MTV's Jersey Shore Family Vacation stars have had quite an interesting year in 2019, with highlights such as Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino's jail time and Ronnie Ortiz-Magro's tempestuous relationship with baby mama Jen Harley. The cable hit is currently on hiatus between the two sections of Season 3, with the back half set to air in 2020. But guess what? If the show ends up returning for Season 4 and beyond, Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi has announced she won't be part of it, as she is now quitting the show.
That's right, the O.G. Jersey Shore meatball has gone public with the declaration that she is vacating the Shore life in order to put more focus on the growing family that she's been building in recent years. Here's how Snooki put it:
I am not coming back to Jersey Shore [Family Vacation] for a Season 4, if there is one. And there's a lot of reasons why, but the main reason is really, I'm just like...I just can't do it anymore. I hate being away from the kids, I don't like partying three days in a row, it's just not my life anymore. And I wanna be home with the kids. I don't mind a here or there going to a dinner or whatever, but it's just really hard on me to leave the kids and film the show.
If Jersey Shore Family Vacation skewed a little closer to how the original series filmed its beach-adjacent seasons without any location changes or nearly as much behind-the-scenes drama delaying productions, then maybe it would be easier for Polizzi to figure out a schedule that allowed her to be with her kids for larger chunks of time. As it is, though, Jersey Shore Family Vacation left the shore life behind in order to make traveling part of the fun, and that's a big part of why Snooki has been unable to see her children as often.
Snooki made her game-changing announcement on her podcast It's Happening with Snooki & Joey, which she co-hosts with her good friend Joey Camasta. (Jersey Shore Family Vacation viewers probably remember that Joey stopped by the show in 2018.) He clearly wasn't going to be the person to try and talk her out of leaving the Shore life behind, considering he probably gets a first-hand account of all the roughness that Snooki has gone through in balancing her work and personal lives.
But even beyond missing her kids, Snooki recognizes that what viewers are watching on Jersey Shore Family Vacation is not the show that everyone got together to make back in 2009, and that the drama has overtaken all of the fun. In her words:
Our show, Jersey Shore, is about family and about making fun of each other and having a good time and laughing, and just knowing that it's all in good fun. And lately, it's just like, everything is so serious, and when it comes to our show it's not about like, team this, team that, and fans are against one another when it comes to a cast member. That's just not how the show works and that's how it's becoming.
Seriously, it did seem like every time someone opened their mouth earlier this year, Ronnie and Jen were getting into some kind of headline-making trouble, usually tied to physical confrontations. (And Ronnie's Uncle Nino didn't exactly help anything, either.) Not to mention the in-house drama between Ronnie and JWoww over her own troubled relationship.
It was just a few months ago when rumors first started spreading about Snooki possibly wanting to back out of Jersey Shore's future, and it looks like she has fully confirmed that now with her podcast declaration. Will Jersey Shore go on without Snooki? Can it? Let us know what you guys think about this turn of events.
The back half of Jersey Shore Family Vacation is set to air on MTV at some point in 2020, so stay tuned for more information on that front.
