Respect Authority

It’s unfortunate that this post will come directly after the preceding one, but rest assured – Respect Authority is a long way’s off from becoming a blog about Jon & Kate Plus 8. Primarily because I never intend to watch the show again.

Indeed, out of some bizarre loyalty to the reality television genre, and certainly no small amount of schadenfreude, I ended up watching last night’s much-anticipated episode of J&K, during which the couple announced their equally expected and imminent divorce. Or separation. Or whatever it is when mommy and daddy don’t love each other anymore but of course they love you and none of it is your fault—except the part where you took over their lives and demanded nonstop attention, thereby tearing apart the very fabric of their relationship and making it difficult, if not impossible, for them to continue having a normal existence.

This is the thing about Jon & Kate—which, outside of the occasional clip on The Soup, I haven’t actually seen before: it’s primarily about children, and it’s fairly boring. And these, my friends, are two very good reasons why I plan to never catch another episode, but also spent 20 minutes last night in reality-induced tears.

I started watching with the intention of writing a scathing “review” today—about the show, about what it means for where reality TV is headed, about the dangers and ills of exploiting children to make a quick buck. I also had tentative plans to make fun of Kate’s hair. But after sitting through an entire hour of it, the awkward interviews, the candid footage of the kids playing, the surprisingly raw, yet consistently cryptic, confessions of both Jon and Kate, I’m mostly just sad. My notes, which started with things like “kids ruin lives” and “Jon seems like he’s high on painkillers,” grew into whimsical paragraphs about the strain of marriage, the tragedy of falling out of love, the process of divorce.

Ultimately, Jon & Kate, despite all of the criticism against it, is surprisingly real. The parents, like most parents, are undoubtedly flawed: Kate makes the sort of overbearing passive aggressive comments with which all women are more than familiar, and Jon’s apathy towards pretty much everything is borderline infuriating. They talk nonstop about their love for the children, and not once in the show did I doubt it, but can’t resist throwing a few barbs at one another in the process. They attempt to be vague when it comes to the ins and outs of their own relationship, but reveal more in body language, word choice and palpable silences than they ever would by screaming at one another. But neither of them, much to my surprise, is particularly atrocious as a human being. Their children, and I say this with the dozens of reality show offspring I’ve seen through shows on TLC, Bravo and the like in mind, are well-behaved and endearing. And clueless.

What separates this show from a great deal of reality fare is its attention to itself—everyone talks to the cameramen directly, both in candid moments as well as during confessional interviews. The interviews themselves include direct questions, and neither Jon nor Kate makes any effort to pretend they’re not being filmed 24 hours a day—the paparazzi play a significant role in their on-screen decision to build the kids’ playhouses deep in their backyard. Ultimately, their willingness to disclose how absolutely strange it is to be on a show about your life makes the show itself seem more sincere, and when last night’s episode played back clips from the first season, nearly five years ago at this point, it becomes clear that despite the infighting and drama of the last six months, Jon & Kate is actually a multi-year record of their kids’ childhood, probably the kind of thing many a family would actually love to have on record.

Sure, the unavoidable melodrama of divorce—the scheduling woes and small conflicts and unavoidable arguments—threaten to make this season a devolution into typical reality nonsense, which actually wouldn’t matter if it weren’t for those damn eight children. It’s also another reason I don’t plan to watch future episodes—as a child of divorce, the scenery is surprisingly familiar. Mom and Dad arguing, Mom and Dad pretending to get along but secretly arguing, Mom and Dad telling different versions of the same story, Mom and Dad expecting you to take sides, Mom and Dad spending as much time in separate rooms as possible. It’s fortunate that at this point, the J&K kids are too young to understand what’s happening, and watching them try to wrap their minds around it is something I absolutely don’t want to witness, but for the other seven bajillion children who have seen their parents do this multi-year dance, the show resonates. It’s like the time your mom recorded Christmas morning to preserve it for all eternity, and in watching the video years later, you realize how tense and awkward the entire thing was. Comments that seemed innocuous, or simply “grown-up talk,” reveal themselves as subdued fights, body language sharpens, emotions are obvious.

One could argue, and many have, that Jon and Kate should realize that the next few years will be exceedingly difficult, even without a swarm of television cameras. But despite a few underhanded remarks, both parents conduct themselves with a relative degree of poise, certainly more than I think I would if every moment of my life were being recorded and a dozen photographers had set up shop on my front lawn. There’s also the rather undeniable fact that they have eight children, and the income from TLC is probably something close to a necessity.

But if Jon & Kate Plus 8 maintains its current ratio of “drama time” to “kid time,” it stands to reason that it will continue being at least 50% about the day-to-day of raising a large family, of organizing schedules, cleaning up messes, quelling sibling rivalries. For all the attention to Jon and Kate, the show itself still seems like a really long Bounty commercial—kids do things, parents discuss kids doing things, and the camera takes it all down. Despite the cameras and tabloid fodder and I guess blog posts like these, I find myself kind of hopeful that both Jon and Kate are willing to (and capable of) maintaining the same level of dignity, and continue to bore those of us who couldn’t care less whether Junior’s playhouse looks like a pirate ship or a teepee.