"Jersey Shore" Recap: Gym, Tan, Rat

Vinny visits family members in Sicily and Snooki throws a bottle of champagne at The Situation.

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Complex Original

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Written by Tanya Ghahremani (@tanyaghahremani)

Snooki's Exceptionally Shameful Walk Of Shame

If you remember from last week's episode, Snooki drunkenly crawled into bed with Vinny just hours after telling Jionni that they need to take a break. This week opens with the aftermath. Decisions made in the dead of night are finally seeing the light of day, and judging by the look on Snooki's face when she wakes up in Vinny's room, the proverbial light is damn harsh.

She scurries out of the bed and stumbles into her own room, immediately waking Jenni and informing her they need to go out for breakfast...with alcohol. Who cares that it's 7:30 in the morning, right? 

Just before they leave, Jenni decides that it's an opportune time to tell Snooki all about how Mike was detailing his did-they-or-didn't-they tryst with Snooks to the roommates the previous night. Obviously, considering she's hungover and confused by the previous night's events with Vinny, Snooks flips and yells so loudly that none other than Sitch traipses into the room to see what's up. Snooks immediately kicks him out and her and Jenni leave for breakfast. The drama!

Snooki proceeds to get drunk on mojitos while moaning about her heartbreak to Jenni, who looks half-awake at this point. Jenni advises Snooki to move on, but Snooki just wails a little more about how she loves Jionni and blah blah blah, whatever. They leave the restaurant and Snooki impulsively buys a gigantic bottle of Chianti that breaks in the street only a few minutes later, and just when it looked like she was about to begin licking it off the cobblestone, she sees a nun and chases after her to say hello instead.

The Situation Isn't Very Logical

Sitch is back at the house, still reeling from Snooki's rejection. He gets the idea (or the producers got the idea and told him about it) to call up his friend, cheesily named "The Unit," and pretend like he's giving him Jionni's number for him to call and corroborate the story that Mike and Snooki did indeed hook up. He doesn't actually give "The Unit" Jionni's phone number, of course; he wants to find "the rat," he says, by planting the story with one roommate and seeing who will be the one to tell Snooki in the end.

"Gym, tan, rat," he repeats over and over, before going to find Ronnie to feed the lie to first. Sammi just so happens to be passing by when Mike is talking to Ronnie and she overhears a bit; later, she confronts Mike with what he heard and he doesn't deny it; he seems to be pretty happy with the way his plan is unfolding.

Sammi tells Snooki as promised, and Snooki completely flips her shit. She stomps out into the living room and begins throwing everything in arms reach at Sitch, yelling that she hates him and that he needs to stay out of her life. It isn't until she tosses a champagne bottle at him that he's able to dodge like, in Pauly's words, "The Matrix," that Sitch finally fesses up that it was a joke. No one's laughing, obviously, and sure Snooki would have thrown more things at him if Vinny wasn't trailing behind her and subtly picking up everything that could be potentially used as a weapon to hurt Mike (which can do himself whenever near walls).

To The Motherland, To Taste Wine? 

After that fun night, it seems like everyone could use a break from one another, so it's perfect timing that both the girls and guys have separate trips planned outside of Florence. The guys are headed off to Sicily to visit Vinny's family there, and the girls are on their way to a winery in Tuscany to get drunk in a classy manner. 

For the guys, though Ronnie predicts that the trip could easily turn out to be a disaster, it's a relatively easy getaway. They make it to Vinny's family's house and, after meeting with about a hundred of his family members who all seem to be at the same house, and they pretty much eat the whole time and look at pictures of Vinny as a teenager (weirdly, he looked exactly the same.) The highlight is when one of Vinny's cousins or second cousins or whatever ends up kicking a soccer ball right into Mike's crotch, for the sole reason that he deserves it a lot. Thanks, dude.

For the girls, things don't run as smoothly—blame it on the alcohol. They're not even halfway into their first glass of wine before Snooki brings up Jionni, pouting that she loves him and wants him back. Even surrounded by an unbelievable amount of breathtaking scenery and objects of historical reference, all she can think about is Jionni, so it must be love, right?

Jenni, trying to be a good friend, tells Snooki that she needs to move on because Jionni isn't going to forgive her indiscretion with Vinny. It doesn't take long before Snooki is ragging on Jenni for being a terrible BFF. A few more drinks in and one incident where Snooki nearly slept on top of some barrels of wine later, they're fully yelling at one another.

Unfortunately, just when it's getting good, Snooki leaves the booze and her friends behind and runs off in her heels. Like, she storms out of the room and runs down the street, drunkenly, in heels.

But, unsurprisingly, Snooki and Jenni make up shortly after returning to the house in Florence, with Snooki admitting to the camera that she would die for Jenni. The friendship is saved.

Oh, Just Kidding...

Back in Florence, Snooki finally decides to own up to her actions and, after taking a few swigs of alcohol, calls her father to get some advice. He either knew exactly what he was doing or he just gives the worst advice ever, because his only response to her lament about Jionni is to tell her that Jionni changed his Facebook relationship status to single. The kiss of death.

This forces Snooki to call Jionni, angry with him for changing his status so quickly. She yells at him in a self-entitled manner for a while until the mood changes and tells him that she hooked up with Vinny, minus any full-on sex. Jionni obvioiusly doesn't take this well and ominously tells her, "Tell Vinny, when I see him, he's dead," before hanging up. Expectedly, Snooki doesn't leap to find a pen and paper to jot that message down for Vinny to see later.

She calls Jionni back and they somehow make-up, but Snooki is still unsure of what happened between her and Vinny. After she hangs up with her on-again boyfriend, she seeks her on-again lover out. Vinny isn't convinced that Snooki doesn't remember anything, but he humors her anyway and informs her that they did, in fact, smush.

Troubled, Snooki returns to the phone to call Jionni back to tell him what really happened, even though they made-up less than ten minutes ago. Not the smartest move.

Best Quotes Of The Episode

"She's like the fugitive right now, and I'm harboring information." - The Situation, about Snooki

"They better have mimosas at this breakfast, because if they don't, I am going back to Jersey." - Snooki

"We look so sophisticated and classy..." "Ew! Nicole, did you fart?" "...Yeah." "And there goes our class." - Deena, Sammi, Nicole, and Jenni, respectively.

"This is my first time seeing Sicily, and it looks like Jurassic Park." - Vinny

"I'm not into geography anymore, give me the f**king wine." - Snooki's adventures at a winery

Written by Tanya Ghahremani (@tanyaghahremani)

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