Snooki & JWoww: Picture Perfect (Despite The Secrets)

By Karen Malmquist

THOUGH SHE’S NOT EXACTLY BACK TO PEEING ON decks like her Jersey Shore days, Nicole is now hiding under one on Tuesday’s Snooki & JWoww. And while the meatball is sneaking smokes, Roger’s hiding something of his own.

Nicole and Jionni are still at their romance-reigniting dinner from last week, and Nicole is stumbling down the line between responsible parent and party girl by suggesting she pump-and-dumps at the restaurant while still tipsy. When they get home via cab, they say hi to Jenni, Roger, and Lorenzo, expecting their baby to say hi back. He doesn’t.

You’d think that in their state, they’d be the ones to break something, but it’s the sober Roger who takes care of that. As he and Jenni are about to leave, they jokingly admire an old wrestling trophy of Jionni’s, and then he accidentally smashes a nearby Jesus figurine. Blasphemy!

The next day, Nicole decides to test her breast milk for alcohol, and even though the test strips say there’s no alcohol in it, she pours it all down the sink because she doesn’t trust it.

Meanwhile, Jenni and Roger are on their way upstate to visit her mother. They’re both really nervous, because Jenni’s never really opened up about her relationship with her mom to anyone.

Janice makes some Sangria, and Nicole and her friend Steph try some for the first time. They like it so much that they decide to try another first: Nicole’s first cigarette in nine months. Not wanting to make Jionni mad when he comes home, she sneaks under the deck and has a few puffs. Luckily, he doesn’t seem to notice when he sees her, and she feels like she got away with murder.

Jenni and Roger are leaving her mother’s place (no cameras were allowed inside), and they both feel great about their visit. She says it makes her and Roger feel like even more of a family now, especially since her mother’s never met anyone she’s dated before.

Later that night, after showering away the cigarette smell, a guilt-stricken Nicole tells Jionni about the deed. He says he doesn’t care that she had a smoke, but is irritated that she felt the need to lie about it. Jionni should be more worried about the microwave behind him, because it really looks like the shelf it’s on is above to collapse.

Nicole and Jionni arrange for a professional photographer to come to the house to take photos of Lorenzo. The photographer, Lauren, requests that the photos be taken in natural light. Well, they live in a basement, so that might be a problem.

Nicole lures Jenni out of the house for a girl’s day while Roger meets with a rep from Alan Friedman Jewelers to pick out an engagement ring. Roger nearly drops one of the pink diamonds when she tells him it’s $500,000 dollars. They then settle on a less-gaudy 5 carat princess-cut center stone with clusters of pink diamonds around it. Whatever that means.

The girls are at lunch, talking about babies and batting their fake eyelashes at each other. They say they want to get pregnant at the same time, and have their babies grow up and marry each other and make a Snooki—JWoww baby.

After Roger’s ring appointment, he invites a friend over to show him the general design of the ring. Next it’s time to talk about the proposal. Roger plans to “fake her out” with a cliché “set-up” for a proposal at a nice restaurant, but then have the actual popping of the question be a more one-of-a-kind experience. He says he’s gotta be secure in his masculinity to be this cool with gushing over engagement plans in front of his guy friends.

When Jenni gets home, Roger says he wants them to make a bucket list of things to do before marriage. This is apparently a way to get her to warm up to the idea of skydiving, because that’s how Roger is thinking of proposing.

Lauren the photographer comes by the LaValle household for the photo shoot. Jionni is annoyed that Lauren’s having him do all of the work setting up and moving everything around, saying in his interview, “I’m not gonna call a landscaper and then to mow the lawn for him!”

The actual photo shoot is Anne Geddes calendar-worthy, with the adorable Lorenzo asleep throughout most of it. Fortunately, he’s too young to realize that he’s posing inside of a pot with a spoon next to him. Possibly a nod to him being so cute that you could just eat him up? He starts crying, so Lauren picks him up and loudly shushes him, only making things worse. Finally it’s all over, and they get some really cute shots of him.

Jenni senses something is up with Roger when he says he’s skipping the gym, opting for them to go out on a dinner date instead. They get ready to go some restaurant called Pilot House, and Jenni gets even more suspicious when they’re greeted by a pink limo to take them to dinner.

Will Roger propose at the restaurant? No, because he said he wouldn’t do it there. Next week, however, we’ll see Jenni jump from a plane. Fingers crossed it’s because she’s skydiving.

Karen Malmquist is a senior at La Salle University, and is a member of the Overpopulated Peninsula comedy troupe. You can follow her on Twitter @KarenSays.