02 March 2012

Who Moved My Cheese Bed?

Last night's episode of Jersey Shore ("The Truth Will Set You Free") was the mattress-movingest hour of all time. Unable to process Jenni and Roger's lusty night-to-be, Pauly hides and rehides the Smush Room mattress, hoping that its absence will prevent a foregone conclusion. Perhaps I should have named this recap "Going to the Mattresses" or "Say Goodnight, Pauly." At this point it's far too late. They don't think it be like it is, but it do!


As soon as Vinny and Snooki get home from their boardwalk date, Deena psychoanalyzes them about what it all means. "Was there any tension?" she pries. Vinny tries to play it off like it was nothing, like their 90-year-old romance meant nothing more to him than a few games of pool. Ninety years, down the drain. Like so much old-people hair (if they still have any).

Deena gets on the phone with Joey, some guy who apparently doesn't like her at all. I'm not sure why we're supposed to care about this person. I'm not even sure why I'm writing about him. This next thing is much more interesting because it is putrid:

Pauly runs into ANGELINA PIVARNICK, the Original Trash Bag herself, at the bar that night!!!!!! Oh GROSS. Triple barf! Thank GOD it only lasts for a few seconds. YUCK!


Situation manages to find a girl to bring home, but after he goes to all the trouble of lending her his sweatpants, she decides she doesn't want to go all the way. They can chat and maybe kiss a little, but nothing else. Obviously, Sitch heads downstairs to order a chocolate chip bagel and a cab. He ends up tipping the delivery guy in protein powder and kicking the girl out after him.

I realized why Mike makes all of his lady guests wear his sweats - that way he can hide their clothes and make it much harder for them to leave. Well, slightly harder. Maybe he's just collecting a wardrobe for his future as Sitchina Scarlett, bawdiest cross-dresser this side of the Mississippi.

Jwoww and Roger's 1-year anniversary is fast approaching, so she makes the same move she always makes and buys a whole lot of crap from a sex shop. It's as though she's an intern for some dirty gift basket company and her boss keeps being like "More! Make it more plentiful! More blindfolds and handcuffs and dildos and things!" She plans on decorating the Smush Room bed with rose petals and assorted sex toys, but not before Vinny and Pauly scoot the whole thing out onto the Mattress Patio and hide it under a blanket.


Pauly's having a hard time with what he knows is going to happen upstairs between Jwoww and her boyfriend. He's smiling when he brings it up, but he's bringing it up a lot. He and Vinny convince themselves that moving the mattress and box spring will be "some kind of message...to the people" of the world, I guess, about why you shouldn't have sex on your anniversary. It's like they've been taking notes on Brian Moylan's gawker recaps, realizing that assaulting a guido's bed is as good as assaulting a guido's mother, power-wise. You wanna send a message, you gotta mess with the bed.

Meanwhile, Sitch tries his hardest to scheme to break up Jionni and Snooki. He makes a point of hanging back by the Shore Store after their shift is over so that he can call up the Unit and literally say "tonight's the night!" This pantomime couldn't be more complete if he put his face up to the camera and did shifty eyes and waggly eyebrows at the same time. Message received, Mike. You're going to throw a truth bomb on Snooki, and it's gonna happen tonight! Possibly.

Jwoww lugs several bags of sex paraphernalia up the stairs only to enter a bedless Smush Room. She suspects Vinny and Pauly (not Sitch for some reason), and even though they eventually break and everyone has a good laugh about it, she still has to drag the mattress and box spring back into place by herself. A perfect illustration of the Guido Prank Principle: If you done a prank, enjoy it for a while! But you gotta admit it eventually. You don't gotta undo it or nothing, just own the fact that you did it.

After an arduous process, Jwoww has finished decorating the bed. And so when she leaves the room for a second, it's very clear that the boys will be dragging it all outside again. Instead, Vinny and Pauly (and now Ronnie, too) just stand around it, dumbfounded. Vinny declares all the sex toys to be "old people" decorations, and that's why he's so pissed. Even Jwoww says something about how she and Roger are an old couple now. And so I guess this is how we discover that old guido couples traditionally decorate with lots of anal beads and penis cloners. Dang y'all, we just use a large, vibrating egg.


Deena spends the entire episode getting told by conscientious roommates that Joey doesn't like her. But she wants to date him anyway, so they go to the club together. When she brings up how he feels about her, he run-walks away, finally able to escape the date he never wanted to go on. Excellent reaction. This is precisely how Deena should be treated. Soon her self-esteem will drop so low that she has to do the Jersey Turnpike at breakfast just to get a little attention. Go back to your kangaroo pouch, Joey. Deena ends up following (chasing) him around until she leaves, and some anonymous girl slides in next to where he's standing. I hate this place.

The boys notice how ugly all the talent at the club is that night, but Pauly knows the drill: "Sometimes it is what it is, you know? You got to smash every night." He mumbles that last part so fast, it's like he's trying to gloss over the burgeoning thought that he might not have to smash every night. No, Pauly, don't even think it. You do have to. You promised...ya motha? At any rate, he can't possibly go home to face "what's goin' on upstairs" by himself.

Time for yet another oddly placed 2-minute segment between commercial breaks. This time it's a business-as-usual afternoon at the Shore Store as Pauly D douses a few lady shoppers in white t-shirts with a Super Soaker. Somehow this won't become a lawsuit.

After the XXL break, we return to the club and to Mike's dastardly plan as he puts it into effect. He and the Unit are going to tell Jionni about the time Snooki and Ryder pleasured them sexually. Bombs gonna go off, yo! Except they can't because the Unit has gotten way too drunk, and God knows Mike can't do this by himself. Plus, Jionni and Snooki have long since pulled an Irish Goodbye and are probably at home asleep by now.

As the boys walk home from the club, Unit takes off his shirt and is arrested immediately. This throws the ultimate wrench into Sitch's plans, but to be honest, he'd already felt it coming: "I'm Sitchsterdamus. Things are gonna get bad." Ronnie stops him from freaking out, reminding him three distinct times that he knows, "from experience," that there's nothing to do until they process the Unit.


So Mike wakes up early the next morning to check on Uncle Jailbird, when suddenly he spies Jionni padding across the living room, completely Snookless for a few precious moments. Mike cannot believe "the probability" that this has happened. It's a forgone conclusion that they're going to pow-wow on the back patio. And when the smoke clears, Big Chief Jion Jion will see the world through the eyes of a different spirit animal: the Mattress Eagle.

photos courtesy of mtv.com

No comments:

Post a Comment