Recaps

What is going on with these girls?! I was looking forward to watching the ladies of Jersey Shore age into a more leathery version of the Sex and the City foursome, but it looks like they're all gunning to become dick-whipped housewives before they hit thirty. Snooki is engaged, Sammi has so thoroughly disappeared under one of Ron's 'roid pecs that she's barely visible this season, and now JWoww is so wrapped around Roger's little finger that she looks more like Little Jenni from Albany rather than the fake-boobed, awful-nicknamed b!tch goddess we've come to know and love.

After their first bad fight, JWoww basically curls up in a fetal position and begs for Roger's forgiveness. "Roger's like 65 years old, so he's not gonna play these little baby games," says Deena, sounding uncomfortably like a middle-schooler whose  best friend is banging her bio teacher. But Deena's got bigger problems than saving Jenni's relationship with Mr. Burns (Roger is 35, by the way). Her boss wants her gone and she's gotta figure out how to bake a cake to get back in his good graces. After two attempts at putting it in the oven (seriously) the cake is baked, and the meatballs are ready to grovel.

Unfortunately, during the night, someone helps themselves to a corner of the cake, which leads to two of the more subtly hilarious lines of the season: 1.)"Who eats cake when they know it's an 'I'm sorry' cake?" - Deena 2.) (In Sherlock Holmes mode) "Okay, who loves chocolate cake?" Really, dude? That's gonna narrow it down? Naturally, all fingers point toward The Situation, as there's only one person in the house (and possibly the world) douchey enough to purposefully wreck a desert meant to save someone's job.

After some more drama with Snooki's urinary tract infection (man, they're really grasping at straws this season), the girls accuse Mike of the cake thievery directly. His nonchalant attitude and lame excuse ("I'm on a diet!") led me to believe dude definitely ate the cake, but Pauly finally confesses, leading Mike to turn into an 8 year-old before out eyes. ("They only notice when I'm bad!") With that, the great cake conflict of 2012 is over, and I hope to never again spend that much of my life watching grown-ups argue about baked goods.

"We're pretty much finding out who the real troublemaker is and it's...Snooki!" The Situation started last night's episode of Jersey Shore by saying that with a straight face. Yes, the girl who's main priority this season is keeping her relationship intact while Mike tries to destroy it is definitely the one causing problems in the house. That pantsless, drunken tirade Mike went on last week must have been carefully edited to make him look like the sociopathic lunatic.

After basically accusing Snooki of being the tanned lovechild of Lucifer and Newt Gingrich, Mike gets on the duck phone to start trying to destroy her. He and The Unit talk for a few minutes about Deena's sister's sex life, and I guess we'll have to wait for the uncensored DVD to know what the hell they said, because the entire conversation was bleeped out. Anyway, Mike seemed to have gotten the info he needed, so it's time to teach that b!tch a lesson about stirring up unnecessary drama! Or something...

As proof of what an evil devil woman she is, Snooki wakes Mike up to invite him to go out. He declines and everyone else hits the town for the same Seaside clubbing we've seen roughly 4,000 times at this point. The highlight was definitely JWoww's weird, depressed attempt to do The Robot. The Snooki vs. Sitch conflict is certainly the best part of this season so far, but the escalating war between JWoww and Roger has now taken second place in terms of weird drama. We know that these two are still dating in real life, yet we watch them play weird head games with each other with the expectation that they'll break up any minute. Who knew Jenni was the type to tolerate this kind of sh!t?

Quick sidenote: Vinny getting shot down by a lesbian and then effortlessly banging another chick who freakin' followed him home demonstrates why the public is beginning to lose interest in this show. It's reached the point where these guys have to put literally zero effort into getting laid. They're famous millionaires being followed around some Jersey tourist town by an MTV camera crew. Given that situation, John Goodman would be knee deep in willing turnpike trim. Anyway, back to the episode...

