‘Jersey Shore’ gang is back
They’re taking the party to Florida.
As inevitable as a hangover after a long night at Karma, Jersey Shore has risen from its proverbial tanning bed.
With the onslaught of revivals hitting the small screen this year, it was only a matter of time until MTV returned to its boisterous reality hit, which signed off in 2012 after six seasons of fights, hookups and boozy summertime shenanigans in Seaside Heights, N.J. It was the type of show for which the term “guilty pleasure” was invented: an excuse to watch a group of brazen twenty- and thirtysomethings misbehave in ways most of us would just as soon forget.
And yet, even as the party wound down in later seasons and the manufactured drama grew stiffer than Pauly D’s hair, we kept on watching because of the outsize personalities in its cast, led by Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi and Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino. Whether they were dodging “grenades” at nightclubs or doing their “GTL” routines (gym, tan, laundry), they were insanely quotable and even controversial at times. But faster than they could yell “Cabs are here!” we’d be outside ready to go out with them if ever given the chance.
Which is why we were equal parts delighted and trepidatious when we learned that the gang would reunite for Jersey Shore Family Vacation, premiering globally Thursday (8 ET/PT), in which they take their drunken tomfoolery to Miami’s South Beach and promise to go “harder than we’ve ever gone before.”
For Millennials such as myself, watching the original Jersey Shore was a carefree weekly ritual, synonymous with tossing back bottom-shelf liquor in your college dorm room with a group of friends and hoping your RA didn’t hear you. But we’ve since grown up, and so has the cast: Snooki, Paul “Pauly D” DelVecchio and Jenni “JWoww” Farley are now parents, while a sober Situation faces prison time for tax evasion.
Would watching them now just look like a sad, desperate attempt to resuscitate MTV’s once-popular brand and their own mostly non-existent careers? Thankfully, no.
Most of the highly entertaining season premiere is dedicated to catching up with the returning cast. Ronnie OrtizMagro, for instance, is expecting a baby with his girlfriend, and Vinny Guadagnino still has regular dinners with his doting Italian mom. The only original roommate not coming back is Ronnie’s ex, Sammi “Sweetheart” Giancola, which becomes a source of tension with her close friend, Deena Cortese, when Ronnie continues to bad-mouth her. Further stirring the pot — in true Jersey Shore fashion — is a talking Sammi sex doll: The guys bring it to Miami to prank Ronnie, and Snooki later wrestles it to the ground. (Because, sure.)
Otherwise, it feels as if no time has passed among the guidos and guidettes. The girls make a nostalgic pit stop in Seaside Heights, visiting the boardwalk T-shirt shop where they once worked and retrieving the duck phone from their old house. And although they admit no one fist-pumps and “Jersey Turnpikes” on the dance floor like they did in their glory years, Snooki still drunkenly falls out of a club and tumbles to the ground at the end of the episode.
Jersey Shore Family Vacation wisely doesn’t mess with its comfortably familiar formula, and it goes down like a cheap tequila shot.
Sure, we know it’s bad for us, but it’s always a blast in a glass.
“Family Vacation” wisely doesn’t mess with its comfortably familiar formula, and it goes down like a cheap tequila shot. We know it’s bad for us, but it’s always a blast in a glass.