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You Suck, Television

We've learned a lot from "Jersey Shore"...GTL, baby, GTL.

Every once in a while, while working on this column, I happen upon a white whale. Occasionally, somebody goes on TV and shits on a mansion’s floor while engaging in a shouting match or allows cameras to capture the slow downward spiral of their marriage, and it’s like they know I’m a columnist in need of something awful to pick apart. So, when I heard about this show about Guidos called “Jersey Shore,” I thought there might be something, but I saw a couple of the originally pre-season promos and didn’t think it was anything special in the context of the metric fuckton of terrible programming MTV throws on the air in a given month.

Was I ever wrong. “Jersey Shore” is one of those shows that piques interest in every way, beginning and ending with the fact that it’s become a full-blown cultural phenomenon. That and it’s a train wreck, but more on that later. I thought these were your typical “invented” reality show types at first, people who play up one bit of persona because a camera’s following them around. But oh, no. A friend of mine who used to be a pretty hardcore clubber informed me that these guys exist, and furthermore she’d been hit on by a dude with a drink in one hand and a pumping fist raised high and glorious. Then there are the Guidettes (which makes me think of Smurfette for some reason, and then I have a doubly uncomfortable erection), the female equivalent, who go for these dudes and others like them. Another guy I talked to grew up just down the street from one of the female cast members, and when I asked him if it was all real, he just told me to avoid Long Island and Queens.

The premise is basically “The Real World” moved to the Northeast. For a whole summer, they put eight of these types (four guys, four girls) in a house and filmed their exploits. By which, I mean booze (so much booze…) and fucking, more or less. Occasionally a shouting match (which because of the accents sometimes sound like a late-era Stallone monologue) ensues, but mostly it’s those first two things. And fist pumping. Now, when I saw Facebook statuses beginning to pop up talking about the fist pump, I figured it was just a stupid thing I had no interest in. I was half right; it’s definitely a stupid thing, but for the denizens of the Shore, it’s a veritable way of life. These guys never stop fist pumping. My favorite bit was that in one episode I saw, I discovered the subdued fist pump. This is when a guy stops pumping over his head to try and pick somebody up, and so he keeps pumping, but down at waist level. I’m so confused by the whole process that I can’t even make the obvious masturbating joke in that last sentence.

As far as the characters go, I have to begin and end with “The Situation.” I remember his first name is Mike, and I honestly have no desire to figure out the last name. I like to imagine that his middle and last names are “The”  and “Situation,” respectively. But I digress. He’s the most famous one to come out of this show more or less, and I can honestly see why. Not only is he the closest(ish) to a sincere cast member, but as egomania goes, he’s turned it into a fucking art form. I was mortified to realize that one day in conversation, I had casually dropped his catchphrase, “looks like we’ve got a situation.” In the season finale (which is the main episode I focused on for this column), he modified this to be a sad statement. That being uttered dejected might be the funniest thing in the world.

Then there’s Snooki. Now, I don’t understand why an overly tanned pygmy dwarf has become a sex symbol (I prefer J-Woww…OH NO I AM PART OF THE HIVE MIND NOW), but she has. It’s at the point where she can show up in a glorified sausage casing at the Grammys and nobody says a thing. Which is interesting, because on the show, all she does more or less is squeal. Seriously, I don’t know what that sound she makes is, but it’s like a baby crying filtered through screeching tires. In the season finale I watched, she saw her ex-boyfriend at a beach bar on Labor Day weekend (who she’s “totally like still in love with,” and I’m quoting directly), and instead of going up to dance with him, she proceeded to start dancing by herself on the boardwalk. Only when non-attractive men tried to do it with her did she stop. I couldn’t write this. Not in a million years.

After watching it, I really had to stop and consider why this show has gotten as big as it has. In the episodes I watched, though the characters are absolutely absurd, it’s no crazier than any other reality show. It’s not even the worst. I think it taps into a very simple thing, though, and wrings it to perfection: the summer romance. Everybody wants one in one fashion or another, depending on how much you want to quibble over definitions of romance. It lets you watch someone else’s, and it’s also really the college fantasy of being able to drink and sleep around without consequence, and when the summer ends you go back to your real life. Also, it makes an amazing drinking game. One shot for every fist pump, and you’re toast at the end of an hour.

You suck, television.