"I got my boyfriend back," came the triumphant shout from Pauly D at the start of last night's Jersey Shore. "I got the smush room tonight!" And with that, the gay innuendo between Pauly and Vinny went from playful joke between friends to two passionate guidos outing themselves in front of a national TV audience. But the leathery lovers managed to keep their hands of one another long enough to hit the club with their roommates in celebration of Vin's return to the house. As a reminder of what he was missing out on her, Snooki literally peed herself in public. Welcome home, bro!

The hard times continue for Team Meatball the next morning, as Deena gives herself an electric shock trying to repair yet another extension mishap (What the hell is this chick doing to her hair at the club?), and Snooki braces for more bladder control problems by doubling up on underwear. Man, is anyone else, like, crazy turned on by these girls? But some minor head and crotch problems aren't enough to keep these girls from a Sunday fun day bender. The whole crew hits the boardwalk, where Snooki determines that she has a UTI (clarifying that that does not stand for "Ultimate Tanning Institute") and prescribes herself 40 shots of tequila for the pain. Makes sense.

There's a new phenomenon afoot this season in which Mike splinters off from the group to hang with townie hangers-on whenever possible. Last night Sitch decided to open up about his new habit to an epically wasted Deena and Snooki. "I feel like there's certain people that like to gang up and talk sh!t behind my back," adding that he thinks the guys in the house are conspiring against him, and pretending that he's done nothing to deserve the cold shoulder. At this point, Mike has decided he's the most persecuted good guy since Jesus, and he plans to do something about it. "Here comes The Situation...and you're not gonna like it," he threatens. This should end well.

After some more talk about Snooki's bladder and an unfortunate glimpse of Mike's pubes, Snooks and The Sitch decide to finally try and patch things up. At first, it looked like bad news for everyone who was hoping the return of Psycho Mike might liven up what's thus far been a pretty boring season of Shore. Fortunately, dude quickly worked himself up into a drunken hissy fit, and as his pants dropped, his voice rose, until he was basically screaming at his roommates about nothing in particular with his dick hanging out. Good to have you back to full strength, you lunatic a-hole.

When the random dude who makes millions running "the Jersey Shore t-shirt store" pays an unannounced visit to the house, you know he's there to stir up drama. But because we're supposed to forget that everyone involved with this show is making ungodly bank, he's just there to play pissed off boss/landlord. He's pissed that Vinny and The Situation went AWOL and he's fixin' to replace them, dammit! Of course, MTV would never, in a million years let some Jersey rando who sells wife beaters on the boardwalk for a living pick new castmembers for the network's most popular show, but the trick actually works and the guidos are convinced they're about to be saddled with new roommates.

But then, as if on cue, Mike returns to the house explaining that "Cancers are very sensitive people" to the interest of absolutely no one. Sigh, I was looking forward to a new house douche bag. Vinny, however, is a different story. The roommates call asking him to come home for Mike and Pauly D's surprise birthday party, but Vin politely declines. See, Vinny is the anti-Situation. People actually like him and want him to come home and he didn't leave as desperate cry for attention - dude really wanted to leave. Fortunately, everything the Shore whores do is tabloid fodder, so we already know Vin comes home eventually (maybe even *SPOILER ALERT* later tonight).

Next, in what feels like the opening scene in a snuff film, the girls meet up with some intensely creepy stripper pimp who helps them set up for Mike and Pauly's party and resists the urge to fill his trunk with Meatballs. But while a Jersey stripper pimp is pretty scary, even scarier is what's happening at the Shore Store - the search for a new roommate has begun! Because they're millionaires who have no real fear of being fired from a t-shirt shop, JWoww rips down Danny's "Help Wanted" sign to discourage further inquiries. She could've just shown every applicant footage of Snooki and Deena dry-humping each other in bunny costumes, which is something that seriously happened last night.

After all the drama, it's finally surprise party time. Shockingly, Pauly and The Sitch are not hard to surprise. "I got cakes, I got strippers...this is the best day of my life," says Pauly. Mike on the other hand can't be cheered up even by those incredible circumstances. He somehow manages to bring one of the strippers home, but chooses not to bang her because of some heated argument about matching socks. I'm beginning to think there's something to this "gay Situation" theory.

