CHRIS QUINN: Too much reality in ‘Jon and Kate Plus 8’
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What happens when your family becomes your business? Apparently you get bodyguards, whine a lot, need time off, get a publicist and surround yourself with other family-destroying celebrity trappings.
Welcome to the most uncomfortable half hour of television you should never watch again, or “Jon and Kate Plus 8” Season 5: The Annihilation.
Whew! That was one heck of a season premiere. I have not seen so much hate broiling beneath the surface in one show since Mrs. Garrett secretly switched Blair’s name-brand shampoo with the less-expensive, but just as effective, generic.
As I watched Jon and Kate hurt each other with cold indifference for the full-hour season opener, I kept expecting to see the two draw steel and in the style of “Mr. & Mrs. Smith,” start blasting.
I was never a huge fan, but the kids are cute and I’ve always marveled at how these two parents managed to live and love surrounded by such a hectic pace. My wife really digs the series though, which means it’s usually what I was watching Monday nights at 8 p.m. on TLC. But not anymore, I think. The whole show and the way their family is breaking up for the viewing pleasure of a voyeuristic public is too harsh for me. I need less reality in my television.
It’s sad when money and fame rule people’s lives because the people and relationships that once seemed dear are now obstacles to what our minds consider success.
Maybe they should jump shows for a while to get some perspective. If they really want to see what it’s like for a family to be a business and not a family, they should hop on board one of the boats of “The Deadliest Catch.” That new season just began, and the outlooks of many of the family-affair crab boat operations are simple. Money is the bottom line; just make sure no one falls off the boat. And money being the bottom line is exactly what seems to be the message coming from “Jon & Kate Plus 8.”
But the Bering Sea is no place for eight little ones. So maybe while Jon and Kate thaw out their hearts on the frozen sea, they can leave their kids with a reality TV family that has kept celebrity and fame in its proper place (which is no place within the family), the Duggars! Those guys have so many kids (“18 Kids and Counting,” to be more specific), they probably would not even notice eight new ones.
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