Reality League Scorecard: Jersey Shore Ends Not With a Bang, But With a Threesome
MTV
Courtney The Bill Belichick of Bachelorettes’s reign as HBIC on The Bachelor has come to end. The way she captivated all that have been exposed to her particular brand of bitchy genius makes her exit feel much more like an intermission than the final curtain. On the flip side, watching the tanned and tatted crew from Joisey pack up their Shore Store shirts and scatter to their native tri-state enclaves had a feeling of finality. I’m sure that MTV will trot out the Seaside Seven for one more go ’round — but America’s feelings about this show pretty much mirror the cast’s feelings about the roof-deck hot tub. Both were super-exciting novelty items at first. Now, the novelty has worn off and they feel like neglected relics of parties past that pose a serious health risk and should be avoided at all costs. I have watched my last episode of Jersey Shore.
Top Scorers:
Courtney (The Bachelor, Lisanti), 70 points: Of course Courtney won. Courtney is your favorite mean girl’s favorite mean girl. Courtney is the difference between hot and cute. Courtney is the difference between a model and a baton twirler. Courtney is the polarizing, manipulating, crying, arguing, scrapbook-making (10 points), skinny-dipping, sneaky-coitusing lifeblood of reality television. Without Courtney, this season of The Bachelor is nothing but helicopter rides and picnics. So there Courtney was during the finale, dressed like a Wicked understudy, in a helicopter high in the Alps, being presented with an engagement ring by the Storm Horse himself — finalizing the victory that had been hers all along (50 final rose points) with a kiss in the shadow of the Matterhorn (5 points).
But really, none of that was interesting. All the good shit happened on After the Final Rose.
While souping around the Grantland offices the morn after the finale, Bill walks by me and says, “You want to know something about Courtney and Ben? They are going to make it. They are meant for each other! Those two crazy kids are going to make it!” He couldn’t be more wrong. Bill was blinded by the same Courtney concoction Ben was.
You see, on the surface, Courtney comes off as a coldhearted, manipulative bitch. But when you start to peel back the layers you learn that at the very core of her being — deep down in the emotional stash box of her soul — she is still a manipulative, coldhearted bitch. Courtney is no fool. She watched the season unfold, saw the entire country turn against her, and devised a game plan for her After the Final Rose appearance. (She is not the Bill Belichick of Bachelorettes for nothing.) She started her rehabilitation campaign with a heaping helping of remorse spiced with quick dash of “I am the real victim.” And before you know it, she had painted herself as the doting, loyal-to-a-fault, estranged fiancée that didn’t even get a sext on Valentine’s Day. And why was that sext not forthcoming? Glad you asked. Because Ben The Bachelor was too busy running around the Yay Area snogging, ass-grabbing, and being photographed with other women. She spun such a convincing tale I questioned everything I ever thought about her. Maybe she isn’t the Bill Belichick of Bachelorettes. Maybe she isn’t your favorite mean girl’s favorite mean girl. Maybe she’s just a misunderstood girl from Arizona who deserves a second chance from Ben and the public that so violently turned against her.
Then I remembered that is exactly what the Bill Belichick of Bachelorettes would want me to think. Courtney, you may have fooled America, you may have fooled Ben, you may have fooled Bill, but you didn’t fool me. I am hip to your evil methods — and I raise a glass of the finest Flajnik in your honor. You will be missed — well, ya know, missed until you may or may not show up on another reality TV show in the next week.
Vinny (Jersey Shore, Jacoby), 50 points: “You want what you can’t have. And I want lesbians. What better challenge than a girl that doesn’t like penis?” Once again, Vinny — the Freud of Fellatio — graces us with a sex riddle, one that resulted in the GRTFL’s first full-on threesome. It is nearly impossible to address what happened without in some way being offensive, vulgar, or dickish, so I will simply share this. There was a point during the proceedings in which Vinny was like an adolescent hyena: not allowed to enjoy the meat of the fresh kill, so relegated to observing, poking, and circling around the feast hoping to feed on the scraps. Eventually, feed he did (50 threesome points).
