All the orange tannin', crotch thrustin', fist pumpin' action you crave... right in the comfort of your own home.
Jersey Shore is a Reality TV show on MTV, that has become one of the network's most popular if not polarizing shows. A reality TV show in the same vein as The Real World, it follows a group of Italian-American twenty-somethings as they party and engage in debauchery, both on the New Jersey beach party scene and in other locations (Miami and Italy).
Unlike The Real World, Jersey Shore has (with few exceptions) kept the same cast intact over the course of the show's run. In part, due to the meme-like nature of the original casts, whose over the top nicknames and personas made them instant celebrity fodder that you either love or hate. (Or Love to Hate.)
Various knockoffs exist outside the USA, including the Dutch version, Oh Oh Cherso (and its second season, Oh Oh Tirol) and the Irish version Tallafornia while the Brits have both Geordie Shore and The Only Way Is Essex. The Canadians attempted to make their own version, Lake Shore (set in and around Toronto), but it was scrapped.
In April 2018, the show returned as Jersey Shore: Family Vacation with all of the original cast returning to the show except for Sammi. A second season has been ordered ahead of its premiere date.
Tropes:
- Accidental Misnaming: The entire house had a habit of mutating "Snooki" into "Snickers" and such in the first season.
- Alpha Bitch: JWoww most definitely. She even proved herself in single combat with Sammi.
- Artifact Title: The second season is set in Miami. The fourth is set in Italy.
- Artistic License – History: Snooki."I feel like a pilgrim from the 20's, washing this shit in the sink!"note
- Attention Whore: The reason Snooki initially tries to leave the house in the first season — she's no longer the total center of attention like she is at home.
- Back for the Finale: In the show's final season, the roommates go to a club and run into Angelina, the cast member who was kicked off back in Season 2. Angelina actually makes an attempt to apologize for her past actions, not that the roommates were interested in listening to her...note
- Battle Cry: After a falling-out with her boyfriend, Snooki lets out a screech before attacking some helpless dishes.
- Beehive Hairdo: Snooki's famous "poof".
- Belligerent Sexual Tension: In the first season, Angelina and The Situation were constantly at each others throat but all the while were trying to get back at one another they admitted that they thought the other was attractive.
- Berserk Button:
- For everyone, being called fake. Angelina's declaration that "all of yous in this house are fucking fake, and I want you all to know that I can't stand anyone of yous" is enough to get into a brawl with Snooki in season two, and subsequently ejected from the house for the second time in the series.
- Last episode of Season Two, anyone? Don't toss that word around.
- Beware the Nice Ones:
- Coming from the above Berserk Button, beware of Pauly D. The kid's still the easy-going person in the house - but do NOT tick him off. His voice deepens, his veins pop out, and he's ready to make you piss your pants. Angelina and Jenni got the brunt end of it, and it wasn't pretty. He's arguably the scariest when angered, though that can be due to the rare occurrence of him actually blowing up.
- The season two finale. Vinny is besieged by the girls who ask if he called them fake. After pressuring him, he screams at them in order to get it through their heads that there was been some misunderstanding. Cue the girls looking like they're about to cry.
- Big-Breast Pride: JWOWW, dear GOD JWOWW. She loves showing them off at every opportunity.
- Bigger Is Better in Bed: Vinny, apparently. According to Snooki, sex with him is like trying to cram a watermelon through a pinhole.
- Breakout Character: When your nickname is Snooki, it's a safe bet that you wouldn't be in the background of an ensemble even if you were the shy type.
- The infamous punch to the face reaching Memetic Mutation level probably helped too. As would the "poof."
- The Situation has also reached this status and has competed on Dancing with the Stars (Although Snooki would do the same thing later on).
- Big-Breast Pride: JWOWW has curves that make Marilyn Monroe look like Audrey Hepburn, and is VERY proud of it. On the beach, her bikinis are so skimpy they would make a Victoria’s Secret model blush.
- Butt-Monkey: Dear, sweet Snooki.
