Kate Minus Jon Plus 8 Plus Hate
TLC announced today that “Jon & Kate Plus 8,” the cable channel’s hit reality show and tabloid magnet, will evolve into “Kate Plus 8″ starting Nov. 2. Due to the separation and pending divorce between Jon and Kate Gosselin, and the escalating rancor between the split parents of multiples, the show is retooling by simply not including Jon Gosselin in the proceedings.
Of course, the writing has been on the wall for several weeks: recent episodes of the series, which has taken a sharp nosedive in the ratings since the split was announced, have been all about Kate anyway, and Jon’s recent interview with Chris Cuomo on “Prime Time Live,” in which he said he “despised” Kate, looked like it pretty much sealed his departure. The man is a disaster — I don’t care how much of a banshee Kate might be, you don’t say that about your children’s mother on national television and the ever-preserving Internet.
As I’ve written before, I watched “Jon & Kate Plus 8″ starting about 2 1/2 years ago — long before the tabloids, long before Jon’s Ed Hardy shirts and pierced ears, long before Kate’s badger hair — because my wife loved watching how people dealt with six toddlers just slightly older than our own son, and I basically thought it was the scariest thing I’d seen since I shut off all the lights in the house at 13 and watched “The Shining” by myself.
But they seemed like real people back then.
To borrow and paraphrase from Bill Cosby, what happened is that reality television is like cocaine — it magnified Jon and Kate’s personalities. A responsible production company would have halted the series once it became clear that tension was resulting from living in a terrarium, but there really is no such thing.
I will no longer watch “Jon & Kate Plus 8,” but it’s not purely out of disgust with the Gosselins. The last few episodes I’ve seen mostly centered on Kate coming up with fun and exciting situations, like an overly complicated movie night in the backyard and a visit to a dude ranch. Mostly, the tone of these episodes, centered on a single mother going forward and putting the past behind her, has been to shore up Kate’s image. I want to see something real about parenting, and since Kate is now in the business of reality television, there is no reality involved anymore — everything is engineered and cultivated for public relations and viewership, which is dwindling rapidly: only 1.7 million viewers tuned in for the Sept. 21 episode.
Now, TLC is exploring another project with Kate, reportedly a talk show. Guess they needed to use that love seat in the basement for something.
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Comments
I am SOOO GLAD TLC FINALLY kicked off Jon. He is a LOSER, a bad dad and a horrible fame whore. He is the worst of the worst. Good riddance and good luck Kate!
All the bes to Jon. He has to recover from living with Kate and could use the vacation. Living with Kate was like dodging bullets every ten seconds. Kate can do the show alone and die a slow network death. Real single Moms know she does not have the right stuff to make it work. Real single Moms are not as into themselves as Kate is. Kate is mentally ill and personality disordered esponentially. She no longer communicates with her own family. She has driven her husband off. She has no friends except her bodygaurd. She deserves to be alone…and her show should be cancelled. Those eight kids will grow tohate her, deservedly so. She is an embarrassment to women, to single Moms and to humanity. Good luck Jon. Kate – karma is a bitch.
A pox on both their houses! But more pox on Jon’s house. I’m with Jorge — you don’t badmouth the baby mama on national TV.
now that jon is out of kate’s life – she has become much more relaxed. Jon was always mean to kate – but he was smart he did it off camera. He did things to frustrate kate and when kate reacted and we see in on camera then we all blame kate. But a little common sense will enable you to see that jon was a difficult person. Now that the stress of living with jon is no longer there – kate is regaining her personality. You women that are so despiteful toward kate are like that because you cannot a husband and you cannot bear to see someone else happy.
They should have kicked Jon off when it was first revealed the type of person that he really is. Kate can go it alone and more power to her.