Hour One: Jersey Shore.
The first words I hear when I turn on Jersey Shore are "f*** hippo." This is not a good start. Also, six of the seven cast members on this shore have names that end in an "ee" sound: Sammi, Ronnie, Vinny, Snooki, Pauly, and Jenni.
"The only thing we care about is getting girls. Getting girls and going to the gym," one cast member proclaims. "Jersey Shore" seems to center on a large group of Italian-Americans living together in a big house and yelling profanities at each other. One of the male cast members, Ronnie, is holding a bag of ice to his face, presumably because they got into a fistfight. At the first commercial break, I'm eight minutes into the hour-long program. I'm also sincerely appalled. Every male cast member is adorned with tattoos and clothed almost exclusively in wife beaters, and the girls all are the rich orange hue of excessive tanning. Most of the conversation centers around things like "so-and-so is so jealous" and "So-and-so is such a slut." My personal favorite cast member so far is Nicole, or as she likes to be called, Snooki. Snooki is unashamedly honest, and just as irritating. "I saw this guy in the bar with muscles, so I'm like, 'Oh, he's my type,' but he was all Irish, and talked with an Irish accent, and I always go for the Italian guys, so it was weird."
At one point, Snooki returns to the house with her Irish arm candy, and interrupts a intense hot-tub makeout session involving one of the other cast members, who promptly gets upset with her. The next thing I notice about Jersey Shore is that many of the cast members refer to each other as "guidos" or "guidettes," which is a term I am not familiar with.
Midway into the episode, the girl Mike was making out with in the hot tub, Paula, is asleep, and her friend is looking for her, and arrives to find her in this man's bed.
The portion of the show that isn't spent at the house is almost certainly at clubs. The show seems to oscillate between these two locations periodically, with brief asides from cast members to break the monotony somewhat.
When I watch this show, I always feel like i'm missing something. Given that I've never seen it before, I don't fully understand some of the intense drama. I do understand that Mike is mad because Vinny is hitting on his younger sister, and Vinny and Mike don't get along.
Jersey Shore is filmed at a breakneck pace, skipping frantically between arguments, making out, more arguments, more making out, and cast interviews with alarming frequency. It becomes almost difficult to view the program without developing a severe case of ADHD or whiplash, whichever comes first.
When Pauly meets a Jewish girl, he proclaims, "I don't care about that religion, I don't understand it and all that, I just want to get to the business."
Slightly more than halfway into the episode, in one of the show's rare scene changes, the cast moves to Atlantic City, where they all promptly fall asleep except for Snooki, who spends awhile playing in a Jacuzzi filled with bubbles, noting that it "feels like a porno."
The cast all goes out to dinner together, spending more time insulting each other then eating. Snooki storms of after an exchange with Mike in which he insinuates that she's fat. The rest of the cast then berates Mike, and Jenny goes off to comfort Snooki.
Snooki reveals that she has had a lot of problems with her weight in the past, alluding to some eating disorder. However, Mike apologizes, and naturally, clubbing heals all wounds. However, while the cast is out clubbing, Mike steals Vinny's girl by accident.
Later, for some reason unknown to me, Jenny smacks Mike and gets thrown out of the club. At the end of hour one, I have developed a huge grudge towards Sally Ann Salsano.

Hour Two: More Jersey Shore.
This episode picks up exactly where the last one left off, with Jenny trying to assault Mike, and she succeeds in punching him in the face. I'm barely over an hour of total Jersey Shore, and my mind is screaming one question: "WHY DOES THIS EXIST?!" I just keep feeling offended by the existence of this television show. I don't really know where the cast is or what they're doing at the moment, but I'm going to assume that it involves the pursuit of sex, and excessive alcohol. Soon Pauly runs into Danielle when he's out with other girls, and she keeps bothering him, much to his dismay. She calls the house when he returns home, and Vinny picks up the phone, pretending to be Mike. That night, two of the boys, Mike and Pauly, decide to hide Pickles under Snooki's bed, as some sort of bizarre prank.
Mike then puts a homemade pungent concoction under Vinny's bed.
Why can these people not help antagonizing each other...? It's strange. Very, very strange. When Danielle calls again for Pauly, he actually takes her call, and she just goes off on him for reasons that I don't think anyone clearly understands. Pauly gets fed up and hangs up on her, bringing me the realization that yes, there somehow are people who are less sane than the cast members of Jersey Shore.