- The Cameo: A couple seasons after she was kicked off the show, the roommates briefly encounter Angelina at a club one night. They try to get away from her as fast they can.
- Captain Obvious: The Situation"If you don't do laundry, you ain't got no clothes!"
- Catchphrase: Pauly D has a few.
- "Ah yeah, [insert phrase here], yeah!"
- "It's T-shirt time!", which has turned into a song.
- "CABS ARE HERE!"
- "Yeah buddy"
- "I ain't even mad!"
- Country Matters: Ronnie gets pretty drunk in the season 2 premier and lets out all the bitterness he has toward Sammi out, including pulling out this trope. Angelina uses it a bit later in the same episode during one of the commentary sections.
- Cultural Posturing: Some guy at a bar picks a fight with Ronnie, of all people just because he's from New York.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: After Angelina gives everyone "The Reason You Suck" Speech, Snooki launches an attack on her. Too bad for the Snooks.
- Darker and Edgier: Reviews indicate that the Uncensored DVD makes the cast seem somehow even more sociopathic.
- Deadpan Snarkers: Snooki, especially.
- Despair Event Horizon: Snooki's boyfriend Jionni becomes enraged with her after all of her recent behavior in while staying in Italy. Jionni later storms off into the night, Snooki breaks down in hysterics.
- Did You Just Have Sex?: Ronnie asks this almost word-for-word after The Situation brings home a hot blonde.
- The Ditz: Snooki. She refused to go tanning anymore because "Obama taxed tanning salons just to spite me" (when that scene was filmed, the tanning tax wasn't set to start for another year), and when asked about the BP Oil Spill by some TMZ paparazzo, she responded, "I don't even use tanning oil!"
- Do Not Call Me "Paul": Snooki's real name is Nicole. However, she does not want anyone to call her by it, except close friends, and people who know her intimately. Although now she seems to, if the rumors are confirmed, not mind being called "Nikki" and dislike being called Snooki.
- Enemy to All Living Things: Crocodiles, flies, and dead frogs all hate our intrepid heroes. The Italian pigeons in season 4 especially seem to have a disdain for our tanned truthsayers as they constantly divebomb them throughout the season.
- Everybody Has Lots of Sex: Almost completely averted in season one, as for the largest chunk of the season only Ronnie and Sammi get any, and that's with each other. By the time season two came around (and the cast became famous) however....
- Evil Laugh: The Situation after he executes his Batman Gambit in "Damage Is Done".
- The Faceless: JWoww's British boyfriend, who lives in... Warrington, Cheshire ???
- Failure Is the Only Option: Any time Sammi asks Ronnie a question. She knows he's going to say something idiotic that will piss her off, but she does it anyway.
- Fun with Acronyms: MVP; ostensibly stands for "most valuable player" but also represents the team of Mike, Vinny, and Pauly when the three are out looking for girls.
- Genius Ditz: Sammi and JWoww.
- Genre Savvy: Sometimes they seem to be aware that it's a reality show.
- Genre Shift: Unintentionally and probably to MTV's dismay. The show was originally portrayed as something akin to the trashier seasons of The Real World, where the show is at least supposed to resemble real life (the infamous stage casting of later Real World seasons aside). The widely publicized contract disputes, significant pay and strike on Jersey Shore pretty much killed this angle. The show apparently lives on as Self-Parody on steroids.
- Hard-Drinking Party Girl: Pretty much the whole female cast, but particularly Snooki and new addition Deena.
- Heterosexual Life-Partners: Pauly D and Vinny, all the way. It's a telling sign if the best relationship in the history of the show (romantic or otherwise) is between two straight male friends. The two even purposely play up their bromance by going on "dates", holding hands, calling each other "boyfriends", and even going so far as pretending to sleep together.
- Hidden Depths:
- JWoww's graphic design skills.
- Snooki's were proved when she competed at WrestleMania 27. The crowd booed her when she was tagged into her match but immediately popped when she performed a handspring elbow and cartwheel splash to win the match. She has a background in cheerleading.
