Jersey Shore Back for a Fifth Season

Watching the fifth-season premiere of MTV’s “Jersey Shore,” I felt a little like a guy who has shown up a party just as the caterer is putting away the buffet.

The event is still going, but it’s not quite the same, or filling.

I’ll admit, I’m late to the “Jersey Shore” party. Initially, I didn’t get the appeal and preferred not to watch with any regularity the antics of those holed up in Seaside Heights.

But I gave it a second and third shot, and it grew on me.

Well, sort of.

Now, though, as the fifth season is set to get underway Thursday at 10 p.m. on MTV, there’s a sense that the show has changed for the worse and it may be time to close the buffet.

Starting the new season there are brief bits of time where the show still sings as the crazy lunkheads live it up on the Shore.

“My bed is my bed, and like, I peed in it last year, so who would want to sleep in that bed?” says Nicole (Snooki) Polizzi discussing the housing arrangements as the crew moves back into the rental house.
How can one not love that?

Or, how about Deena Cortese, coming to terms with Vinny Guadagnino feeling homesick?
“I don’t want anybody in a funk, because their funk puts me in a funk because they’re in a funk, and I don’t want anybody to be in a funk,” she says.

Completely funky and understandable, coming from a girl who describes herself as being “class in a glass and party in a body.”

Amen, sister.

Just as often, however, the humor falls short.

For the record, they’re all back. Besides Snooki, Vinny and Deena, Paul (Pauly D) DelVecchio, Mike (The Situation) Sorrentino, Jennifer (JWoww) Farley, Ronnie Ortiz-Magro and Sammi Giancola are in the house.
And they’re bringing the drama, well, as much as they can manufacturer. Five seasons in, just a few scant moments feel real and everything else completely made up.

Three threads run through Thursday’s opener. In one, Snooki and Mike battle over his threats to reveal to her boyfriend Jionni that she and Mike did the nasty before going to Italy in the previous season. Mike, once likable, has gone Omarosa, which makes him unlikable. Then there is Vinny’s homesickness.

A third theme is Snooki’s friend Ryder sleeping her way through the cast. It’s hard to feel sorry for her, since she put herself in a spot to be mocked. In the first episode, she snuggles with Pauly, who notes he’s not completely comfortable following Vinny in being intimate with Ryder. The next day, they joke about needing a MetroCard to “ride her.”
Get it?

Art, this is not by any stretch. It can be funny at times, sure, but gone is the fresh silliness that made people watch early on. Now, parts are meanspirited and repetitive, a possible downside to the personal fame of the cast.

MTV has everyone signed for one more season of “Jersey Shore” after this one. Maybe, though, it’s time to stick a fork in the last meatball and call it a show.