Jersey Shore - Season Four DVD Review

Jersey Shore is the herpes of reality television. You played around with it. You enjoyed its awful sinfulness. Then you walked away and forgot about it. But it didn't forget you. And every year it just keeps coming back, forever and ever and ever – haunting you and forever scarring your mind.

I know Jersey Shore is a guilty pleasure for many. I have friends and family – people I know, love and trust – who love it. And I can't fault them for liking the show's delightfully dumb contrivances and camp value, but enough is enough. When is this show going to fade into embarrassing obscurity, only to emerge to haunt us in a "Where are they now?" photo feature over at Yahoo? We're four years in, and the show is still alive and well. NBC's Community? That's on the bubble. But Jersey Shore keeps sticking around, like a filthy parasite. Like herpes.

I can't blame MTV, though. They're not the bad guys. They're just enjoying an opportunity to rake in some dough, all while providing fun fodder for Beavis and Butt-head, not to mention the masses of fans who claim to hate the show but religiously watch it every week. Hell, even Mike Judge admitted to falling in love with it at NYCC. "It's kind of hard to stop watching it," he painfully admitted.

But the end is coming. The mass market has grabbed a hold of the series, and is starting to squeeze every dollar from the franchise it can – which inherently makes it uncool to young teens. Just the other day I was at my local dollar store, waiting in their checkout lane. There, I saw some hilariously awful Jersey Shore talking pens. "GTL, baby," one of them screamed at me.


They were sitting right where the Jonas Brothers toothbrushes once were. For fading pop icons, the checkout isle at a dollar store is like death row. Sooner or later you make it there, right next to the gum and mints. And people get one last laugh at you before buying what they really need. It's a harsh truth, but an honest one nonetheless. But I can take solace in knowing that one day I'll get to review Jersey Shore - The Final Season on DVD. It won't be anytime soon, but that day will come. Oh, yes... it will come. If not, I guess there's always Valtrex (a herpes medicine). I wonder if it will help keep the show away, too?

Jersey Shore - Season Four hasn't really changed much from previous DVD sets. There's your usual collection of dull confessionals, after hours specials, a reunion, deleted material, featurettes and bonus interviews. If you're a diehard, give'em a spin. Otherwise, skip it. There's nothing here too consequential.


And again, Jersey Shore producers fail to upgrade the show's ugly below-average SD presentation to the pristine world of HD. I maintain my theory that this is on purpose – if we get to see these folks in HD, we'll quickly turn away. And like previous sets, the full frame transfers are repulsively sloppy – the bottom of TV-on-DVD. Audio isn't much better. We've got mundane stereo tracks all around.

If you're a fan of Jersey Shore, that's cool. One day you'll regret it, all while secretly harboring a fondness for it. We all have our guilty pleasures and our embarrassing purchases. (Confession: I bought the Joey Lawrence CD back in the day.) So if you like it, have at it. No judgment here. But if you hate it... well, I feel your pain.

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