Quick Take: Jersey Shore, "Hook-up"
"This guy had too many Miami Vices." – Pauly D on Ronnie
Review: Jersey Shore, "Hook-up"
(S0202) One of the many reasons that Jersey Shore is a fabulously entertaining show – and make no mistake, I'm declaring it a TV Geek Army mission to make it okay to dig the Jersey Shore – is that these are kids that absolutely live the frat house life (with peculiar and fascinating guido/guidette sub-culture spin, of course) without a filter and at the same time are largely oblivious to the cameras, even as we enter Season Two and the show and its participants have become something of a pop cultural phenomenon.
Case in point is our boy Ronnie, who we saw last week hooking up at the Miami club with abandon on his first night in town. Whether these young ladies are "hand grenades," as Mike "The Situation" alleges, is immaterial here. What's important to note is what goes down next. Ronnie and Sammi are kind of / sort of broken up, you see, but still clearly have raw and unhealed feelings for one another. Ronnie goes out, gets wild, fist pumps, and hooks up with multiple hand… sorry, ladies. He then heads back to the crib and snuggles up with Sammi in her bed, where a drunken exchange of "I love you" goes down.
The great and entertaining thing about this, I would argue, is that Ronnie is seemingly oblivious to the fact that over half (and, later, all) the gang is aware of everything that went down and the extreme likelihood that all will get back to Sammi at some point, and is equally oblivious to the fact that this is being televised and will surely come back to haunt him at some point down the road.
Ah, the powers of positive and short-term and alcohol-soaked thinking. It's a glorious thing indeed!
Much of the episode then focuses on the strange and hazy gray line that exes who are forced to share a living space (and, occasionally, a bed) must walk. Is it significant that Ronnie has the name of another ex-girlfriend in his phonebook? And is it equally significant that Sammi snooped in said phonebook to creep this out, and then confronted Ronnie with said (said) information?
Meanwhile, Ronnie and Sammi kinda sorta get back together (for now), which is hilarious if only because this is the second season in a row in which Ronnie made pre-season declarations of "I'm not going to fall in love," etc. And running in parallel, it has become apparent that Angelina is walking on thinner ice than ever before. After getting verbally assaulted by Snooki and JWoww for off-season alleged hatings on, she gets drunk as all get out and lets her guard down about her feelings about Pauly D. "I love you's" are again hurled around, which it seems is the one thing that will ruffle Pauly's generally placid and affable GTL-honed demeanor. The brief alliance between she and Pauly / The Situation is now shattered as she broke the most holy of rules: do not at any time act against the interests of Pauly D and The Situation to creep at will.
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