Do you know that feeling when you're in no mood to be fucked with? That feeling is all of this episode, wrapped in a tasty New Jersey shell (which undoubtedly tastes very much like pepperoni). The action begins at the first national monument commemorating LGBTQ rights, the Stonewall Inn, on Coming Out Day. Julie and Billy are unhappy, as always, and so have decided to attend a party for the opening of Kevin Smith's jorts emporium, which is relaunching Bugle Boy jeans in Hoboken, NJ.
Julie goes with her mom, Marilyn, to get a free student haircut (shout-out to Bumble & Bumble!), which ends with Marilyn having a pixie(ish) cut and Julie getting a hair-helmet perm. Yes, we know no one has gotten a perm since the mid-'90s, but apparently a certain slew of Jersey girls are still doing that. And so begins what one might assume will be a half hour of jokes about Jersey. Except that Julie discovers her perfect audience in a crew of Jersey girls with sky-high hair while Billy finds Mark Consuelos playing the perfect mixture of a gay guy and a cast member from The Jersey Shore.
Arthur, Julie's boyfriend, gets the Marilyn-rando-side-storyline this week. He's in charge of birthday month at PBS and (spoiler alert) he blows it. Side note: Arthur mentions Julie has an "eating shirt," and that sounds like the perfect way to spend at least one night a week.
Back to Jersey. After one good night, Julie and Billy decide to go back for more, which everyone knows is a horrible mistake. While Joey is explaining "LGBLT" culture to Billy ("Madonna, we’re not into her anymore. It’s all about Demi Lovato") Julie is having her own Sex & The City: The Jersey Years with her squad. When things take a turn for the anti-Semitic, Julie takes a pause for...oh, five seconds. For her, appreciation is more important, it turns out, than being Jewish. By the end, Julie comes out as a self-identifying Italian, which surely means she'll live longer. Prego.
What did we learn this week, kids? Bless your cool friends who move to Jersey to raise the kids and get a house, for they are nothing like the caricatures on the Jersey Shore.