So we've already seen murderous pimps, humping bunnies and some unlikely sock drama, but this isn't one of those episodes that lumps all the good stuff into the first half hour. No, the real highlights are yet to come, including one of the most unexpectedly awesome scenes in the illustrious history of Jersey Shore...

There's been a lot of speculation lately about Vinny Guadagnino and Pauly D being gay guido lovers (GGLs). I initially dismissed it, thinking the guys were just caught up in the throes of a passionate bromance, but after seeing Pauly descend into full Shakespearean tragedy mode after Vinny left the house on last night's episode of Jersey Shore, I'm beginning to think these two might be smearing their fake tans on one another's private parts.

Even weirder were the reactions from Deena ("I love him!") and Jionni (asking Snooki, "Do you love him?!"). Relax, guys. Vinny's cool, but he's not Ferris freakin' Bueller. There are worse things than one of your friends heading back to Staten Island a few weeks ahead of schedule. Vinny's family has an equally dramatic reaction to his return home, but because his mom is the old-school, loving Italian type, she welcomes him with open arms, instead of smacking him for quitting the world's easiest seven-figure job.

Fortunately, Snooki is around to keep things perspective. "Let's just get wastey pants," she says, coining my new favorite term for getting hammered. Before noon, the Meatballs are humping each other on top of the bar and doing body shots with Deena's surprisingly non-hideous sister. Despite stumbling to a cab while the sun is still up, Snooki is somehow back out that night swilling vodka and attempting to break dance, which leads me to believe she's somehow grown a second liver.

The whole crew heads out for round three and Snooki has somehow sobered up yet again. She's soon in need of a serious Cuervo infusion, though, as The Situation's d-bag friend The Unit is (as always) hanging out at Karma waiting to make her life miserable. Why is this dude suddenly around all the time? Where was he the first four seasons? Why is he wearing a vest with no shirt under it? Despite my many questions about The Unit, he's certainly made this season more interesting, and last night's episode was no exception...

The guidos made their long awaited return to the States on last night's episode of Jersey Shore, but first they had to say good-bye to the city overseas where they fought, partied, and...didn't really get laid all that much. "I can't get a haircut out here; I can't get a tan out here, and the gym sucks," Pauly D said of Florence while the crew made their way to the airport. I'm excited to see the Shore whores back in Jersey, too. Not so that they continue to party at the same lame boardwalk clubs while pretending they're not rich and famous, but so they can stop with all the ugly American culture shock griping. We get it! There aren't a lot of tanning beds in Europe! They have more interesting ways of getting cancer...like smoking.

As was widely reported at the time it happened, the crew went straight from the airport to the Seaside house, with no break in filming. And of course they gushed about how happy they were to be home for the duration of the journey. "It's like America's my mother. I'm coming home to my mother," said Ronnie. Okay, guys, it's not like you were in Baghdad. Maybe you'll stop getting those stupid green, white, and red flag tattoos now that you've realized you're way more American than you'll ever be Italian. Happy as they are to be home, it's not long before the Orangemen get caught up in some drama.

"No one wants to room with Mike," says Pauly. It's a problem that came up in Italy, where The Situation was his usual douchey self. Now he seems eager to make amends, but no one's having it. Everyone agrees to their old rooming arrangements, so of course, once they're settled, Vinny Guadagnino wastes no time violently dry-humping his roommate, Pauly. Lord, I can only imagine what goes down when they're not on camera. Fortunately, Ron, Sammi, and The Sitch all back in the same room again, which should lead to the same hilarious, but borderline scary drama those three have created in seasons past.

"I never knew how much I missed pickles and pickle juice until I got back," says Snooki, and, amazingly, she's actually talking about brined cucumbers. As she slurps pickle juice straight from the jar (seriously) everyone else hits the sauce, then the boardwalk, and it's like season one all over again. But as important as drinking and partying are to the Jersey Shore experience, they're not the key ingredients. There were three important letters missing from last season and the guys mean to make up for lost time.

