10 Ways "Jersey Shore" Can Actually Shock Us This Season

It’s easy to figure out why the Jersey Shore kids hit up nightclubs with such frequency: Crowded locales full of impressionable women afford The Situation and his boys multiple opportunities to bag their latest female conquest. We’re sure that Italy has several poppin’ drink-and-dance venues, but there’s one Italian landmark that’s guaranteed to attract hundreds of visitors, and that’s the Vatican.

The show’s male cast members have no shame, so it’s not unrealistic to think that they’d politick all over the religious monument’s premises, spitting game to cute lady tourists. Could they do something so blasphemous? You’d hope not, but these guys will do anything for a nut. The Pope’s stomping grounds seems about as safe from their GTL wave as an 18-and-over bar on the Seaside Heights boardwalk.

The conversations that take place on Jersey Shore vary from brain-numbing to soul-crushing; if not idiotic enough to make grade-school teachers want to quit their jobs, the show’s back-and-forth exchanges reflect poorly on today’s youth, presenting them as horny, alcoholic, party monsters. Just once we’d love to hear any two of the cast members chat about something a bit cultured, even intellectual. [Editor's note: Matt Barone reads books, and not the kind Snooki writes.]

Spending so much time in the historical land of Florence could ideally motivate Snooki and her peeps to visit a library, hang around a museum, or partake in any other activity steeped in Italian decadence. In any given episode, Snooks and her BFF/mini-me Deena can’t talk about boys without rating the guys’ worthiness of sex (i.e., “smushability”).

It’d stop our hearts to catch the two of them evaluating the paintings of legendary Italian artists like Michaelangelo or Leonardo da Vinci minus any asides about what was under the respective painter’s 15th century robe. Or, at the very least, no dumbass questions about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ artistic capabilities.

It’s unlikely that many of Jersey Shore’s younger viewers give two shits about old-school Italian cinema. But we sure as hell do, particularly the country’s exploitation shockers and bloody giallos of the 1970s. In that realm, three names have remained at the forefront, thanks to genre masterworks and notorious creep-fests: Mario Bava (see: Black Sabbath), Dario Argento (see: Suspiria), and Lucio Fulci (see: Zombi).

Adolescent girls who tune in to the hit MTV show to laugh at Snooki’s obnoxiousness and fawn over a shirtless Pauly D would never even catch a Bava reference; we, on the other hand, would rewind the scene just to confirm that our ears haven’t deceived us. If J-WOWW cracks a Blood And Black Lace joke while trying on lingerie, our heads might explode, which the late Bava himself would appreciate.

We can already picture the set-up, but that wouldn’t make the payoff any less unbelievable. Pick any random Jersey Shore “star”—let’s say J-WOWW, just so we can daydream about her sexual habits. Midway through the season, Ms. WOWW starts to miss her old Seaside Heights pad, especially the hot tub, the crib’s best spot for outdoor smushing. Looking to find that same kind of magic in Italy, Jenni ventures across the country in hopes of finding the proper, fresh air sex trap; that indoor Jacuzzi back at their Florence home won’t cut it.

Flash forward to immediately after the next commercial break. We see J-WOWW stuffing wads of cash into a gondolier’s pocket as some anonymous Italian guy steps foot onto the gondola. Then, backed by the producers’ unsubtle musical selection (David Guetta’s “Sexy Bitch”), Jenni and dude get it in; the gondolier, meanwhile, just keeps on rowing down the canal. Assuming that the censors would ever let such a scene air, the shock value would hit instantaneously.

A hypothetical mafia situation might seem a little stereotypical, but hear us out. Those who’ve seen Italian director’s Matteo Garrone’s 2008 knockout Gomorrah know as much about the city of Naples’ most powerful crime syndicate, the Camorra, as the filmmakers let loose. The truth is, though, that the Camorra is quite real, and, presumably, not much like The Sopranos.

Though, we’re guessing that the crime family’s highest-ranking members have kids, namely a daddy’s little girl or two. And, since MTV is broadcast across the world, the don’s daughters are surely aware of the Jersey Shore boys. Hell, they might even prefer Vinny over his more prolific, and dirtier, boys.

So, naturally, the real-life Meadow Soprano’s hunt down Vinny inside a club and go in for the kiss. He’s in pseudo-love, she’s asking him over to meet her parents, and he’s ready to fly back to Staten Island with haste.

