Welcome back, everyone. I hope that your winter break was relaxing and you got to spend time with family, friends and loved ones. Mine sure was, but it wasn’t the only thing I got to accomplish during my quick respite back home.
Since starting college this fall, one of my favorite pastimes has taken a back seat and that would be my near-compulsive consumption of television. I know, it’s going to rot my brain out – thanks, Mom. My favorite thing about television is that I believe it can capture the zeitgeist of the American culture — be it with a popular cartoon enrapturing the young minds of children, or a psychological drama keeping older folks glued to the screen every week.
I watch a wide range of television, from the hyper-intellectual (yes, I’m looking at you, “Mad Men”) to what most people consider absolute garbage. This break, I decided to take my television-watching talents to South Beach and catch up with the second season of the oft-maligned yet oft-quoted “Jersey Shore.” Season 3 begins Thursday.
One of the most striking memories of my first few weeks of college was how into “Jersey Shore” my fellow students are — there were notes on the elevator about “Jersey Shore” parties and certain residence halls were hosting hordes of students in their commons who’d all been enraptured by the spell of gymming, tanning, and laundering. I watched along from home for the first week or two but then became too busy with real life to keep up.
So when I came back to the show a few weeks ago, I immediately remembered exactly what I’d been missing — in the words of future poet laureate Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi, “gorilla juiceheads” and a whole lot of fights about nothing.
“Seinfeld” used to describe itself as “a show about nothing.” “Jersey Shore” has certainly one-upped it.
However, as awful as the show got, and as much as I felt like I was watching reruns of “Maury” or “Jerry Springer,” after a while, it was incredibly endearing. To my amazement, I had found something in common between “Mad Men” and “Jersey Shore” — the two programs I find most intellectually perpendicular on cable. In both shows, it was very hard to find someone to root for! Everyone had an inherent flaw that was evident to viewers like us, and we come back each week with our deepest hopes that someone will straighten up and fly right.
In the interest of my readers, I’ll keep this as spoiler-free as possible, for those who wish to go back and watch season two, but characters who seemed squeaky clean (and by definition, out of place) at the Jersey Shore house were found to have a flaw or make themselves unlikeable. It wouldn’t be surprising if, like MTV’s previous reality show “The Hills,” the series finale outs the entire shindig as a scripted series. The development of the characters and certain themes would fit that mold.
My only worry is that people take “Jersey Shore” too seriously. There are certain values to be celebrated in “Jersey Shore” — the house guests work for their rent, and when families come to visit, they are celebrated. A lifestyle espoused by the house guests isn’t foreign in college — going out regularly, heavy drinking and promiscuity. But in high school or middle school? If a 13-year-old girl’s dream is to be like Snooki, we’ve got a problem.
Jersey Shore’s often maligned, but it’s being viewed through the wrong lens. It’s not reality — it’s satire at its finest.
Sean Quinn is a first-year political science student.