- Iconic Outfit:
- Snooki's being large sunglasses, pouf hairstyle, hoop earrings, short shorts and leopard print.
- The Situation's tank top, crucifix pendant and backwards baseball cap.
- In-Series Nickname: Besides the ones a few cast members showed up with, the Situation calls Angelina "Jolie" in a deleted scene from the first season. There's also a rather talky barber that the guys call "Mouth".
- Inferiority Superiority Complex: The Situation, more than likely. If something doesn't go his way or if someone comes out on top over him, he will incessantly make remarks about being able to get any girl, that he handed someone a girl, et cetera.
- Informed Ability: Jenni "JWoww" Farley's intelligence. Despite that, British media Oop North don't consider it to be an example of an Informed Ability.
- Insult Backfire: While staying in Italy, a drunken girl girl who had been stalking The Situation shows up at the cast's apartment one night. Snooki, wanting payback after being the victim of the The Situation's antics, lets the drunk girl in and hides her in The Situation's room. The hope that when he brings another girl home, he'll look like a pig trying to hook up with two girls. Much to Snooki's dismay, The Situation sends the girl he brought with him home and sleeps with the drunken stalker girl, saying she would be an easier lay.
- Insult to Rocks: The Situation appeared on The Roast of Donald Trump on Comedy Central. Seth MacFarlane translated a joke for the handicapped person on stage, making it sound like it was going to be another joke aimed at the deaf female roaster... and then directed the joke at him instead.
- It's also worth noting that his performance is rather weak; he got exactly one laugh, and that was using a joke that had already been used in prior roasts by at least three different non-professional comedians (namely, the "You know what you and me got in common? It's our first night doing comedy" one.)
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Vinny has his share of repugnant moments, but his obvious love for his family and charity work with anti-bullying organisations shows that he has his heart in the right place.
- Joisey: Trope Exemplar. Bear in mind that actual New Jerseyans are always at pains to emphasize that absolutely nobody in the main cast is actually from New Jersey.
- Karma Houdini: The Situation and Ronnie. The Situation tends to backstab everyone not named The Situation and yet is still liked in the house (probably because he's the Team Mom). Ronnie. Boy, oh boy, Ronnie. Ronnie came up smelling like roses after Sammi found the note. In fact, it brought them even closer together. Actually, it's quite safe to say that all of the cast rarely see their actions blow up in their faces.
- Kick the Dog: The Situation pulls a bunch of these in quick succession during the first season's Atlantic City trip, starting with calling Snooki (who was anorexic in high school) fat.
- Lampshade Hanging: Jenni, Sammi, and Snooki seem to have awareness of the medium.
- Locked Out of the Loop: Apparently nobody—not even the cast members who hung out with her during the season break—was told that Angelina would be coming to Miami too in the second season.
- Love Triangle: In the first couple of episodes it was Sammi in between the Situation and Ronnie. She chose Ronnie.
- Lower-Class Lout
- Moment Killer: Angelina is a type 4 and relishes in it.Angelina: I am a cockblock, mm-hmm. Yeah, I'm not gonna lie. I love it. I love every second of it. There's nothing wrong with what I'm doing. I mean, if a girl's a slut, I mean, she should be abused.
- Momma's Boy: Vinny's mother is impressively Italian.
- Multi-National Shows: Various spin-offs and imitations galore:
- Geordie Shore (Newcastle, England)
- Lake Shore (Toronto, Canada)
- K-Town (Koreatown, Los Angeles)
- Brighton Beach (Coney Island, New York City)
- Party Down South (Southern United States)
- Wicked Summer (Boston, Massachusetts)
- Tehrangeles (Persian-Americans in Los Angeles)
- Kongerne af Marielyst (The Kings of Marielyst), (Denmark)
- Oh Oh Cherso (Holland)
- The GC (New Zealand Maori living in Australia's Gold Coast)
- Network Decay: Being the current long-running face of MTV, this is usually argued as the channel's event horizon for never going back to music videos ever again.
- No Accounting for Taste: It's pretty clear that Sammi and Ronnie are only together because of some co-dependence or fear of being alone.