"If we don't GTL, it's like the end of civilization," says The Sitch, and he's right. I'm pretty sure the fall of the Roman Empire was caused by d-bags not radiating their skin. But while the guys are in heaven, the girls are in hell, lying around the house and stressing about the men in their lives. They dejectedly drag their jet-lagged @sses to a drinks session with their boss, only to find...

Kandi Burruss' mom still isn't talking to her after Redickulous whipped his monster dick out at Kandi's party. Phaedra Parks goes to Kandi's boutique to drop a cake off as an apology. The ladies question discuss whether or not they would pleasure themselves if it was possible, if they were that limber. Phaedra says she'd "probably never go to work." Kandi says she doesn't understand why Nene Leakes left her party when the male stripper started giving himself a blow job. Phaedra says "You showed your cervix for a quarter!" and reminded Kandi that Nene used to be a stripper.

Cynthia Bailey is now at the podium, speaking at her modeling talent school launch event. Cynthia sucks as an MC and Phaedra says "Everyone knows, you wanna look at models, not hear them," lol. After Cynthia flubs all her lines, we meet the new housewife, Marlo Hampton and her boyfriend, who Nene used to date. Sheree Whitfield learns that Nene f*cked Marlo's man.

Cynthia's sister starts crying because Cynthia's husband is having financial problems with his new business venture. Meanwhile, Sheree throws a bottle of water in her ex-husband face after he tells her that he won't help with child support.

Kim Zolciak and her daughter Brielle are talking about her pregnancy. Kim is so candid with her 14 year-old daughter, saying that labor scares the sh!t out of her. Meanwhile Brielle is grossed out about breastfeeding.

Nene shows up to Bar One, the spot Peter and Cynthia are trying to open. Nene tells Peter that he looks so good in his orange shirt. Nene STILL wants to f*ck Peter. It's hilarious, almost as hilarious as Kim's pregnancy conversation with her daughter.

Sheree shows up to Phaedra's law office and tells her that her ex isn't paying any child support. "That burns my biscuits!" Phaedra says. "Maybe he likes bologna sandwiches on white bread, or macaroni and cheese, cause that's what they're serving in jail."

Phaedra Parks brings a gift over to Kim Zolciak's house. Kim is still pissed off that Phaedra's husband Apollo Nida and Peter Thomas argued at her baby shower. Kim says that she actually really likes Phaedra and it was really sweet of her to bring over a gift basket.

Cynthia Bailey and her sister meet up with Peter, and Peter and Cynthia's sister get into a screaming match. Everything related to Cynthia bores me to tears because she has nothing to bring to the show other than her marriage drama. Why is she still on the show?

Kandi Burruss and Phaedra Parks meet up with a planner to talk about her upcoming 35th birthday party. Phaedra comments on Kandi's big booty and Phaedra comments on Kandi's booty. Sheree Whitfield, who has a huge a*s herself, meets up with them. You have to be a big booty ho to hang out with these chicks.

Kandi meets up with Nene Leakes for some heels shopping and sh!t talking. Nene says Kim is "having the third baby by the third man" and that Kandi wanted to be friends with Kim and Kim just wanted a hit song!!! Word. Nene hasn't been as a*sholish as she was last season, mainly because she's speaking to Kandi instead of bullying her.

Back at Kim and Kroy's house, a nurse comes over to discuss what to do with her infant son. Kim is having her son circumcized because she doesn't want her son's penis "to be wearing a turtleneck."

"From the pigeons that attacked to the swagger that got swacked, we'll cover it all," promised host Amy Paffrath at the start of last night's Jersey Shore reunion show. It was difficult to go from Amy's redheaded hotness to the orange roundness of Team Meatball, but Snooki's hilarious praise for "the geography" of Florence helped ease the transition. After everyone had a good laugh at Snooks' retardedness, my future wife Amy introduced the first round of clips by saying, "Something must have been in the Italian wine, because you guys were all a hot mess."

And she was right. Even Snooki acknowledged, "We weren't being ourselves." Looking back on the season, in montage form, it's easier to analyze the bizarre behavior. Did Snooki go on her clean freak, workout junkie binge in an effort to mold herself into wifey material for Jionni? Did Pauly D and Vinny fail to score with Italian chicks because of the language barrier, or because they're becoming less shy about their own homosexual relationship? And, most importantly, did The Situation start practicing his karate kicks in public because he's batsh!t insane, or because...actually, there's no other explanation for that.

