Here is what Barbara Walters says at the beginning of the following clip: “I never got that big interview with Jacqueline Onassis or Greta Garbo—but now I have some consolation. Ladies and gentlemen, my interview with the cast of Jersey Shore.” Dear Lord.

Just in time for the holiday shopping season, Gotham has released the perfect stocking stuffer: Here’s the Situation: A Guide to Creeping on Chicks, Avoiding Grenades, and Getting in Your GTL on the Jersey Shore.

Some Jersey Shore haters will say the show jumped the shark when it started, while others will say it should have stopped after season one.

For me, it sadly came in the middle of the final episode of season two, when Snooki appeared to inexplicably break character (we have the video evidence). It was a heart-breaking moment in a boring episode that could signal something disastrous about our favorite cast of juiced-up Jerseyans.

Regis Philbin is old. Super old. Like, “Jesus Christ was my camp counselor” old. So it’s no surprise that when Jersey Shore stars Jenni “JWoww” Farley and Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi
showed up on Live with Regis & Kelly this morning, Reeg didn’t quite know what to make of them.

The Situation was eliminated on Dancing With The Stars this week, and to make matters worse, this episode of Jersey Shore features him failing miserably with a girl from “Canadia.”

Snooki makes an incest joke, Vinny gets “pot-committed” and Pauly D comes to the realization his wingman is a total douchebag.

Well this episode of Jersey Shore didn’t gain The Situation any Dancing With The Stars votes. Instead, The Situation was exposed as erratic and jealous, and erratically jealous. Also very worn-out-baseball-glove-looking.

Recap slideshow is after the jump (complete with reference to Parker Spitzer)!

For the second time in a row, Angelina, aka the Staten Island Dump aka Trash Bags, left Jersey Shore before the season could come to a close. We can thank The Situation for being a jerk to her, Snooki for physically fighting her, Vinny for smushing and running and much more.

We also became keenly aware of the soon-to-be-sweeping-the-nation “It’s T-Shirt Time” song. Let’s recap.

On last night’s pre-VMAs episode of Jersey Shore, we got to know the person who is turning into one of the stars of season 2 – sweet, momma’s boy Vinny.

His family came to visit, and it was fun for everyone to eat a big meal and spend QT with the fam. But Vinny’s true nature was revealed in two very different interactions with women.

Episode seven of Jersey Shore was sponsored by Fossil watches, Staten Island and true love.

No but seriously, Snooki smushed, Sammi and Jwoww fought, Vinny smushed, Ronnie and Sammi made up, Angelina smushed Vinny and Pauly D and The Situation were the voices of reason.

The epic sixth episode of Jersey Shore was a Seaside Heights roller-coaster filled with sex and violence, food and drink (and a tranny situation).

The Situation, who was the breakout star of season one, will now incomprehensibly be on Dancing With The Stars and has a nickname for his nickname (“Sitch”), was mostly a bit player this year. Until his breakout performance last night – which he summed up with a perfect analogy about his philosophy on life.

Jersey Shore‘s fifth episode began with a 10-second scene featuring Jwoww and her breasts. She’s staring at herself in the mirror, maneuvering her fake mammaries when a disapproving glare comes across her usually blank face.

They aren’t perky enough apparently, or large enough, or something. Saying more in that look than if she attempted to formulate a sentence to describe her emotion at the time, we enter episode five. Let’s recap the shitshow.

Before this season we speculated that the only way it was possible for Jersey Shore to remain great is if the cast remained self-aware. After four episodes, the stars of season two seem to be the ones who still aren’t playing for the cameras.

Ronnie and Sammi are in Guido Guiding Light and Angelina‘s repulsiveness has kept her at the forefront – this week displaying this repulsiveness quite literally by farting in Snooki‘s face. With that in mind, let’s recap episode four (in slideshow-form).

Sleep with one eye open Sammi! Ronnie is creeping and you think he just wants to smush you. This is not, sadly, the case, Sweetheart.

We need to talk about this, and other Situations. But really, what’s the deal with this Ronnie character?

