The third season of Jersey Shore kicks off tonight and I am more scared than excited. Season 1 was one of my most favorite seasons of a show ever1 due to the utter shock of learning people like this actually exist. The complete cluelessness at times of the cast members as to how insignificant and warped their lives were was priceless. Angelina saying “I do good things, I am a bartender” couldn’t have summed it up better. The introduction to The Situation2 and his third person commentary were priceless. The show possessed that vibe of being like The Real World with the right amount of shock value to keep you coming back.
The 2nd season was a big dropoff. There weren’t many hookups or adventures. Aside from the one trip to the Everglades they never really left the house or clubs3. Despite the fact that they supposedly filmed for 8 weeks, the 11 hours they aired was pretty uninteresting. With the novelty gone, it was pretty clear why reality shows about non-famous people don’t have any long-term life, people only want to watch show about people more or less fortunate than themselves. The Situation, Pauly D and Vinny were about the only tolerable people. The Situation had some great moments but even he wore on me as the season progressed. The Ronnie/Sammi situation was beat to death and could not have been more uninteresting.
Ultimately I think season 3 will be a colossal failure and the last one with this cast. The “characters” are way too famous at this point, which makes it difficult for them to do anything out of the ordinary and causes their “celebrity” to go to their heads4. They are back in New Jersey where everyone will recognize them and be gunning for them. That hurts the spontaneity of it. The show will really have to come up with something crazy for me to call the season a success. But as one of my friends has already pointed out, I’ll watch every episode hoping to be proved wrong.
- Seriously, any show [↩]
- The 2nd best self-proclaimed nickname ever besides Reggie Jackson’s “The Straw that Stirred the Drink” [↩]
- I suspect this was a major product of them being too recognizable [↩]
- Snooki’s beachside arrest proves this perfectly [↩]
