Jon & Kate Plus 8 - The Final Season?

If you watched the March 23rd episode, J&K seemed to be about to address the rumours about their marital woes at the end of the season finale. Instead it was about the problems the couple are experiencing dealing with fame. Kate is handling it great (who knew?) and Jon is not dealing with it so well. I have my doubts about that. It can't be nice going out in public with 8 little kids you are trying to keep track of while people are undoubtedly calling them by names and reaching for them. But Kate says she loves it, so there you go.

I think it's probably the money she loves. Rumours of them earning in the mid to high 5 figures for each episode would certainly make the situation more bearable for me!

We've all watched this couple morph into very different people than they were 3 years ago. Their body language on the interview couch has been dismal for weeks now. They give love seats a bad name - sitting side by side, but never touching.

Jon is pretty difficult to read but he doesn't seem to be enjoying his kids as much as he used to. The episodes of him holding down the fort while Kate is away on business trips are pretty grim as evidenced by the recent “walk through the woods” (a.k. in fandom as the "Forced Deathmarch") that he dragged the kids out on. There was clearly no joy in mudville. He no longer seems to enjoy playing with the 'tups.

I think it was first obvious that things had changed with Kate during the puppy-buying episode. There were no family meals, the kids were eating while Jon & Kate each stood off at the side. Kate unveiled her new mod look when she stepped out of the van - long black coat, high heeled boots, etc. Not very mumsy like. Then she kept bellowing about how she had picked out "her" puppies. Also while she was chatting afterwards with the dog breeder, I remember thinking "Is she really flirting with him? Right in front of Jon???"

Could America's favorite family really be breaking up? Jon is probably secure in the knowledge that everyone who watches the show will understand why he left that shrew of a wife. What he isn’t counting on would be the backlash – people love those kids and don’t want to see them go through a divorce plus he'd be leaving Kate with 8 kids, aged 8 and under and that could make her more sympathetic.

Kate is not someone I’d want to divorce. And you can’t help feeling for those kids. How would they cope when Daddy is no longer “a part of their daily lives”? What do you think?

Reality TV

We spend a lot on our cable bill. I just can't bring myself to go back to basic cable, plus we don't go out much so ... what to do but pay up and enjoy ourselves? Over the last couple of years, daughter J & I have become addicted to Reality TV. One of our favorite shows is Jon and Kate Plus 8. Like the rest of America, we just love those kids.

Monday night we stayed up late to watch the start of the new season. At least it appeared to be the first show of the new season, but it looked old because of Kate’s hair which was short and red. She’s been growing it out lately, based on recent booksigning photos and those photos sure didn't match how she looked on this show. The network must have a ton of old footage that can be made into episodes but are limited by having to keep the kids around the same age and trying to match the parents evolving looks.

This episode was about making soup at home. I watched it carefully and don’t believe I heard Kate use her favorite word “organic” even once. She & Jon described some of the ingredients in her soups – broccoli & cheese in one and beef with an assortment of veggies in another. Once again I was amazed me at what sophisticated and adventurous palates her 8 kids have. When my 3 were growing up, they never cared for cheese-based soups or the squash or root vegetables that she named. She had two huge lobster-style pots on her stove and were cooking both soups at once which had to have taken forever! I also wondered at how many meals she’d be able to get out of that batch, since there are 10 in the family – she claimed that she’d be able to get 5 or 6 lunches out of it if she included grilled cheese sandwiches. This definitely made it worth all that effort!

Kudos to Kate in this episode for keeping her cool when her stovetop exploded and she had to get a entirely new stove. Trust me, non-working appliances are a biggie in the Mom stress-o-meter level counter. It was always the one thing that threw me as a single parent - the one hassle I couldn’t just shrug off even back when money wasn't so hard to come by.

The kids were jumping on a Little Tyke inflatable bouncy toy. I saw something like that at Sam’s Club recently and thought it would be a great thing for the Gosselins to have since they have so many kids of the same age. Lunch time brought about the oddest part of the episode - watching six 4 year old children sitting in high chairs and wearing bibs ... all righty then!

During lunch they announced that they would be moving soon. Kudos to little Alexis, the oldest of the septuplets, for figuring out how to get her own bedroom. Evidentally she’s “disruptive” and so sleeps on her own and was informed that this arrangement would continue in the new house. Yup, she scored a major coup in that family!