We live in a country now where someone named Jwoww can tell five million people on TV about a certain guy from Long Island who goes by the name Jay 420, and you can then find out exactly what Jay 420 thinks of the mention. And also – he goes by Dr. Jay 420…he didn’t go through years of 420 school to have you drop the Dr.

Also this week we learned about the IFF (not to be confused with the GFA) and how to have a “Snooki Night.”

Jersey Shore is back, and the crew of non-Jerseyites have moved south to Miami, bitch (that will happen all season).

Yesterday we worried if self-awareness would pervade the show, and the fact that the four biggest stars (Jwoww, Snooki, The Situation and Pauly D) were barely involved in the episode one plot proved it true so far. But the crew still made a big mess, so all was forgiven.

We’ve reached a point in our reality TV consumption where we no longer need to actually believe it is real – the suspension of disbelief for shows like The Hills or Real Housewives is as accepted as in professional wrestling.

But what separated MTV’s Jersey Shore when it beat the beat onto the scene in December was how fantastically real it was. As we await the second season premiere tonight, let’s hope this hasn’t changed.

This morning the unthinkable happened: the eight cast members of Jersey Shore all woke up before noon, (seemingly) un-hungover, and (mostly) covering up their habitually exposed bronze chests with (somewhat) tasteful business attire. The reason? They were the honored guests at the New York Stock Exchange in charge of ringing the opening bell.

Do you like MTV’s Jersey Shore? If your answer is no, it’s probably because you’re old and cynical – at least according to the MTV Networks President Van Toffler.

That was the implication at a luncheon yesterday when Toffler discussed who MTV’s new audience was, and why Jersey Shore is just perfect for the demographic of choice.

The millions of soccer moms who may have previously been unaware about the smushing that occurred on MTV Thursdays at 10pm were introduced this morning to the cast of Jersey Shore on NBC’s Today show.

It went pretty much how you’d expect – the cast members were themselves, and Meredith Vieira conducted the anthropological exploration as a curious outsider.

Dave Itzkoff of the New York Times reports that MTV emailed out a press release at 1:33 am Friday night announcing that the full cast Jersey Shore will be returning for a second season. The second season is planned to air this summer, but the press release warns that the cast will “escape the cold Northeast and find themselves in a new destination.” This does raise the question of why the show should even be called Jersey Shore any more.

Well folks, there’s good news and bad news. What would you like to hear first?

Good? Well all signs point to another season of Jersey Shore, and Jwoww threw out the word “Hamptons” at the end of this episode, which would make it a whole new level of amazing. Bad? Last night was the season finale.

With just one more week of Jersey Shore guidoness to go before the national phenomenon concludes next week, MTV gave its viewers two full hours this week.

The Situation fought with Vinny, and Snooki, and Ronnie, and Sweetheart, and Jwoww, and Pauly D got stalked by an Israeli girl. Also: more fighting and hooking up.

For those who have erroneously questioned whether these Jersey Shore stars actually do anything, in part because of their obvious poor work ethic in their appointed summer job at the t-shirt store – you were proved wrong on New Years Eve. Pauly D showed just why people call him “DJ Pauly D” – bringing the house down at Karma as only he could. But the true star of the episode was The Situation – and his various anti-climactic situations with females.

Thanks to MTV’s Jersey Shore, the humble little town of Seaside Heights, New Jersey, is now the center of the pop-culture universe. The show has been the subject of protest, controversy, mockery, and obsessive recaps by Steve Krakauer. The town is getting a priceless amount of free advertising, albeit to drunken, promiscuous, brawl-prone twenty-somethings.

What was the the town like in the time of this year’s other pop-culture phenom, Mad Men? Mediaite has the goods on “Jersey Shore: 1960.”

Unless you live in a lead-encased cave, you’ve heard all about the punch that decked Snooki, the tiniest cast member of MTV’s controversial new reality show, Jersey Shore. After showing the punch in previews for episode 3, MTV high-mindedly redacted the blow from the actual episode, and ran a PSA-style disclaimer at the end of the show.

“Violence against women in any form is a crime,” the message began, followed by information about getting help for domestic abuse. Scenes from the next episode followed, including this example of MTV’s new commitment to preventing violence against women: