- Share This Post
- submit
- 24
-
Sparkle (0)
Before last night, I had watched Jon & Kate Plus 8 once, and vowed to never watch it again. And except for following the most basic of information in Tweet exchanges with my friend Jodi, I did not. Until last night. Right.
I mean, why not? As a voracious consumer of both trash and treasure online, I have been bombarded by images of these people since news broke of Jon's alleged affair and then Kate's maybe-affair with the bodyguard and the rounds of the trash entertainment shows as I have been by the pre-emptive strike death coverage of both Patrick Swayze and Farrah Fawcett (who have not passed away, either of them, but when they do it will feel to me a little bit like they already did, thanks to Access Hollywood, closed captioned at the gym.)
There are allegedly 20 unforgettable Jon & Kate moments, Entertainment Weekly says, but I can't name more than a few and those happened last night in one miserable episode, which has left me thinking, I'll admit it. It drew 9.8 million viewers, more than any other TLC episode ever, so clearly I'm not alone. I'm thinking mostly, why do I care about this family? And do I really care, or is it just the power of utter media bombardment and blog chatter? And perhaps more to the point, why do they want me to care about them (except for Jon, who after five years appears to have woken from his slumber and realized he doesn't want me to, apparently?) Is it all about the money? Were the birthday party kids real or were those paid extras?
Most importantly, what about the Plus 8? What about the children, Jon and Kate? They're so cute. They're so young. They seem very bright. They still seem to like you. Is this the point where you're filming their birthday parties while pointedly not speaking to each other when you decide that maybe that kind of interpersonal drama - that intimately involves them - ought not to be shared on national television? Because even though I'm not a parent, I'm 99.9 percent certain that's what I'd decide (although I'm also that much certain that I'd never allow my family's life to be broadcast for public consumption. Just not my thing.)
There is absolutely no reason for me to care, other than the horrible human draw to drama and real time train wrecks that makes some of us talk about people like this like we know them, like we're entitled to have an opinion about them and the choices they make as parents and family units. I have enought to do, what with my own family with its various issues and my ton of friends whose families I care about and it's just family family everywhere up in this joint. I didn't and still absolutely don't want to care about Kate Gosselin's (horrible, omg) hair or Jon's slack-jawed expression or the girl in the car (you've heard about the girl in the car, right? And the bodyguard? Sordid little story, the lot of it, really.) I don't want to have my head invaded by images of and stories about a reality tv family from Berks County, Pa. (Right up the road, a couple hundred miles, not even, maybe! I wonder where they live? See?) who had sextuplets and twins and put those six littlest babies on television lickety-split right out of the womb.
Even in this age of pre-fab reality, of people racing around the world for prizes and working out with trainers in insane fitness challenges, most of the shows are still about people living in houses and watching the drama unfold, let's face it, with a variety of strange twists thrown in. Jon and Kate aren't much different. Except now they're not doing well in the aftermath of her schlepping around the country to speaking engagements while he stays home and minds the farm. Now there is a huge big season premiere that interspersed awkward "KATE RULES THE WORLD" party footage (sample dialogue from Kate, pre-photograph: "Take your sunglasses off, Jon.") with very serious off-camera interviewer counselors.
But who really knows? The stories conflict. Tonight didn't answer a whole lot, especially for someone like me who's seen the show once, and never wanted to see it again until I, like probably thousands of unwitting souls, just wanted to see what the fuss was about.
With all I know about the cult of
