Jersey shore a self-tanner tinted train wreck

O.K., I’ll admit it, my – along with the 4.8 million viewers who turned in for the finale of season 1 – fascination with the hair gelled house mates of Jersey Shore doesn’t make any sense.

Well, at least it shouldn’t.

Formulaic in its conception – The Real World mixed with the Sopranos and a little bit of the Girls/Guys Gone Wild franchise added for flavor – Jersey Shore hasn’t redefined or enriched the “reality” of reality television.

It may, in fact, be detrimental to the state of today’s youth.

But who cares about that when you have fist-pumping?

The first season of the reality show, for those who have been stuck under a boardwalk or spend all their time GTL-ing, chronicled the lives of seven (well, technically, eight but who counts Angelina “trash bags,” anyway?) Italian-Americans as they drank their way through a summer spent on the actual Jersey Shore – the one with sand and stuff.

For a whole season, we watched as the roommates got drunk and hooked up, got drunk and fought, got drunk and [insert verb], etc.

Now, the second season of the show, which starts this Thursday (July 29^th) at 10/9c on MTV, promises to delve deeper into the labyrinth of their collective psyches as they navigate the perils of Miami Beach.

Originally surrounded by controversy for the casts’ liberal and self-referential usage of the sometimes derogatory Italian slang term “guido” and subsequently “guidette,” Jersey Shore has perplexedly become one of the most talked about non-competitive reality shows in recent memory.

A lot of people can’t really figure out why the show is so popular. The Situation and company aren’t really all that interesting or talented; they’re just a group of over-inflated egos and breasts/pecs with rock-hard hair.

The cast actually could be considered a borderline offensive parody of almost every behavior (they’re vapid, consumed with looks, aggressive) that society deems undesirable. I mean, come on, Snooki recently admitted that she’s only ever read two books – Twilight and Dear John. During the season, Ronnie got arrested for knocking out some guy on the boardwalk.

At best, Jersey Shore is a semi-escapist television show that produces some awesome one-liners. At worst, the program highlights the social degradation of a minority group and the willing glamorization of violently (and sometimes criminally) self-indulgent behavior.

Part of me wants to rip the show apart for the fact that it revels in misogynistic tones and literal woman-bashing, or discuss how Jersey Shore is so far past the line of bad taste that it makes Ed Hardy look like a designer tuxedo.

Watching a half-hour episode may actually lower a person's IQ a few points, but the show is like a self-tanner tinted train wreck, and I can’t look away no matter how much I want to put down the duck phone.

Maybe, I can’t hate or even dislike the show, because while the characters (because at this point that’s what they are) egregiously defile social acceptability and responsibility, a part of me still somehow wouldn’t mind beating-up-the-beat with them.

Well, at least watch from a very far distance as they do this in the middle of neon lights and half-naked bodies. Just never have a conversation with one of them.

Reality shows allow people to indulge in their voyeuristic tendencies from the safety of their home television or computer screen. Maybe, it isn’t their so-called relatable personas that are so charming, but that their complete lack of self-awareness is somehow mind-numbingly fascinating. I mean, come on, no one – not even their poufed-selves, takes them seriously, right?  

A stranger’s wild behavior on television is effectually a vehicle for most sane, stable people to vicariously live their lives – and for this Jersey Shore is a perfect free-wheeling vehicle.  

And we can all fist-pump to that.