Jersey Shore: Please Read the Letter That I Wrote

FINALLY.

The latest genius episode of “Jersey Shore” delivered the kind of inspired lunacy that made me fall in love with this thing in season 1. It also left me no choice but to go all caps with the opening line of this recap.

This episode was a tour-de-force even before the first commercial break.

The action picked up right where we left off last week, with Ronnie giving some anonymous girl a lap dance after failing Sammi’s test and going out, despite the fact that she actually/telepathically/obviously wanted him to stay home. (Note: the sooner we get the crew into a club or bar in every episode, the better.)

As we soon learned, Ronnie is not too keen on examinations. “I don’t like tests – that’s why I didn’t go to college.” (OHHH, THAT’S why!) Miraculously, that was only my second favorite Ronnie line from that exchange. As he and Sammi began to argue, he said that he didn’t want to beat a dead horse: “The horse is dead…you gotta live it alone.” (Thank you for further spelling out what that phase means – seriously…thank you! That was fantastic!)

By the way, all of this went down after Snooki may or may not have broken up with her boyfriend, who phoned her to say “I f---ed another girl tonight. I’m sorry.” (Another truly underrated gem.) Snooki had tried calling him earlier only to be told that Emilio was too busy to talk because he was surrounded by half-naked girls. He told Snooki to “F--- off.” After Emilio’s confession, J-Woww (not a voicemail) took over phone duties and threatened Emilio, because it’d been over an hour since she’d threatened someone.

The thing of it is, I’m still not 100% sure Emilio was being serious. As soon as Snooki flipped out, he sprained his ankle as he backtracked by claiming that he was kidding. Obviously, Snooki wasn’t buying this, but she seemed to be laughing about it all a bit later (as if she believed he was kidding), which added to my confusion. Yes, it’s entirely likely that I’m over thinking this.

The whole thing ended with the Snooki and Sammi in the confessional (and J-Woww’s boobs wandering into the frame to make an excellent cameo), and with the three ladies breaking a bunch of plates for no apparent reason. Don’t worry, Angelina will get it.

Speaking of Angelina, was this the episode where she became (gasp!) sympathetic? It wasn’t so much the plate thing that got me feeling bad for her – it was the fact that Snooki and J-Woww were clearly positioning Angelina to be the one to tell Sammi about Ronnie’s creepy ways. It’s like, “Hey, Angelina, welcome back to the fold – would you mind being the messenger who gets shot?” Of course, Angelina had to go and squander whatever sympathy I worked up for her by farting in Snooki’s general direction after a sushi meal.

Since Angelina wasn’t taking the bait, Snooki and J-Woww came up with a staggeringly dumb plan (even dumber than MVP ditching Angelina by waiting when she wasn’t looking and running away) to tell Sammi what was up: they would slip an “anonymous” typed letter into her drawer.

I mean, why not create a fake email account? Or at least slip the letter into the mailbox? Wouldn’t it be obvious that someone in the house wrote the letter if it appeared in Sammi’s drawer? Ah, Snooki and J-Woww had that covered by using classy vocabulary like “breasts” instead of “t-ts”, and the word “therefore.” (It’s probably a bad sign that I was pleasantly surprised by Snooki’s typing/grammar skills.)

This Ronnie and Sammi thing looks like it’s mercifully going to come to a head next week. (The preview showed Sammi finding the letter – my god, did the plan actually work?!) It can’t come to an end soon enough. The toxicity of the relationship continues to be depressing. (From an entertainment standpoint, it was nice to at least see Sammi leave her bed and hang out with other people). The push and pull continued as Sammi watched Ronnie get drunk, call her a bitch and leave her stranded in the street as he rode away in a cab. (By the way, that camera shot was, dare I say, beautiful.)

Meanwhile, the toxicity of Ronnie’s drinking continues to be shocking. Witness him staggering around his room, falling down twice, and throwing up “like ‘The Exorcist’” the next morning. In my mind, Ronnie has a spot locked up in season 7 of Dr. Drew’s Celebrity Rehab.

Elsewhere in the house, The Situation made Sunday dinner and remembered how Snooki dropped his chicken. He then proceeded to drop the sauce he was working on. That was quickly followed by Ronnie being nearly hit with a cork and more food falling from the fridge. (Why is there so much food in there? It seems like they go out to eat fairly often.)

Oh, here’s my exciting Vinny update for the week. He quipped that “Victoria should’ve kept this one a secret” when he saw Angelina in her underwear, and was briefly interrogated by Sammi during her Inquisition into Ronnie’s whereabouts. He was also the fawning wingman to Pauly D, as he hit on girls in the gelato shop. Pauly D wasn’t interested in law students more interested in studying law, and less interested in studying, um, Pauly’s D.

So what’d you think of this episode? Will I.F.F. become a thing? (I’m thinking no.) Does your local gelato shop serve “butter face”? Is it just me or does Sammi look better with her glasses? Where can I find the actual numbers on the lesbian rate going up in the country? Finally, who would YOU want to take a dump on your chest?