When we last left our beloved slutty pumpkins, Snooki’s boyfriend Jionni ran, he ran so far awaaay. The next morning, Snooki says: “I get it. I’m a lot to handle.” But she still doesn’t see why he’d go to such drastic measures and leave her in a foreign country. At least that’s what I think her, “Really? REALLY?” means. She tries his phone, only to get that voicemail lady’s long-winded rejection over and over. NO I DON’T WANT TO PAGE HIM, VOICEMAIL LADY. I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT THAT MEEEEANS!

The Saga of Snooki and Jionni, Part 2

Snooki can’t figure out why Jenni is ignoring her. Jenni, Jionni … what we need now is a Joanie. Anyway: Snooki doesn’t remember screaming “I HATE YOU!” at Jenni the night before, so that explains why Jenni’s mad. So Snooki ventures out alone. Not to find Jionni. To go to a local bar alone (if you don’t count her furry Ewok boots as company), get wasted, and harass the local clientele. She dances alone with her beer and her furry boots, and people are staring, which Snooki claims she doesn’t like, but you don’t dance alone in your white furry boots with a camera crew because you want to be IGNORED.

Then she says my favorite thing, potentially, that she’s ever said: “Don’t look at me like I’m a f*cking weirdo! I’m heartbroken! So let me DANCE!” Per. Fecccc. SHUN.

Meanwhile, at the pizza joint, Deena is screaming, “I don’t friggin clean the friggin bathroom!” when her boss asks her to clean the bathroom. DEENA, who is basically the bathroom of human beings. How, you ask? I’ll let her explain: “I don’t know what’s been in that toilet!” Therrrre it is.

Snooki comes home day-drunk and calls her father to tell him what happened with Jionni, and he flips out on her behalf over Jionni’s ridiculous behavior. “If he KNEW you were gonna act slutty, why did he even come?” Dad screams. Something like that.

Snooki goes into a full-on shame-spiral, saying that she hates herself and what she’s become. Watching this, Jenni decides that she, Jenni, is the a**hole, for getting mad at Snooki for “being herself” (also an a**hole). Everybody’s an a**hole! That’s nothing new. But for once, everybody … knows it? That’s definitely new. I predict that if this show gets to season 6 (it will) there will be a live-in therapist to deal with these increasingly frequent and itchy outbreaks of self-awareness.

The Increasingly Annoying Saga of Snooki and Jionni, Part 3

Jenni calls Jionni (haha, that sounds funny) and begs him to come back to Florence and give Snooki another chance. He refuses, but at least agrees to talk to her over the phone. “I can’t, I can’t, Nicole,” he tells her. “I can’t do it.” He took a train to Rome. JIONNI! ROME? And not VENICE? Have an imagination, you cretin! They have BOATS FOR CARS there! Anyway, Snooki begs him to come back, then gets frustrated and says, “Whatever.” Jenni is pissed; when your cruel and untrusting boyfriend leaves you, at least TRY to get him back! “You’re not being Sam right now, because in ten minutes you’re gonna turn around and change your mind,” Jenni tells Snooki. OUCH. Jionni then admits he lied; he’s at the Florence train station. I thought Sammi would get upset that Jenni called her out for being a defeatist, wimpy girlfriend, but she actually smiles and yells, “Stop! That’s not me anymore! Tell her that’s the old me!” The personal growth that Sammi is exhibiting lately is disorienting and ominous. Be on the lookout for frogs and locusts.

Snooki runs to Jionni at the train station, and he hugs her, but he refuses to stay. Even though he wants to. Snooki explains, “He can’t stay because his mom changed his ticket. Nothing ever goes my way, I swear. Nothing ever goes my way.” Why can’t he just use her $30,000/week salary to change his ticket back? The rules of this show are sometimes harder to understand than Lost. 

Prank Yankers

Vinny decides to pull the latest of many nonsensical pranks: This time, he piles all of Deena’s belonging, and a bench, on top of her bed. When she discovers it, Deena runs into the bathroom, where Vinny is in the shower. He chases her out and presses his naked body against her. “Ew, he put his penis on me!” Deena starts to clean up the prank mess, and then falls and gets caught under the bench. All we see are her legs flailing around from under the bench like the Wicked Witch of the West.

If only Snooki hadn’t been so wrapped up in her own problems, she could have popped up and played one of the munchkins.

I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant (Well I Thought Maybe I Was, But I Kept Drinking Anyway)

On their way to the club, Deena starts to worry that she might be pregnant. She’s been acting emotional (and that’s abnormal…?) and now she’s having hot flashes. Hot flashes that only happen when she’s packed into a van, in the summer time, in Italy. And now she’s missed her period. At the club, Deena confides in Jenni, because she hasn’t been punished enough lately. “Every day I get dizzy!” Deena says. Yes, because every day you’re getting drunk? Jenni forces Deena to walk down the deserted Italian streets to some sort of Emerald City door where someone’s head pops out of a little hole, asks you how many pregnancy tests you want, and then gives you that many pregnancy tests. Italy, what a wonderful country!

