And now it's dead...almost. Last night's episode of Jersey Shore found the show's guido/guidette family packing up and moving out of Seaside Heights, NJ, for good. The girls cried, Vinny got an itchy eye and the entire goodbye scene was full of euphemism, as many acknowledged how the show changed their lives without specifically being able to say that. Insert Snooki "Waaaaah!"
Jersey Shore ended up cheating itself out of covering the way its subjects dealt with their fame and how the show interfered with their ability to be their normal weird selves. (Extras weren't allowed to so much as acknowledge their recognition of the cast.) Their lives changed, but the show was static and the result was waning interest — about 2 million people watched last week's premiere, a number on par with the first season's early episodes (before it was a bona fide phenomenon) and a far cry from the nearly 9 million people who tuned into the premiere of the show's fourth season (in Florence, Italy). Naysayers decried paying attention to these patently uninteresting people and in the end, that sentiment was hard to argue with. It's almost hard to believe that this thing was the cultural force it was.
But not everyone is headed toward the same shelf as "The Macarena" and Who Wants To Be a Millionaire just yet. A new season of Snooki & JWwow will debut early next year, as will the talk show The Show with Vinny. So if you aren't sick of them yet, there is still time. (But really, if you aren't sick of them yet, who are you?)