This qualifies it for another odd statistic. The show took less than two seasons to go from the best show on tv, to totally unwatchable. Lets say it started to take off halfway through season 1, was on top through season 2, and a couple of episodes into season 3, it wasnt so bad it was good, it was so bad it was unwatchable. I can't really remember any other series having this sort of arc. Usually shows are just: 1) good, 2) good but unappreciated and ultimately canceled, 3) bad so they are cancelled, 4) so bad that they remain on TV (most reality TV). The point is, is that there is a fine line between #3 and #4. Bad so they are cancelled: The World According to Paris. Bad so people watch it: Kardashians. Bad its cancelled: Living Lohan. Bad we watch it: Bridezillas (and this is just for reality shows). Somehow, to me, JS fell into 3 and 4 in a couple short years.
But I decided to give "JS" one more shot. Did I expect anything different other than the crew being in Italy instead of Jersey? No. Did I get anything different? No. Was I nevertheless entertained? Somehow, yes.
Ten minutes into the episode, as all the characters were getting ready to go to the airport, I commented that the show "sucked so bad." It wasn't entertaining at all. It seemed scripted (which of course isn't out of the realm of possibility). This is what made the show get shitty in the first place. Too many catch phrases written by MTV 'writers' in the same vein of grenades, gorillas, thirsty, sweating, whatever. When Situation called a girl a grenade in an early episode, I genuinely believed that he used that word in his everyday lexicon, which made it funny. When I see Snooki standing in front of the mirror and saying "I hope there are a bunch of gorillas in Florence," I had no believability, which makes it painful.
However, the episode progressed, and I became entertained again. Why? Because of the drama. Call me stupid, but I dont care if its: take a pregame shot, get in the cabs, dance at the club, get in a fight, repeat. Thats what made the show so enjoyable to begin with. I won't go into too many details of the show, but I felt it. Here are a few predictions/observations for the new season:
1) J-Woww lost about 20-25 pounds.
2) That weight loss seems to have found itself on Sammi.
3) The show will be similar to Real World: Seattle. On that season, the crew never went out because the show had become so big, and citizens always ruined it. Anywhere they went, there would be some idiot in the background lifting his shirt up, or yelling out to get on camera (this was in 1998, when a majority of people finally had a nice 28k dial-up modem to surf the net, celebrity was becoming bigger and bigger with shows like TRL, and of course, thanks to Real World resident Irene, lyme disease was brought to the nation's attention). I'm not saying that the Italians are going to behave the same way in which the Seattleites behaved in 1998, I'm just saying that the show seems constricted at this point. To support this, consider the relationships. Pauly wants to go out with Deena. Sitch wants to go out with Snooki. Sammi and Ronnie obvz wanna go out with each other. The only thing stopping the 4 for 4 is a Vinnie JWoww hook up, and somehow, JWoww solidifies herself as the classiest of the eight by abstaining from this.
Now. Are we to really believe that these people cant find anyone else, and have to hook up with someone else in the house? That Pauly travelled 7,000 miles to Italy, just to fall in love with the girl that was living 10 feet away from him last year? Or Sitch, who is a self-proclaimed ladies man, would touch Snooki with a 10 foot pole? With all the celebrity these guys have acquired, they can't find one decent looking, half respectable girl in two combined continents? While I may be giving all the men too much credit, I refuse to believe that fact. Therefore, I feel these relationships are a product of MTV writing, which is caused by some sort of a constraint from being in Italy.
4) Finally. This prediction shouldnt even elicit a bullet point. Sammi will hook up with Ronnie. And they'll get back together.
On the surprise spectrum, I put this fact somewhere in the tier of: death, taxes, and the sun coming up in the morning.
But it got me thinking about something else. As the men fist pumped on the dance floor, and everyone exclaimed: "I cant wait to see and party with Single-Ronnie," I thought about the old adage "bros before hoes." I didnt think of it because Im a major advocate of the adage, or I thought Ronnie should/shouldn't follow it, I just thought of it. Then, when I was driving, I thought of something that could explain this term's existence, and why it is seldom followed (I always think of my blog posts while Im driving, btw. Not coincidentally, I have 3 moving violations in the past 12 months). The term exists, will continue to exist, and will continue to be broken because of one simple phenomenon in game theory: The Prisoner's Dilemma.
Simply put, the "PD" is something that causes two people to not cooperate, even if it is in their best interest to do so. A spin off of it is: "each person acting in their best interest, produces a less than ideal result." A better way to explain it would be to explain the game:
Two people are arrested for a crime. They are held in separate rooms. The police tell the following to each person: " If one person tells on the other, and the other remains silent, the person who tells will go free, and the silent person will go to jail for twenty years. If neither person talks, they each go to prison for one year. If they both tell on the other, they each go to jail for 5 years." Got it? To clarify, here is a nice table that someone else did to explain.
First, lets agree that the ideal scenario is in the bottom right. Each prisoner serving one year equals the least total time served by far. Out of four individual options, it is second best (0, 1, 5, 20 years).
