Just as soon as it starts, ladies and gentlemen, it’s over. I guess that can be said about the greatest sociological experiment of our time, but it can also be said about The Situation’s relationship with Paula. After what seems like four days (but was really more like two weeks), The Situation has changed their relationship from official to unofficial. From holding hands walking down the boardwalk to surreptitiously knocking boots in a tanning bed at Simply Sun. To going out to Karma together to giving him BJs in the stall before he goes out and grinds his still wet junk on other girls on the dance floor. Yes, they are done. Or, at least in the term that Sammi and Ronnie revolutionize, “done.”
But before we can get to that, we must look at the terms that the guidos use so that we can know just what the hell they’re talking about.
Settling the Air: This is when two parties who are disagreeing have a conversation to get both of their sets of grievances out in the open in the hope of reaching some sort of resolution. It should not be confused with “clearing the air.” In the guido culture we all know that they air can be quite filthy with all the particles from their smells, emissions, functions, and other pursuits. In fact there are clouds wherever they go and their constant movement only makes the clouds worse. But when they can actually sit and talk, then the air settles and the particles rain down imperceptibly until they leave a nice film of grime on everything in the room. This is when an agreement is finally resolved, when everyone has been calm enough for the air to settle.
Spaghetti Day: When two girls of similar physiological makeup go out drinking and causing havoc during the day, it is called a “meatball day.” This is the male equivalent. The term meatball day gets its name from the fact that the women’s ovaries are round and often vary hormonally active on such a day, so the celebration is related to their genitals. Similarly a man’s genitals usually lead him out drinking and carousing, but because they are long and often flaccid, they resemble a piece of spaghetti more than a meatball.
OK, I’m must going to come right out and say this now. Last night’s dispatch was perhaps the most boring of this show we have ever witnessed. The entire episode was devoted to The Situation breaking up with Paula and then when the event happened, it took about six seconds and Paula looked like she was going to cry but then she was fine with it and Sitch kissed her on the mouth and left and probably booty called later that night. Snoozeville. What else did we learn? Snooki isn’t inviting Sitch to her wedding and she wants to invite Vinny but she can’t until he and Jionni start talking to each other. JWOWW is throwing a shower for Snooki. That’s about it. Lame. Have we learned everything we can about these beasts and are finished with expanding our minds?
The one thing we have left to discuss is The Situation’s relationship with Paula and it seems to suffer from the classic Madonna/Whore dichotomy that everyone who has taken a psychology class at community college learned about. He initially liked Paula way back in Season 1 because she went home with him from the club, hopped into the hot tub, hooked up with him, and then left in the morning wearing his clothes and was late to her first day at her new job after her friend came banging on the door. Remember that? Oh, it was so long ago we can hardly remember it, but we do remember Paula being the trashiest of all the trashy girls ever on the show. But now, now that he has asked her to get married he wants a girl that is like his mother or his sister. He wants a girl who is nice and demure and feminine and won’t talk about sex and be one of the boys. Sorry, Sitch, but you can’t have it both ways. You have to reconcile that either Paula can be both your Madonna and your Whore or you need to not start a relationship with a Dumpster and expect it to be like living in Neiman Marcus.
Anyway, Sitch tells the crew that he’s going to break up with Paula and they start telling random girls about it at the bar. Seaside Heights, as The Situation says, is a very small town and word travels quickly. Naturally word gets back to Paula and she makes a tearful call to The Situation. She says that everyone at the tanning salon (which is not only where she works, but something like the town square in guido culture) says that he’s going to break up with her and she wants to know why. He sort of hedges his bets, but then says he’ll come by the tanning salon and talk to her. Yes, his plan is to go to her place of business so that it can’t take long and she can’t make a scene. Always a gem.
So, he tells her that she’s not the girl that he knew before and he wants to go back to the way it was. The funny thing is, the nasty skank is always the girl that Paula has been. Maybe it’s not her that’s changed, but him. What he essentially tells her is, “You were good enough to smush, but not good enough to date. Let’s go back to just smushing.” Paula sheds a tear but after making a joke about being dumped goes right back to her oblivious life. Poor Paula. I think she knows her station. She’s just always going to be the slutty girl who works at the tanning salon who no one takes seriously. This was her one shot at redemption and she was afraid she couldn’t live up to it (hence the crying phone call) but now she has accepted her lot. She is Pounded-Out Paula. That’s all she’ll ever be. And that’s good enough for her.
The most annoying thing about this breakup was the number of times Ronnie tried to make “GTB” happen. Yes, that’s “Gym, Tanning, Break Up with Paula.” This is not at all original or clever or even fits in with the original acronym but Ronnie must have said it 20 times. His brain has been so addled by all the fights he’s been in and all the juice he’s done that he feels the need to express all of his thoughts on a loop. He thinks every time is the first time. And you can see the other guidos sort of take that sort of begrudged tolerance like when your Nana starts to lose it and always asks where her china is. “I told you Nana, it’s in the cupboard.” And you have to be nice and smile, but you just want to shake her and make her get it.
There is only one other thing we need to discuss before taking a break from all this insanity. It’s the newest creature in Snooki’s menagerie: Jumanji the penguin. Jumanji is an inflatable bird that Snooki carries around with her on the boardwalk and cares for her. It seems like Snooki always has some sort of animistic fetish in her life. First we started with Crocodilly, the alligator bed pillow that she snuggled and cuddled with when she was looking for a boyfriend and really needed someone to love. Then there was Lola, the tarted up bunny suit that she loved from last season which she used as a way to act like a slut when she was trying to be faithful to Jionni. Finally we have Jumanji, a defenseless creature that she has to care for and defend from the stomping feet trying to pop him on the boardwalk. Of course this is an objective correlative to her unborn child. She is worried about caring for it and providing for it and as a result she has adopted this other creature to give herself some training. We worry for poor Jumanji because, after the birth of the child, he will be relegated to the back of the closet, slowly losing his air as Crocodilly and Lola also gather dust, childish things finally put away for the rigors of real life. That is, until Snooki feels unloved, too chaste, or reckless once again. That will probably happen in a week.
Follow Brian Moylan on Twitter @BrianJMoylan
[Photo Credit: MTV]
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