I’m a huge fan of Jersey Shore, dating back to when it first premiered on MTV in 2009.
I’m from Long Island, which has a spiritual and cultural kinship to northern Jersey and the neighborhoods the cast grew up in. When I think about Jersey Shore relative to the kinds of guys I went to high school with, I immediately think of Ronnie Ortiz-Magro.
My childhood was packed wall-to-wall with less charismatic versions of Ronnie: tough guys – some more legit tough than others – much more focused on brawn (GTL in Ron Ron’s case) than brains, shall we say.
Ronnie isn’t a petty bully by any means, but my childhood held plenty of those as well. So many, in fact, that it was a relief for me to head off to college in upstate New York. Save for some short stints staying at my parents’ house after that point, I’d never live there again.
My childhood wasn’t all that special though, and in fact I made it into adulthood with only a handful of actual scuffles and punches absorbed in total.
My shield was a combination of deflection, blending into the crowd, and when truly in a pinch, cleverness and humor. And in my friend group, comedy became both a shield and a finely honed and sharpened weapon. There were those who didn’t make the grade and were cast into the social wastelands.
That shield served me well, but at some point in my adult life, I recognized I needed more tools than that to navigate the working world and adult relationships.
I’m an example of someone who grew up in an environment that radiated low-grade menace, and I learned how to survive without ever knowing how to fight. I still don’t, in fact.
Of the entire Jersey Shore gang, Ronnie has had by far the roughest go of it (even accounting for Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino’s stints in jail and rehab – his overall journey turned out to be both remarkable and inspiring), and the version of him that we see in the 2020s via the long-running Jersey Shore: Family Vacation is one who knows that his failings and mistakes have cost him.
He’s lived some life, in other words, and is trying to take account of himself and make amends where he can. It’s strange to say this about someone I’ve never met, but after spending so many years “with” Ronnie, I wish the guy well.
There are actually several Jersey Shore fights involving Ronnie that blur together in my memory — different episodes, different instigators, the same volatile ingredients.
All of them tend to start with Ronnie walking home with at the time girlfriend, Sammi, after drinking. The couple were always fighting something or another and had a toxic relationship that made for compelling reality television, but it also was one that made you wish like hell that they could break up and stay away from each other.
In one scene, Ronnie and Sammi have left one club or another, and are walking back to the Shore house on the boardwalk. The two are in mid-squabble, but more importantly there’s another couple walking near them, and the guy of that couple is clearly trying to instigate something with our dude Ronnie.
It’s critical to note here that everyone involved in this scene is clearly drunk to the gills, and thus decision-making skills and reason are far from optimal all around.
There’s something about this scene that makes my blood boil. Ronnie as mentioned is a muscled, tough dude who can “handle himself,” as we’d say back in the day, so it’s not that big a deal – by Jersey Shore standards at least – that a rando wannabe is trying to goad Ron Ron into scuffling.
What drives me crazy is that as the two couples physically converge on one another and the tension escalates, the rando’s rando girlfriend literally plays interference between herself and Ronnie. In effect, she voluntarily becomes a human shield as her drunk ass boyfriend slides around behind her, looking for just the right opening to punch Ronnie in the face.
Ronnie for his part does an admirable job of attempting to disengage.
For a little while.
He’s simply trying to walk home with Sammi, where presumably their endless argument could then (mostly) peacefully continue.
But soon, Ronnie reaches his breaking point, and when that moment happens, he takes the dude down with brutal efficiency, putting him into some kind of MMA-like position while leveling blows all around his head.
In another much quicker-brewing incident, Ronnie sprints away from the camera at another dude who was taunting him, after yet another kerfuffle.
We only see the aftermath this time: the dude completely unconscious on the ground.
“That’s one shot, kid! That’s one shot!” Ronnie then announces gleefully, dancing about as his adrenaline surges through him.
Maybe the reason these scenes land so heavily with me is because on some level I wish Ronnie was punching all of the petty bullies I grew up with in the face.
A desire for all of those kids to get their one shot.
As irony and the music overlords have it, I’m listening to R.E.M.’s “Living Well Is The Best Revenge” while I wrote the above sentence, so there’s much to be said about that.
I’m reminded too of The Sopranos episode, “Employee of the Month,” which is best known as the one where Dr. Melfi gets raped in a gruesome scene. When she later recognizes her assailant (who is literally the “employee of the month” at a local restaurant), we understand that she has the power to unleash Tony Soprano on the guy, should she wish to do so.
Her moral dilemma is to weigh the satisfaction of vengeance against the idea of living in a society governed by the rule of law. Ultimately, she holds back from calling in what would become her personal attack dog. But we as the audience can feel the visceral desire of what it would feel like to gain the ultimate vengeance against an enemy that deserves it.
I also realized that I use that catchphrase from Ronnie – that’s one shot, kid – as my proxy for the desire for righteous vengeance, which can either be physical or other kinds of real world machinations.
And it’s also about how pop culture can weirdly allow us to safely rehearse the fantasy of being the person who could enact that righteous vengeance in one swift motion.