Ty and Emily (The Challenge, Lisanti) 35 points: Ty and Emily won The Dome this week (10 points) and did so well in The Challenge it inspired my reality-TV host spirit animal, T.J. Lavin, to declare, “There were a few teams that killed it (25 points). CT and Diem and Ty and Emily, however, there can only be one power couple ” At first the whole “killed it” thing was a goof. Bill and I would make fun of him on the podcast for saying it too much and added it to the scoring system. But now the gag has completely backfired and I am getting double diced by The Challenge producers every single week. How do I know? HE DIDN’T EVEN SAY THE “THERE WERE A FEW TEAMS THAT KILLED IT” PART ON CAMERA! It was under B-roll and very well could have been a voice-over that was added later just to mess with me. Touché, The Challenge producers. Tou-fuckin’-ché. (If they aren’t messing with me, then I’m even more delusional and egotistical than the folks I cover in this column. A toss-up, honestly.)
CT and Diem (The Challenge, House), 25 points: Guess what? CT and Diem killed it too (25 points). Shocking! In this challenge, the contestants had to run through “jet wash.” What is jet wash? Honestly, I have no idea what an actual jet wash is, but what they were calling a jet wash on this show is that super-scary tunnel of fire that shoots out of a jet engine. Yeah, they had to run through that shit.
Now, what I have learned from the time I have spent working with jet planes — read: playing After Burner — the “jet wash” is hot as balls. But is this air hot? How are they running through it? What about all that fire coming out of the back of the engine? I have no idea. Honestly, I’ll never understand aeronautics. One time I asked this pilot bro whom I was drinking a beer next to how planes fly and he started explaining by folding this piece of paper and then talking about how the wing was shaped and then talking about “lift” and then talking about “jet wash” and then zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
Jennifer (Basketball Wives, House), 20 points: Suzie from Basketball Wives on Jennifer’s lip gloss line, Lucid, “I’m really proud of Jen. She’s doing big things. She has her own lip gloss. That’s a big deal.” Jennifer on Lucid, “Lucid is my baby. It is more than just a lip gloss line, it is me proving I can do this myself and be independent” (20 points).
You know what? I want to do big things. I want to be independent. I want my own lip gloss line just like Jennifer Williams. With this in mind, I took three minutes of my time and found out how to make it at home and how to incorporate myself — so now all I need is a former best friend to hate me so much they start a rival lip gloss line and we both benefit from the resulting press coverage. Jennifer and Evelyn are the Jay-Z and Nas of cosmetics.
Lindzi (The Bachelor, Simmons), 20 points: Lindzi didn’t stand a chance. They didn’t even bother cutting the show to make it seem like Ben The Bachelor Who I Have Never Seen In The Same Room At The Same Time As Rafa Nadal was remotely interested in her. This is the actual conversation that transpired as she professed her love for him:
- Lindzi: “I came on here not knowing what to expect, thinking I will have a fun time and that will be it, and it turned out I
I fell in love and I love you
”
Ben: “That’s good.”
Ladies, if you ever tell a man “I love you” and he responds with “that’s good” and you stab him to death with a nail file, please make sure that I am on the jury because I will totally let you off. That is 100 percent a justified murder. “That’s good” is something you say after taking your first sip of mulled cider on a winter afternoon, not something you say when someone professes love for you. That wasn’t it, either; the whole final date Ben is mailing in these kisses (10 points) and playing along with her whole “I want to be a great fiancée and wife for you and I am ready for the next step” when clearly all he could think of was what style of sex swing he was going to buy for Courtney for their new shag shack. When he finally broke the news to Lindzi that they would not be getting engaged, she offered this:
- Lindzi: “I am mad at myself.”
Ben: “For what?”
Lindzi: “For not giving you what you needed. It kills me that I couldn’t give you that and I wanted to so badly.”
