I’m sure all of you know that yesterday was the beginning of the end of “Jersey Shore,” everyone’s favorite reinforcer of negative Italian-American stereotypes. My favorite reality show will pack up its bronzer, hairspray, and jewelry for good. Let’s all take a moment and look back at our favorite moments.
I have two. The first was during season one, when Ronnie brawled on the boardwalk and uttered those immortal lines: “Come at me, bro!!”
My ear heard it and my eye spotted the scene whilst I channel-surfed in 2009. Transfixed, I knew I was hooked and it caused me to block out an hour of my Thursday nights for the next three years.
My other favorite moment has stayed with me for a year and a half. In the midst of their typical Krakatoa-level lovers’ quarrels, Ronnie and Sammi did something I honestly didn’t expect – they went to church, to “release their sins” as Sammi put it. Some could smugly look down their nose at them and say, “They went because the producers told them to” or “I wonder if they went the other 51 Sundays of the year.”
Yet I think that this is the most “real” moment of this reality show. In their moment of discord, Sammi and Ronnie knew they needed to be made whole. When they can’t GTL anymore, when there’s no more time for “T-Shirt Time,” when the cabs aren’t there, they know they’re left alone with their broken selves. They went to “release their sins” because they knew only One could make them, their relationship, and their shore house whole: God. In that moment, they were most real with themselves.
Incidentally, this is a clip I can’t find online.