I am having trouble focusing on the program, and it's only hour two. It's getting pretty pathetic. The cast members went bowling, Jenny and Mike hate each other... The monotony of Jersey Shore is starting to wear on me. It's slightly past halfway through the eighth and penultimate episode of the first (hopefully only...?) season of the program. The episodes are all essentially the same... They begin and end with melodrama, peppered with the short periods of respite known as "commercial breaks." It's the equivalent of going to a play and only being able to compliment the intermission.
When the show continues, Danielle has showed up again at Karma, the club that the cast members seem to inhabit nightly. Pauly comments that she came "out of the woodwork," which seems like a stretch, considering he met her there only the week before.
Snooki mentions that she found a guy who had "all the qualities she wanted," and then to elaborates, calls him "hot" about five times, saying little else.
As the cast leaves the club, the get into an altercation with a seemingly random person on the street, and Ronnie punches the man, knocking him out. The group continues walking, and then the police arrive, and Ronnie is cuffed and taken to jail. Sammi comments that "It's not anyone, it's Ronnie, he shouldn't be in jail."


Hour Three: The Real World.
"When people stop being polite, and start getting real."
This show has a much less abrasive opening than Jersey Shore.
The cast members, all eight of them, live in one house together.
At seems like it's the beginning of the season, and the cast is convinced that Emily and Ty slept together last night.
The cast members are predicting that there will be a lot of drama, which seems strangely... self-aware, as if they just broke the fourth wall and spoke directly to the camera. It was... strange. And then of course, the three girls start discussing their weight and the bodies of the other girls in the house.
Ty likes to discuss his relationships with Ashley? The second reference to self-image problems comes after Emily and Ty go to the gym together. Emily talks a little bit about how she doesn't like her legs.
Ty is upset, he had a goal of "not sleeping with anyone" while he was on the show.
Ty then calls his ex.... why? just because... it creates some sort of tension, doesn't it? Callie gets lost running. Andrew makes some remarks about how you can see through the frosted glass on showers. FASCINATING. God, I'm just getting angry and sarcastic. I don't know why... I've watched too much reality TV. I even took an hour break between Jersey Shore and the Real World to cool off. I feel really tired, even though it's barely past eight o' clock. I find my mind continuing to wander, playing with things like Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. I love Photoshop... Anyway, my attention is recaptured when Ty and Emily start to fight because Emily was talking with other guys at the club because she didn't want to hang out with Ty when he was being all emotional and "pouring his heart out to her." Ty and Emily have a physical altercation and then later talk it out outside. Ty gets in her bed when she decides to go to sleep, and he keeps wanting to talk to her.
Emily tries to discuss her problems with Mike, and then chats with Andrew.
Oh boy, drama.... shocker. Who could have predicted that? Oh... wait, everyone did. Twenty minutes ago.
Ty tells Callie that she's not skinny enough for Playboy. And now everyone's mad and sad and upset and whatnot.
2.75 Hours into the reality TV marathon, I can hardly keep my eyes on the screen. I just don't find anything interesting. How long does it take to scan the thousands of applicants for this show for people that look normal but are completely lacking in tact and social skill? I bring this thought up with my dad, and he says that he doesn't understand how people can be so boring as well, and that he doubts that any of the cast members can be found in their rooms, doing things like... (God forbid...) reading? But of course, while I by no means think the cast members are intellectual giants, I remind my dad that they are filming these people around the clock on multiple cameras, and they compile all the footage and cut it into a half an hour. Reading = boring = not television. Isn't the stereotype that people have cathode ray tubes to avoid ink and paper?
Hour three has drawn to a close, and with VH1, MTV, and MTV2 all showing things other than reality shows (WHAT?!) I have to reluctantly watch the evening news.
I want my MTV.

Hour Four: Jersey Shore.

I missed the beginning of this episode, the first three or so minutes, but I feel like I haven't missed much. From what I can tell, this episode came before the two I watched the other day. There seems to be some tension among the housemates. Ronnie has feelings for Sammi, and is revealing them to Jenni. Ronnie also is angry at Mike. I'm watching all of this with my family, upstairs, and my brother has requested that I watch the season finale of Jersey Shore with him.
When the show comes back on from commercial, it's reunion time. Jenni's boyfriend shows up, Angelina's two rhyming-ly named friends, Alana and Elena, show up, and Angelina has invited her boyfriend to come clubbing with them.