Anyone who saw this exchange immediately thought she was talking about sex. What else could she possibly be talking about? Then during my hours and hours of research I came across this clip of Jimmy Kimmel asking every question you ever wanted asked of Lindzi on national television including, “Did you make love to Ben during the course of the show?” A question she dodges — a dodge that can only mean yes. I have to hand it to Lindzi; she handled that interview and the break from Ben with class and tact. After being devastated, she waited until she was whisked away in the helicopter to cry (10 points) — were I in her position and had just been emotionally demolished on national television in the Swiss Alps, there would have been only one option: Hurl that hairy fool off the cliff to his death. No idea how she restrained herself.
Robin (The Challenge, Kang), 10 points: Robin is the Grant Hill of this year’s The Challenge cast. You respect her veteran savvy, but you’re still shocked when she puts up numbers like she used to. This week she fell off the crazywagon and released a couple mid-cry (10 points) Robinisms like it was 2004. The first came when a concerned castmate inquired about her well-being:
- Robin: “I’m drained, that’s all. I came here with one goal: provide for my son. Any means possible. Does that mean I have to come here and share my life with people? No, that’s not part of it.”
Gotcha Rob, provide for son by any means necessary, check. The second came after she dealt with the “jet wash”; notice how the Juwan Howard to her Grant Hill, Mark Long, carefully deals with her emotional breakdown:
- Robin: “I live in Florida — that was like hurricane speed. I can only imagine if I was hit by a hurricane and I had no home and
Mark: “Are you starting to cry? Is that really happening now?”
Yes, Mark, it is.
Camilla (The Challenge, Lisanti), 5 points: Camilla cried. I’m shocked T.J. didn’t tell her she killed it at crying just to screw my day up.
Kesha, Tami, and Evelyn (Basketball Wives, various GRTFL teams), 5 points: There is nothing that better encapsulates every episode that has ever aired of Basketball Wives than this exchange between Tami and Kesha (5 points):
- Kesha: “Please don’t call me a bitch and be rude.”
Tami: “Bitch, bitch, and more bitch.”
Kesha: “That is so sad.”
Kesha later added, “I have never been around a group of ladies like this one. This group is very unique and right now I am not feeling like these are my type of people.” She says they aren’t her type of people now, but by the end of the season she will have somebody’s extensions between her teeth and a stiletto heel lodged in her thigh as she hosts an event to launch a line of lip gloss for newborns. Don’t fight it, Kesha. Own it.
Filed Under: Basketball Wives, Ben Flajnik, Courtney the Model, Jersey Shore, Reality TV Fantasy League, The Bachelor, The Challenge, The Decline of American Civilization
More from David Jacoby
-
Lowbrow Highlights: Bromance Blossoms on ‘The Bachelorette’
-
Lowbrow Highlights: Hook-up Theories and Concussion Drama on ‘The Bachelorette’
-
Lowbrow Highlights: Analyzing the Greatest ‘This Season On’ Promo Ever on ‘The Bachelorette’
-
Lowbrow Highlights: The 2015 ‘Bachelorette’ Bro Bio Breakdown
-
Lowbrow Highlights: GG From ‘Shahs of Sunset’ Gets Weird on the First Date
More Basketball Wives
-
Grantland Reality Fantasy League: The Mushroom Farmer Was a G
-
Grantland Reality Fantasy League: Kissing Cousins, Ladybit Care, and an Existential Crisis on Basketball Wives
-
Grantland Reality Fantasy League: The Basketball Wives Peace Summit
-
Grantland Reality Fantasy League: Basketball Wives, Bachlorette Bros, and Survivor’s Kim
-
Grantland Reality Fantasy League: The Hypnotic Laser Eyes of Survivor Kim
More Hollywood Prospectus
-
Brand Echh: Sandra Bullock and Billy Bob Thornton Can’t Save the Lame ‘Our Brand Is Crisis’
-
50 Scenes That Do Not Appear in the Fox ‘X-Files’ Revival
-
In Praise of Beach Slang, 2015’s Best, Most Sincere Rock Band
-
Who Was Missing From Taylor Swift’s Miami Squad?
-
Happy ‘Halloween’: The Best Horror-Movie Monsters