- Noodle Incident: Whatever it is involving Sammi and a Subway franchised fast-food restaurant (if footage on various websites is anything to go by).
- It's still not known what exactly the incident was at the Subway, but it's believed Sammi and Jenni "JWoww" were involved in it. The context of the incident is itself not known, but nor is when it happened ever mentioned.
- Also Pauly D apparently got...familiar with Angelina during the hiatus between seasons.
- No Periods, Period: Issues regarding the girls' cycles are occasionally shown.
- One episode on Season 2 had a big plot point on Angelina leaving a dirty menstrual pad on the bathroom floor. It ended up underneath her pillow, courtesy of The Situation, who also called her "dirty little hamster." Previously, she uses "her time of the month" as an excuse for not having sex with Jose.
- In the third episode of Season 6 Deena believes she has Toxic Shock Syndrome, and tells JWoww that she's been using the same tampon for almost 2 days. Even worse, she says she at one point took it out and put it back in.
- In Season 1 of Family Vacation, Angelina drunkenly believes she crapped her pants in the back of a taxi only to reveal to the rest of the cast that it was instead "period shits." No one knows what this means. To make matters worse, she then tries to show the rest of the house her underwear to prove it is her period blood.
- Not Me This Time: Verbatin by Snooki when she learns Deena was arrested after some boozy antics.
- Obfuscating Stupidity:
- The Situation, much like Paris Hilton, figured out how to make an uncanny amount of money despite being an incredibly sexist, drunken meathead at all times on camera, to the point where he got a payday from Abercrombie & Fitch to not wear any of their products on the show. But when he appeared on Dancing with the Stars, he, while hardly bright or charming, was significantly less repulsive than he is on the show.
- JWoww, who's a graphic designer.
- Everyone except Vinny, note , several of the cast members were in college when the show started, including Snooki who was training to be a vet.
- Older Than They Look: Pauly D (far right in the page image) was 29 at the start of the series, but easily looks like he's in his early 20's.
- One-Steve Limit: Almost played straight.
- Only Known by Their Nickname:
- Snooki. And to a lesser degree, The Situation (or The Sitch), but people do call him Mike sometimes.
- Averted with Sammi. The opening credits lists her nickname as "Sweetheart" but it's only used a single time in the show, and by Sammi at that.
- Only Sane Man: Vinny, who's something of an Ensemble Dark Horse because he seems to be the one legitimately good housemate alongside Snooki. Then he did things like sleep with Mike's sister and Angelina.
- Oop North: See Germans Love David Hasselhoff. For reasons that baffle absolutely everyone in the States, JWoww has a cult following in Britain.
- Our Goblins Are Different: Snooki. Cracked.com's review of the show called her a goblin about 20 times, and South Park morphed her into a giant rat-looking thing.
- Pass the Popcorn: Well, there wasn't any popcorn, just pretzels.
- The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: Jennifer 'JWoww' Farley is a graphic designer by trade, but nowadays that's sidelined for fairly obvious reasons... which is a shame, if forum posts are anything to go by. Especially since StackOverflow.com deleted a thread on her.
- The Plan: JWoww and Snooki both play this trope and are well aware of it being Reality TV, well, if Fan Myopia is anything to go by.
- Poe's Law: See description.
- Pokémon Speak: You thought this trope only applied to fictional animals? Listen to The Situation for a few minutes and get back to me.
- Product Placement: Inverted, as Abercrombie & Fitch has offered the cast a subtantial sum of money to stop wearing their product. Though, given that they still sell "The Fitchuation" T-Shirts, it's not clear whether it is just a publicity stunt.
- A similar situation is a recent Miracle Whip commercial where Pauly D states that he hates Miracle Whip enough to dump a girl over it. Apparently his distaste for it is meant as a marketing point.
- Really Gets Around: No one will dispute what a douchebag he is, but you have to hand it to the Situation for apparently having so many girls that they form an information network. The guy finds out within minutes when Ronnie gets arrested in the first season.
