Jon and Kate Plus 8 Plus Hate
Usually with deep embarrassment and lately with great regret, I have watched “Jon & Kate Plus 8″ for the past couple of years, mainly because my wife loved the show and because the behavior of the sextuplets was just slightly ahead of the actions of my own preschooler — predictive on a massive and scary scale. Before the show devolved into a self-referential meditation on the caustic effects of 21st century tabloid/reality television fame, “J&K+8″ was the cutest little horror show on television — parents of young children could look at Jon and Kate Gosselin and their massive brood and think, “There but for the grace of limited fertility go I.”
But last night’s episode confirmed what our supermarket checkout experiences had been trumpeting for weeks: the Gosselins are a 20-legged disaster. While the couple announced on the show (in isolated interviews) that they were separating, a placard appeared shortly afterward indicating that the Gosselins had filed papers on Monday to dissolve the marriage. Quick and ugly.
Even from the limited understanding we are allowed if we choose not to read the rags, this was still not a surprise, given that Kate was increasingly surly and self-absorbed last season and Jon has been uninvolved and enunciating like he just got stuck with a tranquilizer dart. Plus, the kids started looking a lot like window dressing on the show, which is a fairly pathetic but obvious outcome in the reality television age.
We’ve seen all this before in the paleolithic era of reality television. The historical precursor to all this was “An American Family,” a 12-episode series that ran on PBS in 1973, in which the Loud family of Santa Barbara, Calif. fell apart. The documentarians weren’t counting on the Louds being a mess when they arrived, but that’s what they got when Pat asked Bill to move out and filed for divorce.
The Gosselins are a different kind of loud, and even without the cameras or the couple’s personality mismatch, the odds were against them — parents of multiples are reportedly three times as likely to divorce. Throw camera crews into the mix, and Monday’s outcome was predictable as sunrise.
What bothers me about this meltdown is the terrible Faustian deal the Gosselins entered into with this show. The couple reportedly made nearly $50,000 per episode, which should provide some security for the kids provided that the cash doesn’t get wasted on legal fees and/or excessive living. But then there’s the toxic aftermath: the sextuplets and the twins will grow up with an obnoxious truth — the dissolution of their family can be Netflixed by everyone they know, and far too many people that they don’t know.
Isn’t reality television wonderful? Two decades ago, when TLC was still “The Learning Channel,” the network used to broadcast surgeries. It’s a toss-up as to whether “J&K+8″ or those chest-cavity shots were more invasive.
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Comments
You know, I think it wouldn’t have been so bad if the show hadn’t been so popular. It seems like part of the problem was that so much attention outside of the show was paid to that family — the kind where the put-upon mother begins to feel like a media superstar and the hen-pecked father finds lots of willing surrogates to love.
Maybe it’s just me, but I prefer my reality dives into real lives to be short and sweet — competitions like “Wipeout” and stories like “Intervention” do it all in one hour, which goes by too fast to make media darlings/devils out of the subject/s.
well, as a longtime “Big Brother” addict, I can’t deny the appeal of watching people, in all their vile glory, under the microscope. What makes “Jon and Kate” so tragic, ultimately, is thhe innocents who are impacted along the way.
It really is something of a paradox, the balance between how reality TV is both a financial life preserver and soul killer for multiple-birth families. I mean, does anyone think the Octo Mom will even be able to support her family without the inevitable reality TV show? But these shows conversely celebrate and reward bad behavior.
Then again, thinking about it, life kinda rewards bad behavior.
So maybe I need to stop talking.
Watching “Man vs. Wild” on Discovery Channel helped a 9-yr old get rescued in the Utah woods.
Watching “Jon and Kate” on TLC helps you…uh….nevermind.
Thank goodness for the MUTE button on our remote, when commercials for this show come on. But there is little left on TLC of any ‘learning’ value since it went to so many of these so-called reality shows about people having children by the litter, etc. And as if weren’t bad enough that they had their own shows, they spilled over into other shows, such as the “Say Yes to the Dress’ episode where Kate bought a dress to renew their vows in. Ironic and sad.
These networks need to return to REAL documentaries. We’ve had enough of this mindless stuff. Time to stop dumbing down the country.
I think that marriage was doomed regardless! I’m sure Jon being able to watch himself being emasculated on TV (with his boys in his ear) sped it up. But no doubt, there is no way they could have lasted forever with things going that way- no matter who was at fault!
I’m so glad to hear that they are finally getting a divorce. The facades that they put on for the sake of show business makes me sick. Those poor kids are trapped in a selfish and loveless marriage that’s only out to get recognition and money. Kate is a stone cold bitch sometimes and runs that family like an army camp instead of being a loving mother. I never understood the appeal to the show… my parents NATURALLY conceived a multiple-birth and you don’t see her trying to throw her children into the spotlight. Who cares about Jon and Kate? Cheating to make a family for an attention-starved woman is shameful. People are infertile all the time and have fertilization treatments and the result is often multiple births. I’m hoping it’s all going to be over soon. Exploiting little children the way they do makes me sick.
That’s some of the best writing I’ve read in a long long long time. Anywhere.
(So I hate to say that the subject is so pathetic, but maybe that’s just the way things happen.)
Please keep up the good work!
i agree with the person who said TLC used to show surgeries, and stuff you could really learn from. i mean i could get fertility drugs and have 6 or 7 babies at one time, but in this day and age, it is nothing special. Why not put the octo-mom on TLC, now there is a woman who needs some help. As far as Kate, she’s an idiot, you can’t stick a man with that many kids at once and not expect him to go running
It’s fascinating and telling that this topic has inspired more chatter than anything else I’ve seen on Staticblog. Realty TV= the roadside bloodbath accident for the new millennia
great piece, George.