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Finally, the members of the greatest sociological experiment of our time forage for their own food, and they promptly caught crabs. No, the actual crustaceans. They did not contract a horrible case of pubic lice, though they did make lots of jokes about it. The guidos never change.

Yes, they all caught crabs last night and everyone tittered about it as if their hunting was really an infestation. The reason the joke is funny is because it is sort of a foregone conclusion and just the easiest form of double entendre. Too easy, guidos. It was all too easy. While we're discussing language, let's look at our new vocabulary word for the week.

  • Eyebeam: The look that a stalker gives its prey. It is a deep and intense connection with the eyes on their object of obsession that tires to simultaneously draw its target in and destroy it at the same time. It is said that the initial eyebeam came from the Duck Phone every time it quacked, and that is how it lured the guidos under its thrall.

Speaking of catching crabs, the most amusing part of the guido's fishing trip to the dock was of course the "meatballs's" attempt to row row row their boats gently with a scream. First the wind wasn't cooperating and the large, flat, inflatable raft kept sending Snooki and Deena flying and spinning around like one of those helicopter seeds that fall off the trees and go careening toward the ground.

It is well known that the guidos have a very difficult time using simple machinery (there was a whole montage last night reminding us of their problems with grills and fires) and it seems that oars and boats are further examples of those simple machines they just can't operate. Snooki and Deena kept rowing at cross purposes, trying to make themselves go forward but just spinning around in circles with their joint ineptitude instead. Lo, if there ever was a metaphor for their very existence, this is it.

Then things go from silly to perilous, as the meatballs lose control of their craft (another metaphor), get trapped under a dock (that could be a metaphor) and are dangerously buffeted about by the wind with no rudder, no course, and no purpose (definitely a metaphor). Then the boat starts to sink, Deena starts to go crazy because she thinks there are sharks, and the whole thing seems hopelessly perilous. That is until Snooki jumps out of the boat and we realize that they are only in about two feet of water and they could have walked themselves ashore the whole time. That's so like the guidos. Just when you think it's bad, you realize there is no drama at all.

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Last week we ended with Roger, the Mayor of Seaside Heights, getting into a fight to defend the honor of JWOWW, his damsel in distress. This was just another move for Roger to show that he is in complete dominance of the relationship. He is not only her lover, but her protector, too. Anyone who has seen JWOWW fight knows that she doesn't really need any help. It didn't end there. Later, when calmer heads prevailed and they got back to the house, Roger made another play for control over JWOWW.

She wants to take him upstairs and "smoosh" but while she's getting ready (I believe she was pooping because, for the ways guidos have sex, voiding one's bowels is usually necessary), Roger goes downstairs to have a sandwich with the rest of the guidos and engage in some wild and witty banter. JWOWW comes out on the balcony and pleads for him to return, showing off her strange sleeping ensemble consisting of a homely sweatsuit with a slutty cut and a pair of thigh high boots that she stole off a hooker who was working a rest stop on the Jersey Turnpike.

Roger is telling the guidos that he is in love with JWOWW and that the previous few days—when he and JWOWW had been fighting—were torture, but he's still not letting her have the upper hand. He even has a second sandwich, knowing that JWOWW is getting upset and he should get upstairs. When dealing with a powerful guidette like JWOWW, who has been known to eat the heads off of the men she sleeps with, the only way to come out alive is to be completely and utterly in control. Roger continues to do this. We don't know if this makes him a hero or a dick, but he is still alive, so that's something.

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The most interesting character on this season of our little experiment is Lola, the tarted-up bunny suit that Snooki so adores. According to Snooki, Lola is a Vegas prostitute who has fake everything: fake boobs, fake butt, fake vagina. She is basically the most despicable thing that one could imagine. She is worse, even, than how most of the world views Snooki. However, she is still Snooki's hero and adopting her personality, literally putting on her disguise, allows Snooki to behave even worse than usual.

We see this when she loses a bet with The Situation and wears the outfit to Karma. Suddenly she's taking shots, she's grinding with everyone, and behaving just as disgustingly as she did when Jionni left her alone in Florence. Now, however, she can blame it all on Lola. I think Lola is a manifestation of Snooki's id, which she has been forced to sublimate because of the restrictions that Jionni keeps placing on her personality.

Lola even makes Snooki and Deena crash the beach in the middle of the night. At 4 a.m., they take to the surf and are surprised when the cops find them. Well, it can't be that hard considering cameras with glowing lights are fixed to them on the dark water. The best part of this interlude, however, was not Deena trying to flirt with the cop but when the cop finds the pair in the water. "Nicole!" he says. "Time's up." The cops are on a first name basis with Snooki. Ha! Of course they are.