If you look at the table, you see that Prisoner A benefits by telling (confessing), NO MATTER what Prisoner B does. Look at the left column, and read from bottom to top. If Prisoner A remains silent, while B confesses, A gets locked up for 20 years. If A confesses, and B confesses, A only goes to prison for 5 years. Therefore, he is improving his expected sentence by 15 years. The same is true if B stays quiet. Look at the right column, bottom to top. If A stays silent, 1 year, if he talks, 0. Therefore....
No matter what B does, A feels he benefits from confessing. He either improves his sentence 15 years, or 1 year. Therefore, A talks.
That being said, Prisoner B is going through the same thought process, and rightfully so. You can analyze his position by looking at the top row, reading right to left. He goes from 20 years to 5. Then, bottom row, right to left; 1 year to 0, the same way A did. Therefore, he feels it is in HIS best interest to confess.
So what happens? Both confess....which produces the top left square - they each serve 5 years. This isn't the ideal situation we discussed, where both serve one year and are out. Therefore, each acting in their own best interest, produce the non-ideal result. Hence, the prisoners dilemma.
The transition from this to "Bros before Hoes" may be obvious, but I'll go through it. First, I feel that every person has both been a victim of, and a perpetrator of "BBH." We've all been in a position where our friends start dating a girl and stop hanging out with us, and, although we may not like to admit it, commit the same injustices against our friends. We all know the phrase. We all know the pain. It is why Judd Apatow has any films. We're all familiar with this concept.
Why does it continue to exist though? If everyone is familiar with BBH, and supposedly follows it like the bible, why is there a consistent breach of the mantra? Why arent we just a bunch of bros always hanging out, playing XBox, drinking Nattys, and having an occasional hook up? (I want to point out at this point that you think I'm going to get sexist with this article. But I wont. Im not gonna blame the breach of BBH on women, Im gonna blame it on men. It has nothing to do with women forcing mens hands at relationships or marriage as some men (Judd Apatow) would like the world to think. Women dont make us throw away our action figures, wear a tie to meet their parents, and make you take them out to a restaurant even though theres a meaningless WAC game on a saturday night you want to watch...its men doing this. Rest assured ladies, I'm not getting sexist with the article, yet....)
So we preach BBH, but we dont follow it. Why? Because a) we want to act in our own best interests (obviously), and b) all things considered, it is better to have a relationship.
What if I hit you with this: "youre sitting at home on a saturday at 4 PM. You and your roomate can each go out with a girl that night, and have to decide independently whether or not to do so(this is starting to sound like an episode of "Threes Company.") If you each stay in, you each qualify for the BBH award, and will have a great night of drinking, video games, dominos pizza, barhopping, and could even have meaningless sex with a woman whose name you cannot remember (this would be the bottom right square, the ideal square). If you both go out, your nights will be a typical date - potential for fun, but "obvz not as good as hanging with your bros in the long run, but at least I got some pussy bro"* - this would be the top left square. And if you stay in and your bro goes on a date, you have a night where you drink 17 Natty Lights and watch Classic Pop Up Video on Vh1 at 1 AM until your roommate brings back a perfect model and fucks her so loud you can't hear Natalie Imbruglia singing on the TV anymore.
*[This is only the way a bro who would say 'bros before hoes' would think about the dating world and hanging with his bros.]
Now, these scenarios aren't set in stone. The real world doesn't work EXACTLY like a game from game theory, but it does for the most part. It isn't as if you could collaborate with your roommate to see whats going on for the night. But as we know, it often falls into the "hanging with (females name) tonight."
Here's where I need to clarify. There isn't anything wrong with hanging with a woman or your girlfriend. Theres this stigma attached to it I never understood. But then again, I've never uttered the phrase "bros before hoes" until this blog post. Obviously, though, the phrase exists. So why is it that bros establish something as childish and stupid as BBH, then break it? Its because of the Prisoners Dilemma. By deciding to go out on a date, the bro is improving his lot. He is either going from hanging out alone in his apartment to a date. Or he is improving from hanging with a bro to getting laid. While it may be written in the BBH code of ethics that hanging with your bro and drinking and ordering a pizza is the best thing to do, we so often see idiots who preach the BBH ideology are the ones in relationships; albeit they are rocky, like Sammi and RonRon. This is how it happens.
Girls even got in on the fun, with their lady-like naming of "chicks before dicks." The same idea holds. They believe its better to go to brunches, sip mimosas, and have a night on the town with the girls than it is to get involved with the big mean man who only wants sex. Yet, when Mr. Right, (or in the case of the 1996 Ellen Degeners smash hit, Mr. Wrong), comes along, they will ditch their chicks for the dicks.
I know what you're saying. You're saying "H, it isn't like that. Men just think with their penis. Men only want sex. Women want a man before their biological clock strikes 12." Well thats all bullshit. Thats been indoctrinated into us since day one and anyone who thinks like that is a loser (while me, the person who drinks 17 beers in one night, and watches pop up video and Fresno State vs Nevada Reno on a Saturday night, on the other hand, is of course a winner). Its a fundamental flaw. Bros and women will believe in BBH & CBD, but they also believe that they are improving their situation no matter what by going out on a date. Therefore, they end up dating, which strictly violates BBH/CBD. If every bro/woman behaves this way, we suddenly have a ton of relationships. And then...... actually, theres a lot of things I can say here I'm not gonna say. I feel like I probably already pissed off enough people.
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