MTV's 'Jersey Shore' recap: Musical bimbos, R-rated backflips and the punch heard '

, Snooki, Snooki. MTV's "Jersey Shore" castmate transformed from sloppy, slutty drunk to acrobatic party girl to tragic figure in the course of one episode. MTV indeed faded to black just before Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi took a fist to the face from a drunken Benny, and it was no laughing matter. We wish MTV hadn't promoted the clip in the first place, turning the punch into national punchline. MTV saved the punch for the last couple of minutes; we'll presumably see the fallout next week.

When we last saw lovebirds Sammi Giancola and Ronnie, their epic romance was in the crapper because Sammi gave her number to a guy friend after she saw Ronnie dancing with another girl. Ronnie stormed off, followed by Jenni "JWoww" Farley, and when Sammi heard about that, she followed them home. She finds Ronnie lying facedown on his bed wearing only a towel, and JWoww is in the next bed. It does look suspicious, and Sammy asks JWoww if they hooked up. She denies it. Ronnie doesn't want to talk to Sammi, and they call each other disgusting and Sammi storms off upstairs. Ronnie, adjusting his towel, follows. (On the upside, this must be great cardio.)
You'll forgive me, but much of what happens next is too full of bleeps to be intelligible. (It probably wasn't that intelligble without the bleeps either.) We do catch Sammi saying, "Now my heart is torn." We think Ronnie is crying. Many more bleeps. Then Ronnie admits how special Sammi is to him: "I was ready to put you into the equation, like you ... in the equation." Awww! Ronnie's trying to do math! They hug and makeup.
Paul "Pauly D" Delvecchio and Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino bring home two blondes and convince them to get in the hot tub in their underwear. "They were acting kind of stupid," Pauly D says, "but we were making the best of the situation." Or was it The Situation? It's like the conversational equivalent of an Escher print.
Both couples make out and then retire to the bedroom. Which they share. But Aunt Flo is visiting Pauly D's girl. Waa-waah. Mike wanders off, presumably to find a condom, and when he returns, Pauly D's girl tells her pal that she has to go home because her mother will be freaking out. "I'm like chill out, Freckles McGee," The Situation says. And just like that, my fondess for the lug has turned into a full-blown crush.
The next night, Sammi and Ronnie head into the guest room. There is some rolling under the covers, intercut with fireworks. MTV is not exactly known for its subtlety, but seriously. Sammi: "Yes, I had sex. Like hello. You're gonna have sex if you're into somebody. It's natural." Ronnie: "Yeah, we smooshed."
The guys spend the morning manscaping and working out. We only mention this so we can set up this awesome quote from The Situation: "If you're not hitting the gym for like an hour or so, then you may have a problem. Because I'm at the gym for an hour and a half, you know, working on my fitness."
That night, they hit the bar, where Snooki earns JWoww's undying admiration when she performs backflips across the dance floor. Her skirt rides up, exposing her thong. Naturally. JWoww, grinding up against Pauly D, also inadvertently, or perhaps advertently, engages in some crotch baring.
SCOTT GRIES/PICTURE GROUP/MTV
Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino and Pauly Delvecchio
Are you ready to play musical bimbos? Pauly D and The Situation are trolling the bars for chicks, or as Pauly puts it, "looking to see what we can grab." "Are you feeling me?" croons The Situation to Alex, a brunette, and her blonde pal. They're game, but on the walk home, the boys spot a couple of girls in a Mercedes convertible and walk over; the original girls get annoyed and walk off.
Pauly D and The Situation grab a pizza and escort the convertible chicks to the house, but the girls are not interested in getting in the hot tub. Luckily, the original chicks return and seem more into it. "We're about to kick out those girls," The Situation tells them. "Right now, I'm serious ... because you girls are cuter. I'm feeling it right now. I'm about to kick out the girls upstairs. If you can respect that, I will."
So there goes the second set, and Alex and her blonde pal take their places. But there's a situation, see: "One of these girls was definitely hotter than the other, and it happened to be my girl and Pauly D was with the grenade," The Situation says, cracking himself up. Pauly D calls the blonde "busted" but entertains her for The Situation's sake, but then he decides he can't take her attitude and turns around while they're walking up to the roof deck.
The Situation and Alex go to his room and start hooking up. Then the blonde waltzes into the room and tells Alex that's she leaving. Alex is fine with that. "You don't want to do this," the blonde tells her. The Situation is less than thrilled with Ann Landers, particularly when Alex heeds her advice. He continues the belabored combat metaphor: The blonde, he says, "was a bomb pretty much, and Pauly D did not know the code to decipher the bomb."
Snooki meets a nice-seeming guy named Russ -- though she calls him Ron -- and they spend the night on the beach and are making out as the sun comes up. Snookie says that he makes her laugh but it didn't go anywhere. "Once again a waste of my time."
The mallard rings, and it's JWoww's boyfriend Tommy, who hung up on her last week when she tried to tell him she had hooked up with Pauly D. She had apologized to him earlier, and now he tells her he heard that she was dancing with Pauly D all night. Turns out that Russ/Ron is a friend of Tommy's and was told to keep an eye on JWoww. He tells her that if she's flirting with anyone, he's done, and hangs up on her again. She calls him back and says she's tired of him threatening to leave her. Snooki -- Snooki! -- talks some sense into him. Snooki's redemptive arc continues with a visit from her cool mom.
The gang, along with work pals Julio and Scott, heads out to a bar and they're all having a good time, but they're getting hassled a bit by a group of, as Vinnie puts it, "typical fraternity college losers." Sigh.
At one point, one extremely drunk guy (later identified as Brad Ferro, high school gym teacher) steals some drinks that JWoww had ordered. So The Situation orders another three shots, which Ferro again tries to take. "That's not for yoooouuu," Snooki, perched on a bar stool, tells him. Ferro shoots back something we can't print here. "Who are you? Go away! ... Why don't you pay for those?" she tells him.
Julio, who seemed a bit sweet on Snooki before, tries to intercede, but Ferro gives him the same directive he gave Snooki. Snooki then directs Ferro to get out her face, only with a couple of expletives thrown in. Then the screen goes black. (MTV, who had been promoting the heck out of the punch, decided to pull the footage because it was too disturbing.)
Snooki is crying on the floor while bouncers immediately jump into the fray. Ferro hustles out of the bar, where a policeman grabs him and deposits him in a squad car.
(FYI, Ferro apologized in the New York Post today but said he didn't remember much of the incident. He was arrested and is undergoing anger-management counseling.)
The show closes with the number for a domestic violence hotline and a solemn reminder that violence against women in any form is a crime. (Last we checked, violence against anyone is a crime. I make this distinction because in the scenes for next week, we see JWoww tearing into another girl at the club. That's apparently okay.)