Return of the lunkheads: Jersey Shore
Jersey Shore, the show in which pumped-up, tanned Italian-Americans gel their hair and sleep with each other, has returned for a new season. Last season, the fourth, they went back to their roots in Italy, for what was roundly perceived as a total disaster; now the “guidos” and “guidettes” are back to Seaside Heights with their old routines of GTL (gym, tan, laundry) and stormy amatory antics. Snooki, Mike “the Situation”, Pauly, Vinny and the rest – now all practically millionaires in real life – are back to “working” in a T-shirt shop, hailing cabs and hitting the clubs and boardwalk. But is it time for the over-muscled meatheads to go away?
“My bed is my bed and I peed in it last year so who would want to sleep in that bed?” said Snooki, asking to stay in her old room.
“This is hurricane season,” Mike warns. “And it’s headed straight for Snooki Island.”
Hmmm. A cautionary welcome? Josée Rose on The Wall Street Journal Speakeasy blog was “just about ready to welcome back our orange friends.” The gang have really missed Jersey, and need haircuts, tans and gym sessions ASAP. Rose noted that the “core cast members” earned $100,000 per episode for Season 4; and that Vinny, who has been threatening to leave, was a political aide before the show, and had been planning to go to law school. Perhaps that’s why he’s so frequently the most homesick.
Nah, they’re boring! Crystal Bell on The Huffington Post wondered, though, if the party was ending for the guidos. The cast are becoming caricatures of themselves. Season 4 was a “failed experiment” – none of the cast had any interest in Florence, and Florence “had no interest in meatball guidettes.” In Season 5, the “Seaside quote machine is on the fritz.” Nobody’s being funny; it’s just “tired retreads of their greatest hits.” Alas for MTV, “even rats in a cage get boring to watch.”
Give them a chance? Liz Kelly Nelson on the Zap It blog disagreed – despite the lack of spontaneity, she was “totally sucked back in to the dram, manufactured or not.” How can fans resist “the siren call of GTL, Ron Ron Juice, the duck phone…” She did also ponder, though, that if Snooki herself has complained about being bored with the show, then how are fans meant to deal with it?
Nope. Richard Huff on the New York Daily News, however, was adamant. The silliness of the original seasons has gone. It’s not art, either; it feels “meanspirited and repetitive” which may be because of the fame of the cast. Now it’s time to “stick a fork in the last meatball and call it a show.”
Watch the Season 5 trailer below