Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
‘Kate Plus Eight’ keeps on keeping on
TLC is known for giving viewers a look into the lives of unusual people and families. A common sight upon tuning in to the cabler is that of one super large family or another, be it the Willises, the Browns or the Duggars (well, not the latter anymore, thanks to eldest son Josh’s big fat scandals).
Compared to these families, all of which have a dozen offspring or more, the Gosselin kids seem like a perfectly manageable brood of eight. “Kate Plus Eight” has had its fair share of behind-the-scenes drama over the years, but the series has nevertheless returned for a fourth season. A new episode airs Tuesday, Dec. 22, on TLC.
Back when “Kate Plus Eight” was still “Jon and Kate Plus Eight,” the show enjoyed massive popularity and quickly became one of the network’s highest-rated shows. The fifth season — the last one before the couple’s split — premiered to a whopping 9.8 million viewers.
The Gosselin children are twins Cara and Mady, now 15, and sextuplets Alexis, Hannah, Aaden, Collin, Leah and Joel, age 11. They’ve lived their lives in the spotlight; what began as two one-hour specials in 2006 and 2007 became a regular series chronicling the everyday lives of the Gosselins, and the challenges faced in rearing such a large brood.
The show’s consistently high ratings dropped significantly after Jon and Kate’s 2009 announcement, midway through the fifth season, that they’d be ending their 10-year marriage, and Kate failed to regain the heavy viewership she and Jon enjoyed as a couple. Last year, for instance, Kate’s third solo season — which marked the family’s return after a three-year hiatus — drew just 1.8 million viewers for its premiere episode in January.
It’s popular opinion that Kate, to be blunt, isn’t terribly likable. Neither is Jon, for that matter, but somehow their shortcomings and less-than-admirable qualities made for good entertainment when they had each other to play off of. As Hitfix columnist Liane Bonin Starr wrote during “Kate Plus Eight’s” lukewarm second season: “Despite Kate’s dogged attempts to run the household [in “Jon and Kate Plus Eight”] the way Mussolini ran the trains, the kids were small and adorable chaos monsters, Jon put the passive in passive aggressive, and it was easy to vacillate between finding the woman completely intolerable and understanding how eight kids and a weenie husband could make you that way.”
The spray-tanned, nip/tucked woman who flitted off to Mexico for her 40th birthday on TLC’s dime seems to have lost her relatability as a harried mother, and many viewers feel that Jon’s absence is notable even three full seasons later.
One could argue, however, that the show is by no means worse, it’s just different. After all, it’s not as if most of us can relate to the Kardashians (many people have lessthan-nice things to say about that family, too), yet their series still has a ravenous following. And let’s be honest — one certainly doesn’t need to be likable to be entertaining.
In any case, with two teenagers in the house and her toe back in the dating pool, Kate has a whole new set of challenges at her feet, and she maintains that, aesthetic differences aside, she’s still the same person we’ve been watching all these years.
“My goals haven’t changed in terms of raising my kids,” she said in a “Kate Plus Eight” special that aired in June. “My ideas haven’t changed, my parenting hasn’t changed — I’m just doing it alone now.”
Indeed, since the divorce, the show’s focus has zeroed in on Kate as a single mother raising the kids on her own. Her venture back onto the dating scene plays a role this season, with an early episode including dinner and a helicopter ride over Central Park, complete with the age-old anxieties of how to end a first date. She’s also now parenting two teenage girls, which makes for an entirely new set of challenges that would be present regardless of her relationship status. However Kate may be painted in the tabloids, it shouldn’t be forgotten that she’s still a woman rearing eight kids — surely not something with which her critics have a lick of experience.
Nor is she ignorant to those criticisms, though one she’s been keen to shoot down is the idea that being part of the show has had any kind of negative effect on her kids’ lives. In a visit to “Today” last year with twins Cara and Mady, the girls were asked if people had the wrong impression of their family.
“I wouldn’t say wrong, I would just say not the full story,” Mady said. “A lot of people think that filming our show has damaged us, but it’s only really helped.”
It’s been nine years since the Gosselins made their first appearance on TV. Viewers have watched the kids grow up, and while the show may not have the same flavor it had in the beginning, change doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Catch a new episode of “Kate Plus Eight” Tuesday, Dec. 22, on TLC.