Speaking of fighting, the Sitch and Snooki are still going at it, and not in the way he claims they went at it in LA. "You're a bad friend!" Snooks says, minutes into the reunion, to which the Sitch hilariously counters, "We didn't even get to that part yet!" But get to that part they do, as Snooks and Sitch are pulled aside for a one-on-one, and reveal the full extent of their hatred for one another. Snooks basically spits venom at Mike from the time they sit down together, and it seems at times as though she's exaggerating her hatred for the benefit of the abusive, gay guido watching at home. Although, when it's montage time, we get to see some previously unaired clips, such as Mike creepily leaning into the camera and saying, "If you loved your boyfriend so much, you wouldn't have been on your knees with me." So, in conclusion, Mike's probably telling the truth about their hook-up, but they both suck equally.

After seeing the clips, Snooki decides to take her rage out on the entire cast (including her BFF JWoww), screaming "You guys are f*cking fake, and I hate all of you." Whether Mike is telling the truth or not, these two should just go ahead and hook-up, at this point. They definitely deserve each other. As Vinny points out, if Nicole were legitimately telling the truth, she wouldn't fly into a rage at the first mention of her history with the Sitch. And, at this point, if Mike is lying, he's the craziest, most soulless sociopath to ever appear on reality television...which is a very real possibility, come to think of it.

After a fairly hilarious recap of Deena's sexual misadventures in Florence, Snooki heads back to center stage for an explanation of what makes Team Meatball great...

Apparently, The Situation should start a spin-off series where he just gets hammered, talks to himself, and does pantsless karate kicks, because the first minute of last night's Jersey Shore season finale may have been the funniest thing I've ever seen on television. Sadly, on his current show, Mike still has to deal with other people, so when his roommates come home, Ronnie Ortiz-Magro takes The Sitcher aside for a man-to-man and tells him if he doesn't change his ways "he has to go." Mike is still hammered and half-asleep at this point, so he threatens to "scoot" and Ron accuses him of "acting like Angelina." The difference, of course, is that Angelina bounced before this Jersey Shore thing took off, whereas Mike is a one-man empire. If I were him, I'd scoot while the scootin's good.

Next, Pauly D and Vinny say good-bye to the pizzeria, and from the way they talk about it, I get the impression they had more good times and funny moments with their Florentian co-workers than we got to see. Back at the house, Ron and Sammi have a 3-second smush session that the rest of the house has a good laugh at, and Mike persists with his threats to not follow the rest of the crew to Jersey. So no one knows what will happen in Jersey, but for the time being, the guidos are just trying to enjoy the little time they have left in Italy. Sadly, they start one of their last nights in a club that (in Deena's words) resembles "a basement frat party." But Team Meatball is not easily discouraged when it comes to getting hammered, so Snooki and Deena seek out a more bangin' locale.

The ladies get wasted, but not as wasted as the chick Pauly D meets at the club and then hilariously shoves into a cab after she falls down drunk. All-in-all the last clubbing night in Florence was pretty uneventful, but the morning after emotional send-off at the pizza place made up for it. Although, leave it to Deena to ruin the beautiful sentiment behind someone asking for an article of clothing to remember you by, by handing the dude a dirty thong. So the guidos are almost done with Italy. They've even started passing up the pasta and wine for Gatorade and barbecue. But first, they have one last thing to take care of...

Sightseeing! Somehow, these people have been in Florence for six weeks and failed to visit a museum or pose for a group picture. I don't wanna sound like a snob, but c'mon guys...you knew you were in Italy, right? Of course, they set out on their once in a lifetime tour of Florence eager to soak in the culture of the artistic and historical mecca they've been living in for the last month and a half. Or not. "Do you wanna go get liquor if we get bored?" Snooki says at the outset. In fairness, we didn't tune in this season to watch a bunch of bunch of spray-tanned gym rats look at Renaissance art.