Filming for the second series of Jersey Shore is currently under way in Miami and, by from everything I’ve read, it’s been a total disaster. MTV made the decision to stick with the cast from the first season whose reputation is preceding them. Which means they’re getting turfed out of the Miami hot-spots because the club owners know exactly what kind of bullshit shenanigans follow these knuckleheads wherever they go.

If you ask me, they should have gone for a whole new cast for the second season. It’s like Borat or Dennis Pennis or whatever - once these characters get a little famous, people stop falling for their pranks and the whole joke is over. It’s the same with Jersey Shore. The first season was a bunch of no-name guidos getting into the kind of trouble you can imagine every guido gets into. Now we’ve got a bunch of people jumped up on the sense of their own fame surrounded by people who know exactly who they are. Everyone is in on the joke. It’s not funny any more.

At the same time though, I can see why they decided to stick with the same cast. This was a perfect storm of ridiculous, over-the-top personalities. With J-WOWW, Snooki, The Situation and Pauly D (and to a lesser extent, Ronnie, Vinnie and Angelina), MTV managed to capture lightning in a bottle. I doubt they could repeat it again if they tried.

Wanna know what I think? Of course you do! I think that if you absolutely had to stick with the original cast, rather than sending them to Miami, a better idea would have been to pack them all up and ship them off to Italy.

Can you imagine how incredible that would be? I’m getting tingly just thinking about it. They’d come face-to-face with real Italians. It’s would be an amazing fish-out-of-water story, as they have their ideas about what it means to be Italian both crushed and affirmed. Possibly at the same time! Not only that, but MTV Italia only started showing Jersey Shore last month, so these kids aren’t nearly as famous in Italy as they are in the States. They could wander around, jumped up on the sense of their own fame, but with near-complete anonymity.

Ah well. Maybe Season 3?