- Refuge in Audacity: You could argue that anything the cast members do is this. For example, The Situation and Pauly D's plans to "hook up" with the two girls they brought back from the club in episode 7 of Season 2 backfire when The Situation's girl backs out due to having a boyfriend. Not ready to give up (bear in mind, it's 6 in the morning at this point), the two men go through their phone books calling every girl they know, until Pauly D manages to find a girl willing to come over at such an early hour. If that wasn't enough for you, the events that follow will prove it: The Situation tells Pauly D to ask her to bring a "hot girl" for him. When she arrives without a girl for The Situation, The Situation opts to make breakfast for himself, then adjourns to his and Pauly D's room to watch him and his girl have sex. He even offers Pauly D half of his egg sandwich midway through.
- Romance and Sexuality Separation: The Situation points out in one episode that Angelina regularly has sex with various men while denying sex for the man who dates her, gives her gifts, etc. The guys tell her she's a whore for cheating on the guy she's dating and that she should have sex with him because he has done so much for her.
- Slap-Slap-Kiss: Vinny and Angelina spend an entire episode screaming about just how much they despise each other. Then they hook up in the backseat of a cab at the end of that same episode and have sex. Belligerent Sexual Tension has nothing on these guys.
- Small Name, Big Ego: The Situation. Demonstrated by this quote:"Everybody loves me, babies, dogs, ya know, hot girls, cougars. I just have unbelievable mass appeal."
- Spell My Name with a "The": The Situation.
- Spicy Latina: Snooki is Chilean and JWoww is half Spanish.
- Spin-Off: Two, "The Pauly D Project" and "Snooki & JWoww".
- Squick: JWoww's reaction to learning that Pauly D is 29 years old and making out with three likely 20 year-old girls at once in the hot tub in the first episode.
- Stalker with a Crush: Pauly D had a stalker that would follow him everywhere (to work, to the club, to the shore house), stand outside whatever building he was in and just stare at him. She even reappeared in a later season!
- Stealth Parody: They seem so completely aware yet unaware of how awful they are. Is the whole show a parody?
- Team Mom: More and more as Season Two wears on, The Situation. He cooks, he cleans, he acts very... mom-ish. He even uses guilt trips and whining to get his way, just like a real mother! He's actually used the fact that he cooks for everyone to justify being a complete asshole.
- This Is for Emphasis, Bitch!: A drinking game can be made the first episode of each season when a character says: "We're going to/in (location), bitch!"
- Too Dumb to Live: Snooki. Good Heavens, Snooki.
- Took a Level in Jerkass:
- Sammi. Just Sammi.
- Vinny in Season 3, to some.
- Trademark Favorite Food: Snooki and pickles.
- True Companions:
- Poor Snooki honestly believes they are, or certainly wants them to be, despite the painful clarity that the others do not feel the same way.
- As the series went on, it certainly seems that the roommates see each other as a family. An incredibly unbalanced and dysfunctional family, but a family nonetheless.
- Unsettling Gender-Reveal: The Situation falls for a transgender woman while out at a club one night. We aren't told how he eventually found out, but he looks visibly shaken in the confession booth.
- Unusual Euphemism:
- "Grenade" for an ugly (or just not up to snuff) girl. The joke is that you throw a grenade to your wingman and he'll jump on it for you. A "landmine" is the same but skinnier.
- "Gorilla" for a big, muscular, 'roided-out guido.
- "Smush" or "Smush Smush" for typically casual sex.
- Verbal Tic: Ronnie says "bro" a good deal. The Situation, meanwhile, has "situation".
- Wouldn't Hit a Girl:
- Horrifyingly subverted with Snooki◊.
- Played straight in that the show wouldn't air the footage of Snooki getting hit but was more than willing to air J-Woww hitting the Situation.
- As of Season 3, MTV apparently isn't too shy to show Sammi punching Ronnie in the face.
- Horrifyingly subverted with Snooki
- Yum Yum: Whether you actually find it attractive is a moot point, but Snooki tends to eat pickles in this fashion.
