Jersey Shore is my all time favourite reality show. It’s so baseless: individuals paid to party and portray a westernized sense of culture. Yet it was immensely popular. I like to think it’s because they made us feel better about our own lives.

This was a television show that set the template for many more to come, none ever reached the heights of OG Jersey Shore.

We had the main standouts: Pauly D, Mike, and of course my personal favourite: Snooki.

All three of them had one thing that immediately drew our attention: their appearances. We had the blowout, the random exposure of abs, and the poof.

Eventually we realized the personalities that were to match the styles were hella entertaining.

Pauly D was jokes, loud and just radiating good energy. How much of that is actually true? Viewers will never know. He made catch phrases that some of us still find ourselves involuntarily yelling. It may be annoying to some but it was effective in leaving his mark. The least memorable part probably was the amount of girls he went through, oddly enough for most is an afterthought.

Mike. The OG villain, the OG shit starter. He was unapologetically his cringy self. Who else would have the balls to unbutton their shirt up to their belly button and label it as casually professional?Apart from that, he was always starting something – spreading things from here to there. In the beginning he was watching from the sidelines, eventually he was called out for his shit and he retaliated like we all wanted him to: a rabid hyena.

Of course Mike had his issues that we weren’t privy to during the original airing of the show, but he plowed through. That takes balls.

Sunday dinners were pioneered by Mike, one of the few that could cook well. Hygiene was something that was a rarity to the house, but not to Mike. One thing that’s often over looked with ‘The Situation’ was his sense of humour. He came out with some of the most notorious lines of the show.

To name a few:

• “Don’t come over to someone’s house at fucking 5am and expect to just watch them play checkers.”
• “This is the shirt before THE shirt”
• “Shut your mouth you dirty little hamster”
• “I’m like… a pretty deep dude”
• “I’m not fucking any of my roommates, therefore I should not be cleaning up any of their shit”

Now we come down to Snooki. The most iconic roommate of first 3 seasons of OG Jersey Shore. This tiny little girl turned out to be a Molotov cocktail. Definition of party is always here.

Snooki embraced animal prints, flared nails, tanned for the gods, the poof, and was hella confident in whoever she was. She knew what she wanted: a gorilla juice head guido. She manifested from season 1 day 1, and she made it happen.

Often underestimated Snooki banked on her personality more than any other cast member.

I never understood why every other roommate didn’t immediately love her on day 1. They were all hella judgey and quite rude (again all aspects that made the show more and more entertaining).

She got punched, she had a physical fight with Angelina, she showed her cooka more times than I can remember, went to jail, had a meltdown in the middle of Italy, and then came back pregnant.

That’s to say nothing will ever come close to the OG Jersey Shore run. It left a pretty hefty mark in the world of reality television. It was the perfect combination of eccentric personalities, a small space, drama, and of course alcohol.