Later, at the club, Mike, Angelina's boyfriend, shows up, and promptly breaks up with her. Snooki's friend (with benefits?), Mike, also shows up.
Turns out Mike (Angelina's boyfriend) is a married man, who was going to get a divorce (presumably to be with Angelina.) Angelina claims she is done with her boyfriend. When he calls later asking for her, she tells Mike (cast member) to tell him to call back. Later, as Jenni and Tommy (her boyfriend) are cuddling, he tells her that he would break up with her if she ever cheated on him. She lets him leave without telling him about when she kissed Pauly. The next day, the cast are sitting around eating pancakes. I like pancakes. They're also discussing how much of a "d****bag" Angelina's boyfriend is. I don't like "d****bags." Also, Angelina is skipping out on work. Apparently, the residents of the house are supposed to work every day in this souvenir store on the Jersey Shore. If they miss work, they consequently get fired and of course kicked off of the show. Apparently Angelina doesn't care what anyone thinks about her. So when Brad, labeled "The Boss," shows up, Angelina becomes very rude and immature. She is being incredibly disrespectful, so he tells her that she is leaving the show, the store, and the Shore. She only lasted 3 episodes. Kind of pitiful, isn't it?
The problem is that these shows are populated exclusively by people with a strange sense of entitlement. Angelina epitomizes this kind of thinking. When she is interviewed in one of the many individual interviews during the show, she claims "I don't have to do anything I don't want to do." What she doesn't understand, however, is that sometimes, in order to have shelter, one might want to work. Angelina doesn't seem to show any remorse about her leaving the show. The rest of the cast doesn't seem that broken up either. Mike even went so far as to address her as a "little b****." In individual cast interviews, the cast admits that they don't miss Angelina at all.
Later, Jenni is talking to her boyfriend Mike on the phone. She finally tells him about how she got really drunk and made out with Pauly. She tells him that she loves him, and he just hangs up on her. Pauly views Jenni's breakup as a good thing. "This way she'll fell less guilty when she hooks up with me," he notes. Astute, Pauly. Astute. Soon, Snooki and her friend Ryder end up at (surprise) a club. They grind on each other for a bit and subsequently come back to the house to relax in the hot tub.
Ronnie and Sammi go out to go mini-golfing and go-karting, and then return to the house. To the guest room. Alone. Snooki, Ryder, and Mike spend a while making out in the hot tub. Oh, the infinite joys of empty, pointless sexual activities.
Turns out not only are the cast members totally incapable of running their love lives, but they are as incapable of using common household devices. Pauly decided to put charcoal on a gas grill, which almost leads to disaster.
Later, at the club, Sammi and Ronnie have a falling out when they both see each other with other people.
Hour Five: Jersey Shore. It's episode #4, both because it's the fourth episode of the season, and the fourth one I've watched. I feel like I have a pretty good grasp on this show at this point. It's becoming very formulaic. They rapidly fall in and out of love, oscillating between love and hate in seconds flat. And somehow they find time in between to put themselves at massive risk for skin cancer.
I'm starting to question what the allure of Jersey Shore is. I am wondering if the motive is purely schadenfreude, the sheer delight of watching people ruin their lives and those of others. Ronnie and Sammi have sex about twenty minutes into the episode, raising a whole new set of questions. Ronnie, Vinny, Pauly, and Mike all go out together. They go tanning, they go to the gym, and they go to the barbershop. Naturally, they spend a lot of time talking about how each of these pursuits is a step toward the greater goal of hooking up.
And that night, at Karma, the club, Snooki puts on quite a display while she dances, executing all kinds of moves that lead to everyone in the club having a more than passing familiarity with her undergarments. While all of this is being shown, there are voiceovers from the other two girls in the house, both of whom talk about how "proud" they are of Snooki. Somehow, promiscuity has become a virtuous trait. Jersey Shore has a tendency to glamorize character traits and activities that are generally deplorable, such as wantonness, vanity, and insipidity. It's hard to understand why either the cast members don't understand how empty and vacuous they are, or why they don't care. "I'm not looking to fall in love on the Jersey Shore. I'm just trying to hook up." Amazingly enough, Pauly and Mike somehow manage to maneuver four girls such that they get rid of the two they were originally going to take home, get with two others which they do take home, the original pair show up, they tell the second pair to leave, and get back with the first pair.