I’m shocked this is the first time we’ve ever had a pregnancy scare on this show. Is “smushing” actually what I think it is? Anyway, Deena pees on the stick, yadda yadda yadda, and she is … NOT pregnant. Booooooo! I was really looking forward to Deena’s spinoff, “My Infant Has a Psychiatrist”!

The Now Staggeringly Obnoxious Saga of Snooki and Jionni, Part 4

Snooki calls Jionni now that he’s back in the U.S., and he says her drunken behavior made her look like a “pig.” “I’m depressed because of you, and I’m not being myself,” she tells him. “What do you mean you’re not yourself? You’re drunk seven days a week, you’re hooking up with girls and you’re dancing in your underwear, how is that not being yourself?” OHHHHH BOY, BOY! That’s the last straw. Snooki decides to “take a break” from Jionni and hangs up.

If she’s most upset about one thing, it’s that Jionni didn’t appreciate her hot pink, leopard print bikini-dress the night that she flashed the crowd. “If you want to look slutty one night when your boyfriend’s here, YOU LOOK SLUTTY. Why? Because you wanna have sex with him. Obvi!”

Karma Chameleon

All this fighting makes Snooki yearn for the comforts of home: “I need to get nails done and I need to shop and I need to get Jersey attire and I need to go to Karma. I swear, if I went to Karma tonight, I would feel fine.” And that’s when a lightbulb shaped like a penis appears above her noggin! What if they all dressed up like they’re going out to Karma, and turn the living room into Karma, and Pauly’s the DJ?!?!

Pauly is thrilled. “Yes! Let’s bring Karma to the living room, and I’m gonna be the DJ!” For the fifth or sixth time this week, it’s now the best day of Pauly’s life. Nobody knows how to carpe the diem like Pauly! He’s like a puppy. A PUPPY WHO’S A DJ! Now that’s a cute image/awesome Halloween costume idea.

All the house mates “get fresh to death” for their pretend-time dance club. They even yell “CABS ARE HERE!” when it’s time to go to Karma (the living room). The girls dance up on each other while Mike “just sits in the corner with his glasses on and looks like the biggest creep ever.” (Says Ronnie.) It’s nice to see them all have fun together, inside this little make-believe land inside their slightly larger make-believe land. It’s times like this that I realize my true, deep, pure, loving affection for these people. No one can say they aren’t entertaining.

Now that she’s mad at Jionni, Snooki goes where she knows she’ll get the sexual attention she wants: Mike. He lays on cliche after romantic cliche about how he would take care of Snooki better than anyone else. Jenni says that Mike doesn’t love Snooki, he just wants to break up someone else’s relationship. Because he’s miserable. And a sadist. And his hair looks like a dweeb’s sometimes (a bowl cut parted down the middle, WHAT?) Snooki weakly rejects his proposals, coming off just disinterested enough to encourage him to keep laaaaying on those compliments. “I love you like a good friend,” she says. A good friend she’s had a little bit of sex with once or twice or thrice. If Ronnie and Sammi are like this show’s Romeo and Juliet (which, for the record, they are not), then Snooki and Mike are like Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. And Mike’s making a suuuper ugly Lady Macbeth right now.

It’s at this point in the conversation that we actually need a little context to see through Mike’s lies: Last week, Mike went around talking to anyone who would listen (which was no one) about how he wanted to kick Jionni in the head. Ronnie said, “Do what you gotta do.” Translation: “Whatever it takes to get you to stop talking to me about kicking dudes in the head.” But now, to get the target off HIS (Mike’s) back, Mike tells Snooki that Ronnie was telling him (still Mike) to kick Jionni in the head. Snooki gets furious that everyone is talking behind her back and egging on Mike to beat up her boyfriend.

Mike tries to get sympathy from the other roommates, but ends up saying something gross and bleeped out about how he f*cked Snooki, so te girls scream at him about being a disgusting dude and a terrible friend until he leaves the room. YAY!

The episode ends with a disturbing turn of events, sponsored by the Jersey Shore house twin-sized beds: Deena tries to hit it with Pauly, but he rejects her. On the other side of the room (!) Vinny and Snooki start kissing and … doing … other … things that I don’t want to explain because I don’t want to be seeing them, but as Pauly says, “We all know what’s going on.”

Sex! Tears! Yelling! Dancing! Pregnancy Scares! Getting Caught Under Benches! I know we don’t give grades on this website, but I give this episode of Jersey Shore an A+.

Next Week: Snooki wakes up and immediately regrets that decision. And that decision has its aftermath: Jenni tough-loves Snooki to tears, and then Snooki has to tell Jionni what — I mean whom — she did.

(Images courtesy of MTV)

Meghan Carlson

Senior Writer, BuddyTV

Meghan hails from Walla Walla, WA, the proud home of the world’s best sweet onions and Adam West, the original Batman. An avid grammarian and over-analyzer, you can usually find her thinking too hard about plot devices in favorites like The OfficeIt’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and How I Met Your Mother. In her spare time, Meghan enjoys drawing, shopping, trying to be funny (and often failing), and not understanding the whole Twilight thing. She’s got a BA in English and Studio Art from Whitman College, which makes her a professional arguer, daydreamer, and doodler.