Jersey Shore fans expressed frustration over seeing certain parts of the show presented with “fake” and “staged” calls.
MTV recently aired its Family Vacation Season 7, with viewers seeing all sorts of drama in the episodes.
Among the big stories were Ronnie Ortiz-Magro’s return to see his castmates and his ex-girlfriend from Jersey Shore, Sammi “Sweetheart” Giancola, after years of not seeing one another.
Multiple stories also involved Angelina Pivarnick, including a feud with Sammi throughout multiple episodes and meeting her biological father.
Angelina met her father and other family members she’d never met thanks to castmate Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino making some calls to launch an investigation.
An episode featured Mike, Angelina, and other castmates seated at a table during a call from the person they called to help them.
Jersey Shore: Family Vacation features many calls that could be staged or set up by production
Earlier this year, an episode of Family Vacation featured Mike getting a call while his castmates were seated with him at a table.
While castmates were joking and laughing about something else, footage showed Mike taking his phone out and looking at a text message. The message on the screen indicated it was from the genealogist and private investigator they’d contacted to help find Angelina’s dad.
During the footage presented, Mike also texted castmate Vinny Guadagnino about it before he called the woman and put her on speakerphone for everyone to hear.
A commenter suggested it was “probably to force them to talk to each other when they aren’t together.”
Castmates reacted throughout the call, displaying confusion, sorrow, and possible tears of happiness. The video below shows how things played out in the aired episode.
The call didn’t seem fake, but production could have staged the moment so that all castmates were present.
There’s always the possibility that production filmed separate scenes for the episode or set things up so that the woman’s text and call arrived during those moments.
Other calls have featured castmates seeming to talk to each other in real-time, although fans suggest production filmed the scenes to recreate calls or “stage” them.
The Family Vacation clip below from a year ago might include an example of a staged call. However, it’s unknown if Vinny and his castmates were on the call in real-time.
Viewers blast production for ‘staged’ and ‘fake’ calls
A Reddit post on a Jersey Shore subforum demanded that production stop faking phone calls on the MTV show, seemingly referring to FaceTime and other calls in the footage.
“No like they film the other person pretending to respond to them even though we all know that they’re not talking to anyone,” the original Reddit post author responded.
They also mentioned how Mike gets a call “many times,” and it’s just his “home screen or his lock screen” when he holds the phone to his ear.
“Can’t they just have both parties screen record the FaceTime? Then send production the file?” a commenter suggested.
“That’s what I’m sayingg! Like one side is mic’d up so they can easily just do that!” the original post author replied.
It’s often unclear which moments of a reality TV show happen in real time or are filmed in a certain way to create entertaining content.
While fans want more real-time footage for their Jersey Shore episodes, it seems unlikely that production will deviate from creating the best potential scripted scenes and moments to entertain viewers.
Jersey Shore: Family Vacation Season 8 is TBA for MTV.
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