Thursday night television used to BANG in the late 2000s. The Office and Parks and Recreation on NBC, Pawn Stars on History Channel, and topping off the night, Jersey Shore on MTV.
The Real World may have started reality TV, Keeping up with the Kardashians may have popularized it, but Jersey Shore was its peak.
When Jersey Shore premiered in 2009, Thursday ceased to be Thursday anymore; It became “Jers-day.”
Terms like GTL (Gym, tan, laundry), T-shirt time, “grenades," fist pumping and the “smush room” were popularized by the likes of Pauly D., Snooki and the other cast members.
Besides disseminating some sleazy, youth slang, Jersey Shore became popular because of the eight “Gorilla Juicehead Guido/Guidette” roommates who lived in the house. When the show premiered, the cast members quickly became household names.
While we still adore them for our own nostalgic purposes, the cast members were, quite simply, some of the most repulsive humans ever to star on television. They would party, fight, sleep together, and so on and so forth, and even though our parents hated it, we loved every second.
Of course, everyone remembers Snooki, with her tacky spray tan and signature “poof” (The classic “Snook look,” as I like to call it). She probably garnered the most fame out of all the cast members, and arguably was the reason for the show blowing up. Some people look at the episode in season one when she was punched in the face by a man at a bar as the moment when the show crossed the line from popular MTV show into pop culture phenomenon. Poor Snooki. She just wanted to cuddle with Crocodilly.
Via Wikimedia Commons
Remember Angelina? She’s the girl who left halfway through season one, came back for the first few episodes in season two, and then left again after brawling with Snooki. Angelina wasn’t even from New Jersey; she was from New York. She affectionately referred to herself as the “Kim Kardashian of Staten Island,” while the rest of the cast called her the “Staten Island dump.” Yikes.
What about Ron and Sammi? These two had a seemingly never-ending on/off again relationship that served as a plot point for many episodes. Can’t you remember Sammi yelling “Rahn! Stahp!” in that shrill, irritating voice? Or Sammi asking her family for life advice via the duck phone (Yeah, the duck phone!)?
Or how about Mike “The Situation?” That moron found every excuse he could to pull up his shirt and show off his abs. The guy was such a tool. So much so, in fact, that in 2011, Abercrombie and Fitch offered to pay him a substantial amount of money NOT to wear their clothes. “The Situation” is also notorious for bombing at the Comedy Central Roast of Donald Trump in 2011.
via Giphy
Jersey Shore was undeniably one of the most popular TV shows during the past 15 years, but after its final season in 2012, the show and its cast members, aside from a few short-lived spin-offs, have fallen off the face of the earth.
People forgot about Jersey Shore faster than Snooki could devour a pickle.
As the cast members moved from their 20’s into their 30’s, they began to grow a bit. Snooki, JWoww, and Pauly D. all have kids (the latter was from a hook-up in Vegas), while Vinny and Sammi became podcast hosts.
Jersey Shore still gets some love, though. The hottest new meme circulating on Twitter involves turning Jersey Shore scenes into movies, and Snooki appeared on the most recent season of The Celebrity Apprentice (a sure sign that her career is over).
While Jersey Shore had, say, three years of fame as opposed to 15 minutes, it still came and went, like many other pop culture sensations from the 2000s. It was a good time while it lasted.
It still makes us wonder, though, why did we find these greasy idiots so entertaining?
@Heeeeeres_Jonny
