Kate Gosselin in Spin Off Series, Jon Forced Off Air

Word broke today that TLC will re-launch its reality hit Jon & Kate Plus Eight in November. The new show comes in the wake of the messy split between Jon and Kate Gosselin, the Pennsylvania parents of eight children.  The new version of the show will focus on Kate Gosselin’s life as a single mom, and will be called Kate Plus Eight.

This is not a reality show, its a televised melodrama.  On a real reality show like on VH1, people neglected as children live out their fantasies on basic cable.  People with inferiority complexes clash with those that have superiority complexes and its  entertaining for 22 minutes.  With Jon & Kate Plus Eight these kids were practically born on TV and don’t have a say in the matter.  There are lots of large families all over America that don’t have television cameras crews documenting and editing their every move.  Eileen O’Neill, president and general manager of TLC, said in a statement. “The family has evolved and we are attempting to evolve with it; we feel that Kate’s journey really resonates with our viewers.”

Right.  Because Kate’s journey is just like so many other newly divorced single moms.  How will she juggle her demanding career as a television personality while paying attention to all those kids? How will she pay the bills?  It promises to be a real struggle in this economy.

Has it occurred to Jon or Kate or their handlers that maybe the marriage was doomed because of their “faux” fame.  Sure its odd to have eight kids, but its not impossible or unheard of.  America has an odd fascination with people who give birth.  Well some people.  The media won’t show up with a camera crew if you’re pumping out babies in a rural trailer park or in some blighted inner city.  It helps if you’ve had fertility treatments and are mildly telegenic. The Gosselin’s made their break on Discovery Health’s 2005 special, “Surviving Sextuplets and Twins” and then the follow up “Surviving Sextuplets and Twins: One Year Later.”   Then they moved to TLC with their regular series.

Like any decent reality program they needed some dramatic tension, so Jon went out and had an affair in April 2009.  Not the brightest move on his part.  Where is his agent?  “Umm, Jon your whole fifteen minutes of fame is predicated on you being a Dad.  Nobody cares about you outside of that.” After that bombshell, the couple decided to split.  This got them more than 10 million viewers when they announced it on the show.  That’s more or less when the show jumped the shark and audience is down to less than 2 million viewers now.  America has turned the channel and moved on.

Hopefully Jon and Kate will wake up and realize they’re not stars, role models, or even remotely interesting outside of the roles that were crafted for them by their show’s producers. More importantly, I hope that Cara, Mady, Alexis, Hannah, Aaden, Collin, Leah, and Joel have a trust fund for all therapy they’ll need later in life.  At least its all captured on DVD, that might help the kids and the psychologists sort out the mess their parents have made.