We’ve already seen them infiltrate an Enrique Iglesias performance, so you’d think that the crew is itching to take over another internationally renowned singer’s live gig. Italy is the home of many successful recording artists, but none so opposite of Jersey Shore than prestigious opera musician/vocalist Andrea Bocelli, who’s also blind.

Imagine the horror for tenor lovers: It’s a unusually dull night inside the Jersey Shore’s Italian abode, when Pauly D suggests that they “see what this Bocelli dude is all about.” Once at the concert, the gang inexplicably starts to “beat up the beat,” even though Bocelli’s music hardly has any bass-lines. It’d be the one time we’d feel envious towards Bocelli’s sightlessness.

Whenever they’re together in Seaside Heights, Sammi and Ronnie, Jersey Shore’s resident love/hate combatants, bicker over the same old shit, kiss and make-up, and then start yelling back and forth again. And when the dramatic lovebirds were in Miami for the show’s second season, the new location did nothing to stop their incessant quarreling.

If there’s any setting that can inspire seamless functionality in Ronnie and Sammi’s relationship, it’s got to be Italy, widely recognized as one of the world’s most romantic places. The elegant restaurants, the gondola rides under the stars, bottles of fine wine and candle-lit dinners—the country is perfect for a couple looking to patch up a relationship’s wounds and snuggle more than scuffle.

Come October 27th, when Season Four draws to an end, nearly three months’ worth of Thursday nights without no Ronnie-and-Sammi fights whatsoever will shock and awe. Or make that “Awww!”

Of all the Jersey Shore participants, Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino has been the most successful at marketing himself beyond MTV’s parameters. Yes, Snooki laughs in the face of her high school English teacher thanks to her fiction-writing side hustle, but The Situation continues to find new ways to extend his fifteen minutes of fame into a solid half-hour.

The man clearly has that gift of gab, and he’s always seeking out the next big publicity look—what could be a bigger news story than Sitch weaseling his way into the Vatican and posing for snapshots alongside Pope Benedict XVI. It’d be a Nielsen ratings bonanza on some “You’ve got to see it to believe it” shit. For the sake of all Catholics, we’d hope it’s really just Forrest Gump-like, CGI trickery.

Earlier this year, Italy’s prime minister came under attack for being a bit too promiscuous. According to reports, Silvio Berlusconi, 74, paid to have sexy times with a Moroccan minor, in addition to hosting villa parties featuring 33 prostitutes who’d sleep with Berlusconi’s houseguests. He went to trial for the charges, and, obviously, his reputation has been tarnished. Furthermore, a couple of revelations about Berlusconi have come to light: He’s clearly into younger women, and he likes to party.

In other words, J-WOWW is perfect for him. Though, of course, he could have any of the Jersey Shore girls, we’d like to think that Mr. Berlusconi shares our taste in women; of all the housemates, Jenni is easily the sexiest, even if she’s less natural than a Fat Burger. A Berlusconi appearance alone would definitely equate as a WTF moment; watching him and J-WOWW secretly walk off to her bedroom: “holy shit” status.

We’re not saying that the Jersey Shore kids are dumb—that’d be unfair. It takes a certain amount of business savvy to market one’s self as well as The Situation has, for example, and viewers only see whatever MTV producers allow out of the post-production editing room. For all we know, Sammi could read Upton Sinclair’s literature during her downtime, leading to heated debates with Ronnie over who’s the better writer: Sinclair or Ernest Hemingway?

OK, so that’s totally not the case. But imagine if the Jersey Shore crew’s stay in Italy ignited some brain-powering fire? At a club one night, they meet a few foreign exchange students, intelligent types temporarily living in Italy. Once a few sexy co-eds are back at the house, Pauly D and Vinny unexpectedly curb the flirtations and smushing, spending the entire night talking about the collegiate experience.

As the season ends, both guys reveal to their cast-mates that they’re sitting out the fifth season in order to major in psychology and anthropology, respectively. And then our alarm clocks go off, dreamland shuts down, and Pauly D is banging some no-name hottie with the lights off, as MTV’s night-vision camera makes it look like that Paris Hilton sex tape. Now that’s the Jersey Shore we all know.