
The Jersey Shore housemates are all about having fun and looking good in the process, but a disturbing incident that was set to air on Thursday’s episode has since been pulled by MTV.
Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi, a 21-year-old from Marlboro, N.Y., and one of eight self-described “Guidos” and “Guidettes” that make up the cast, is shown in a clip receiving a vicious blow to the face while drinking with her housemates at a bar.
The assailant, Brad Ferro, a 24-year-old high school gym teacher, was arrested and charged with “simple assault,” but the image of Snooki getting hit proved to be too much for the controversial reality show.
While MTV deals with the fallout, the housemates point to the incident as a turning point of their time together, saying that the attack on Snooki actually served to unite them.
“A positive came out of it,” an unfazed Snooki tells PEOPLE.
“It definitely brought us closer together. It definitely brought us together as a family. We have each other’s backs and it was a positive.” As far as silver linings go, this may be as good as it gets. “The first couple of episodes, [Sooki] didn’t fit in,” Mike ‘The Situation’ tells PEOPLE, “and
when that happened, we thought, ‘That’s not cool. You should never touch a girl, in that way, no matter what!’ That brought the group together in a way that we cannot describe.” According to Mike, the rules of Jersey Shore are as simple as they are steadfast: Look good, feel confident and treat women with the “utmost respect.”
And when Snooki went down, the rest of the house stepped up.
“That was a very, very unfortunate situation,” Pauly D says.
“It should never have happened, but the thing is, it brought the whole house together as a family. I felt like Snooki was my sister. I met her, we weren’t close, but something bad happened to her and it brought us closer together.”MTV has since released a statement explaining their decision to pull the footage, saying, “What happened to Snooki was a crime, and obviously extremely disturbing.” But the real lesson here can best be summed up by Sooki herself, who says,
“It made me more aware about going out. There are –holes out there, and it made me more aware about who I am surrounded by.” source