Many months ago, I was coerced by friends into watching an episode of Jersey Shore, whose continued popularity is the leading cause of dead birds flooding God's country and other such signs of the apocalypse.
And, as much as the admission makes me hang my head in shame as I turn the shower to scalding, I kind of enjoyed it.
So last night I happened to stay in and NBC wasn't there with its only worthwhile shows and FX wasn't there with something like Sunny or The League and so it came to be that my remote made an unscheduled stop on Channel 40, home to MTV, which is otherwise known as the worst channel this side of Lifetime.
And there it was -- the Jersey Shore in all its overwhelming orange splendor, haunting me again.
A marathon, I guess, preceded the 3rd season (they're at three already!), whose main narrative seems to be the triumphant return of the crew to their hallowed spawning grounds in New Jersey.
And so I watched it. Maybe three or four hours of it. And as much as it horrifies me to say it, I was wildly, wildly entertained.
And the thing is, the show is not good. In fact, it's heinous. It's awful. The idea that these screeching orange morons can coexist in the same medium that gives us the excellent Mad Men or the magnificent Breaking Bad is beyond my powers of comprehension. If something like The Sopranos is the Moby Dick of TV, Jersey Shore is those awful romance "novels" with an orange Fabio on the cover.
And here's why my narcissistic Northeastern elitism -- which only reads Stephen King books at home, choosing to save Joyce and Bellow for the subway -- gets kicked right in the sprouts, because despite my best efforts to dismiss the show as the contrived exploitation of the lowest common denominator, I have to say that I really enjoyed the spectacle.
I'm not really sure what it is. Pauly D is hilarious. So is the Situation (or is it The Situation?), who plays the greatest sociopath on TV since Dennis Reynolds. And Snooki. Watching Snooki is like trying to watch a drunk baby grabbing at shiny things, if that baby looked like a penguin had sex with an Oompa Loompa and sounded like a version of Alvin and the Chipmunks that grew up on Long Island. Plus, the SNOOKI WANT SMUSH-SMUSH parody on South Park was spot-effing-on.
Perhaps my favorite, for rather obvious reasons, is J-Woww. Or is it Jenni? This question is part of my fascination with her. On the one hand, there is that impulse to call her by her Christian name, as in, "Wow, Jenni, those are terrific breasts." On the other hand, the first and only thing that comes to my head whenever she takes her shirt off is "WOW."
And I'm aware of how much of a dirty old man this makes me. But J-Woww is a prime example of what I call the "Staci Rule." Staci, as you no doubt remember, is the Blake Lively character on The Town. On the one hand, she's a crack ho. On the other hand, she looks like Blake Lively. Do you see the inherent conflict? This "trashy hot girl dilemma" is exactly what J-Woww personifies, and I have no defense for it. The Staci Rule states that of course you would hook up with this girl, but only if you did it in the shower. Or if a shower was nearby.
So I'm afraid I have surrendered to the phenomenon that is the Jersey Shore. Late as always to the party (remember Lost and Mad Men?), I grudgingly concede that I will watch this show, which so often sounds like what happens if you trapped pigs and cats in heat and rabid pigeons in a small coffin together, on a regular basis for the foreseeable future. I'm not proud of it, but there you have it. Cast the first stone at will.
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