LAST EDITED ON 05-31-09 AT 04:17 PM (EST)For those of you who missed the hour-long episode that opened of "Jon & Kate Plus 8" Season 5, including the kids' birthday party and the separate confessionals, here is a summary of the episode as I remember it.
The show opens with separate confessionals of Jon and Kate. Kate looks as if she's just come from the makeup and clothing departments of Jon & Kate, Inc., with both her hair and clothes as perfect as they could be. We start with her.
Kate: I have a lot of anger right now. This isn't the life we'd planned for. I should already have my own daytime talk show, darn it!
In his scenes, John is unshaven and looks as if he could have been hanging at Delta House with Bluto, Flounder and D-Day, although he sounds more like the soft-spoken Pinto. He has his feet up on the table in best rebellious youth style. For the next few minutes, the scenes are intercut.
Jon: Things have gotten out of hand. The publicity is ridiculous. I can't even go out and pick up co-eds without being followed by a photographer.
Kate: I blame Jon for everything. I shouldn't have to go through all this. The photographers are here just because of Jon.
Jon: We just thought we'd put our lives on TV and that would be it. Little did we know that TV would become our jobs. Now I finally know what Ozzie and Harriet did during the day.
Kate: M-A-R-T-Y-R. That's me. Make sure you spell it right.
Jon: I quit my job two years ago to stay home with the kids full-time. I love my kids. But that just isn't the way I envisioned my life turning out.
Kate: Everything has gone exactly the way I planned it. I've become glamorous. We're rich. I'm an author that people love and respect. Why is Jon doing this to me? If I didn't tell him what to do, he'd forget to breathe. Maybe that's not such a bad idea.
Jon: At some point our kids are going to Google us. I have to be prepared to defend my choice to put us on television, as well as my taste in bimbos, to them. I'm not sure what I'm going to tell them. Maybe I'll plead temporary insanity.
Kate: I still feel a lot of anger. It's all directed at Jon. The most important thing was for us to look like a normal family. That's all our fans knew. Now they want to see if I'm holding hands with my bodyguard. It's all Jon's fault. He's jealous of my success. And I had the sense to take up with someone that worked for me, so I can tell him what to do, and he has to do it. Jon doesn't have the foresight for that.
Jon: People will say anything. If I gave you $20,000, you might say anything. Heck, for just a little more than that, I've pretended that we're a real family for years.
Kate: In the early days, Jon was always better with our fans. Maybe he wouldn't be so jealous if he were the one being adored by millions of book-lovers across the country. But now he acts as if he doesn't want to have anything more to do with the show or with the fans. It's just strange. This isn't the person I married.
<Intercut scene at book signing:
Little girl: I loved the episode where you got dogs.
Kate: You want them? If it's OK with your mother, you can have them.
Little girl: <Laughs nervously.>
Mom (standing nearby): <Laughs nervously.>
Kate: Really. Come take them. They remind me of Jon. They've got to go.>
Kate: People appreciate that kind of candor at book signings. I'm not sure that they understand that I'm made of sugar and spice and everything nice, but I make sure they do.
Interviewer: Jon, do you think things would be different if you were writing the books and Kate was staying at home?
Jon: I can't write. I've also been told that I don't breathe right, either.
Kate (yelling offscreen): ARE YOU JUST GOING TO SIT THERE WHILE HE INSULTS ME LIKE THAT? I'M THE STAR HERE! YOU ALL WORK FOR ME! DO MY BIDDING, OR YOU'RE FIRED!
Kate: Jon keeps going on about how hard it is to be alone with the kids all the time. I don't know what he's complaining about. He has help. He has help all the time. I don't have help out there on the book tours. And when my books are being ghostwritten, I don't have any help other than the ghostwriter. But Jon is surrounded by help. Of course, a few people aren't welcome here any more. Like my brother and his wife. Or any other member of my family. Or anyone else who doesn't think the world revolves around me. But Jon should be used to that by now. I told him to suck it up and get with the program. And what does he do? You know he didn't get that hair transplant because he wanted to look better for me.
Interviewer: Is this where I ask them if they still live in the same house?
Producer: No. You can ask them that during Season 6.
Interviewer: But there won't be a Season 6. That's why we doubled the episode order for Season 5 from 20 to 40.
Producer: Precisely.
Kate: We're just not the same people that we were when the show started. I've changed for the better. Jon hasn't. That's why I'm the star.
Jon: I'm sorry to my family.
Interviewer: What are you sorry for?
Jon: I think everybody knows.
Interviewer: No. Are you sorry for going out with another woman or just for being caught?
Jon: I'm sorry for putting them on TV, OK? And then for putting them in the tabloids. I never even bought a tabloid until there was a story about me in one. I wouldn't buy another one.
Interviewer: Why not?
Jon: Because it made me out to be a villain. If I want to hear someone making me out to be a villain, I just have to stay home and listen to Kate.
Kate: When you're gone from home for a long time, the kids start to forget you. They started calling me by the babysitter's name. I told them that it hurts my feelings when they say that. Don't they understand that all I do is sweat and toil for the family and just a smidgen of personal glory?
Jon: I hate our life.
Kate: I love our life. OCTOMOM, EAT YOUR HEART OUT!
Then we start the main part of the show, the sextuplets' fifth birthday party.
Kate: I have to do this all by myself. Jon wants a weekend off.
Interviewer: Didn't you say that Jon always had help? Don't you have help too?
Kate: What part of "martyr" don't you understand? You know, you can be replaced!
Kate rounds the kids up in the "Eightmobile", a modified stretch van in basic black, and takes them to the party store in town. Outside the store are a collection of paparazzi.
Kate: I won't let the children call them paparazzi. I make them call them the "pee people" so they don't sound so pretentious.
Right, because it's so much less pretentious for the kids to have to explain that, when they say the "pee people", they mean "the photographers who follow us around and take pictures of our every move" than it is just to say "paparazzi".
Kate: Why don't hey follow some other mom around and take pictures of her?
Well, probably because no other mom in town has a full-time camera crew that follows her around, Kate. Or may be making out with her employee/bodyguard. Hey, you can't guard Kate's body any closer than when you're fondling it. But unlike your camera crew, Kate, the paparazzi print whatever pictures people want to see, not just the ones you tell them they have been permitted to use.
Apparently, Kate hasn't permitted the camera crew to film her desperate attempt to curry favor with the kids by buying them whatever they want from the party store, even though the kids have said that all they want is a "bouncy party".
Kate: The kids told me what kind of party they wanted. But that doesn't mean that I won't get to do things that I want to do, on TLC's nickel.
The boys are all dressed alike, and the girls are all dressed alike. Sure helps the sense of identity to be dressed exactly like your siblings. However, the boys keep beating on each other.
Jon: I call them the Three Stooges because they wail on each other and then go back to having fun, just like cartoon violence.
<TO BE CONTINUED.>
Email this topic to a friend
Printer-friendly version of this topic
Bookmark this topic (Registered users only)
