"Thankfully, we have a prenup 'cause this thing can't end soon enough," Jenni says -- as Ronnie admits, "I think I've finally realized I need help."
Thursday's "Jersey Shore: Family Vacation" kicked off Season 3 of the MTV series by picking up the day after Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino and Lauren Sorrentino said "I do."
And boy did reality smack our favorite guidos/guidettes right in the face.
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View StoryWhether or not she wanted to, Jenni "JWoww" Farley was forced to address the claims her estranged husband, Roger Mathews, was making on social media.
"My divorce, um, it was a sore subject. I filed before the dude ranch, but I didn't wanna talk about it publicly out of respect for my children," she told the camera. "So when those videos came out, I feel like it was a really, really low blow by Roger."
Roger posted several videos to his Instagram, one from the backseat of a police car, saying Jenni had filed a restraining order against him.
"I'm not allowed to go home and see my children," he said in the selfie-style video. In another, he said, "We're gonna address this in court, which is the proper place to address it." Roger assured his fans he would keep them "updated on all of this."
"I feel like Ron and Jen," a defeated Jenni said to Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi during a FaceTime call, mocking Ronnie Ortiz-Magro's tumultuous relationship with Jen Harley. "I just try to keep everything so private, and I literally feel like I'm on all the tabloids." Nicole said she was running errands but would be over as soon as she could.
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View Story"In the last 24 hours, I've just been going through it," Jenni told the camera. "Like, shit got real." In her confessional, Snooki elaborated, claiming, "Roger decided to post all of these videos attacking Jenni for being this horrible person and a horrible mom. Now, it's in the news. It's everywhere. It's awful."
Once Nicole made her way to Jenni's, the two spoke more candidly.
"I thought silence was for the greater good," Jenni began, before Nicole interrupted to agree with her. "It is! Who wants their shit out in the public anyway? I guess he does!"
"As bad as our relationship got, I stayed f--king quiet because that's what you're supposed to do!" Jenni said angrily. "So to me, the ultimate betrayal is the fact that he went public."
"It's like 12 videos of saying that you broke up the family and you didn't want it to work and you took the kids away from him," Nicole said. "Which is not the case at all!"
"Little does anybody know, Jenni let Roger stay in the house after she filed for divorce so he could still be with the kids, but he would start fights in front of the children," she later revealed. "So finally, enough is enough, she called the cops, said you gotta get out. But she never said, 'Roger can't see his kids.'"
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View Story"All I said was, 'I want a cooling off period.' I don't want him in my face," Jenni said to her friend. "And then he left. People think that I had him arrested. Not even the case because you wouldn't have your phone in the back of a cop car! They were being nice and giving him a ride."
Security footage from inside Jenni and Roger's home showed Jenni talking to the cops, presumably on the night Roger recorded himself from inside the police car.
"If you ask the judge to give you sole parenting until that restraining order hearing in three-to-seven days, the judge is gonna give you that," an officer was heard telling Jenni, who sounded like she was crying. "Look, I don't wanna do that to him," she replied. "He should be allowed to see them. He's not a bad dad. I'm not gonna say those things."
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View StoryNicole told Jenni that Roger "stooped to Ron and Jen level," which pained JWoww to hear.
"The irony in all of this is I love to make fun of Ron and Jen -- car chases, getting ran over, drama -- and now I'm on that level," she told the camera. "And I'm sure Ron and Jen are looking at each other like, 'Oh, did you see what's on the morning paper today? Not us!'"
Jenni got emotional as she told Nicole that all she wanted was for the situation to "calm down because I'm in the public eye, and I don't want this to get out of control. But at the end of the day, he's still the father of my kids. Gotta keep it together. Everything that I do in this life today, the kids come first. And for him to literally just piss on all that and call me like a piece-of-shit mom, that sucks."
JWoww later told the camera, "The last thing I want is for this divorce to drag out. Thankfully, we have a prenup 'cause this thing can't end soon enough."
Ronnie and Jen's ears must've been burning because shortly after ringing in the new year, TMZ got footage of Ron leaving a club "bloodied" after Jen allegedly threw an ashtray at his face. In a second video, Ronnie was seen punching the video camera on the front door of someone's home, presumably his.
So he went to go visit his dad -- who's been through similar situations and managed to turn himself around -- "to take a break from the toxic situation I'm in because when you argue with somebody and you mix it with the alcohol and you mix it with my bad reactions, it's just not good for my daughter to be around."
"I'm tired of being in the tabloids for negative stuff," Ron told his dad. "We fight and I get triggered and I spiral, if you wanna say, and then it just becomes too much."
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View StoryHis dad, point blank, told Ron that if he didn't change what he was doing, he'd end up in jail or dead. He urged Ronnie to "get off the hamster wheel," then quoted an AA favorite: "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result."
Ronnie broke our hearts as he broke down during his confessional. He said he grew up seeing more than he should have been exposed to and that he wanted to break that cycle for his daughter.
"We're almost the same person, in a way," Ron said of his dad. "He had a rough 20s and rough 30s and he wasn't in the best place in his life, so I saw a lot more things that I didn't wanna see growing up. And that's my biggest fear for Ariana -- is that she's gonna be 2 years old, 3 years old and I have a black eye. Or she's 2 or 3 years old and I'm doing something stupid to go tit for tat with Jen, and she's just sitting there watching this and she's absorbing this."
Ronnie stepped outside and called a wellness retreat center. "When were you looking to fly in?" the woman on the other end asked. "As soon as possible," Ronnie replied.
"Right now, I'm feeling a million different feelings. I'm feeling anxiety, I'm feeling depression, I'm feeling lost," he told the camera. "I've become a person that I never wanted to become. I've finally seen that I'm with the person I never thought that I would be with. I'm in a relationship I never thought I'd be in. I feel like that the last year has just stripped me down layer by layer, like an onion, and I've got nothing left at this point. I need to figure out why I'm so unhappy. I need to figure out how to get myself back to a better place. I need to figure out how to be a better father. I need to figure out how to be a better person. I need to figure out how to be a better friend."
"I don't really know what the answer is. So I think that's what I'm looking for is answers," he continued. "I got to a point where I'm tired of being tired. I think I've finally realized I need help. I just decided I don't wanna live like this anymore. I'm tired of being depressed and making really, really, really bad decisions. I have to make a change 'cause it's just gonna keep happening. My fear is that something is gonna happen, and I'm not gonna be there for the baby."
And just like that, Ronnie and his dad hopped in the car and headed to the airport. Although Ronnie revealed in mid-February he had attended a treatment center in Florida for a month to tackle alcohol abuse and depression, he never outwardly said during the episode that he had an issue with substance abuse.
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View StoryIn happier news, Deena Cortese gave birth! She welcomed Baby CJ, who weighed 6 lbs, 5 oz, on Jan. 5 after a nine-hour labor.
Also, Nicole announced she was pregnant! She had husband Jionni LaValle soft-pitch a baseball to their son, Lorenzo, to hit. Once the bat struck the ball, blue powder went flying. It's a boy! But we already knew that because social media is a thing. Angelo is almost 3 months old and sooooo adorable.
And in Uncle Nino news, Vinny Guadagnino's unfiltered uncle took Mike to lunch to chat about the latter's upcoming "vacation." Nino said he had friends at the facility Mike would be going to and assured him that "blowjobs don't count in jail."
At the end of the episode, we saw Mike and Laurens head off to the Otisville Federal Correctional Institution in New York. He appeared nervous yet calm as Lauren live-streamed his final moments. All the roommates tuned in. He was ready to do his time.
"Jersey Shore: Family Vacation" airs Thursdays at 8 p.m. on MTV.
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