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While Snooki is misbehaving as Lola, she's also contemplating misbehaving with Vinny. As Vinny points out, the two are like the Ross and Rachel of the house: Everyone knows they hooked up and that they will hook up in the future and he will run to the airport to stop her and her baby from moving to France to work as a fashion designer or something (the '90s was so long ago). It all seems inevitable. When Snooki gets drunk and wants to hang out, she chills with Vinny and it seems like there will always be a simmering tension there.

There are two strange things here. The first is that when the guidos initially met, no one wanted Snooki and she famously could not get laid. Now it seems like men are always vying for her attention and fighting to hook up with her. She has somehow been recast as a sexual being.

The second is that when they are at Aztec, Vinny refuses to do shots with Snooki. He says he's not drinking. Is this because of his "anxiety?" Is he on medication? Has he not been drinking this whole time? This is a huge deal. If he was drinking, would he have hooked up with Snooki when they were hanging out? Was she trying to get him drunk so he'd pull out his enormous penis and stick it in her? Also, Snooki leaves with Vinny and leaves the shots behind, but then goes back to get them. Snooki had to make the choice between Vinny and alcohol and her choice was clear. Jionni needs to watch this again, because if he ever makes her choose, she'll probably make the same decision.

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The second most interesting character on this season of our little experiment has to be Vanessa, DJ Paulie Dead's stalker. She had a run in with her idol a few weeks ago and it ended with DJ Paulie Departed running off to the bathroom and leaving her silent and alone. I thought that might be the end of her, that she would cry alone in her beach house and get over her lost love. Instead, though, it has only intensified it.

As we can see, she shows up at the Shore Store whenever DJ Paulie Dogged is working and just stares at him, then follows him home, and then follows him to whatever club he's partying at that night. The whole time she's wearing her Paulie D hat, holding her camera, and clutching a bag that is full of mysterious contents. It's becoming exhausting for everyone.

JWOWW thinks that she can have better luck than the other guidos and asks Vanessa what is in the bag, trying to humiliate her into staying away. She says its a blanket. Why one would need a blanket for stalking is beyond me (maybe she gets a chill?) but it seems like it has some nefarious purpose. Then JWOWW asks Vanessa if she has a boyfriend and she says yes, her front teeth protruding from her sheepish grin as she launches into a revelry of DJ Paulie Devoted clutching her in his toned, tanned arms and telling her that he always loved her, that he would always want her, that she is the one.

Everyone seems to think that confronting Vanessa will make her go away, but it will not. It will only fuel her. And so will ignoring her. Either way, DJ Paulie (is) Doomed.

That night Vanessa will go home to her room in her grandparents' beach house, which is near the Shore Store, and she'll run up to her room and throw her bag on the bed. "Vanessa, we're about to have dinner," her grandmother will yell up the stairs. "Not now! God. Can't you ever leave me alone?" she'll reply. "Vanessa, dear, why don't you come down and spend some time with us, what are you always doing up there?"

But it's too late, Vanessa has her bag on the bed and she pulls out her blanket and spreads it gingerly on her pink duvet, the same one her grandparents have had in her room there since she was 8. She unfolds each square of the blanked and looks at what is inside. There's a grease stained paper plate with a half-eaten crust inside, which she pulled out of the trash can on the boardwalk right after DJ Paulie Delicious finished his lunch. There's a quarter that was on the floor of the Shore Store that Vanessa swears came out of DJ Paulie Deep's pockets. And there's a green Starbucks straw, that JWOWW was sucking iced coffee through when she talked to Vanessa about her lover. Not bad for a days haul.

She organizes them on her dresser along with the hair clippings, a shoe lace, cocktail napkins with vodka soda rings all dried in the center, a receipt from the Shore Store the day she bought her favorite hat. It's all there, like a little alter. There's a mirror above it with pictures of DJ Paulie from all Directions, as she snuck up on him trying to get his attention, trying to get him to see that she is really the one, trying to prove that if she could get just a second, if she wasn't so ugly and shy and stupid and crazy that someone could love her, that someone like Paulie could love her forever just for being her. But how was she going to make it happen? What would she do next? What? What?

"Vanessa," her grandmother said, this time with a knock. "Why don't you come out?"

"Not now! I'm thinking. I'm thinking."