Jon and Kate Plus Eight

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Controversial TLC Reality Show about a family with eight kids. The series focused on the lives of Jon and Kate Gosselin, who have a pair of twins and a group of sextuplets (for those of you slow on the uptake, that's the "Plus Eight"). It chronicled their day-to-day lives.

It ran for four seasons before hell broke loose with the disintegrating marriage of the Gosselins, with accusations of adultery on both sides being tossed around. The scandal paid off for the show, leading to the fifth-season having record ratings as Americans turned in to see the trainwreck up close as Jon and Kate separated. The series was put on a hiatus, undergoing retooling as TLC wished to jettison the soon-to-be-divorced Jon from the show and rename it "Kate Plus Eight". Needless to say, Jon fired back with a cease and desist order towards production of the show, saying that it "has damaged the children's lives." Due to the controversy surrounding the show and Jon and Kate's divorce, it was canceled.

And even more recently, it was Uncanceled...sort of. A two-hour special and limited series, entitled Kate Plus Eight, showing how the family currently is doing, will air, and then a new series called Twist of Kate following Kate as she travels around the U.S., will soon follow.

Tropes used in Jon and Kate Plus Eight include:


  • Control Freak: Kate.
  • Crossover: Jon, the boys, and one of the twins attended a Phillies game; Kate+Eight went to Ace Of Cakes' bakery as a birthday surprise for Kate; Jon visited the Monster Garage dudes (TLC wouldn't let him keep the chopper); Emeril Lagasse visited the house to cook dinner during/after the divorce announcement episode.
    • Kate also appeared on Sarah Palin's Alaska, when the Palin family went camping and invited the Gosselins along. It wasn't a very long appearance, since she left before they were supposed to go home (despite the children having a blast).
  • Day in the Life
  • Design Student's Orgasm: Jon's Ed Hardy T-shirts.
  • Domestic Abuser: Kate persistently yelled at her husband Jon, belittled him, and repeatedly hit him. On camera. In addition, people who knew the Gosselin family said she kept him on a $5 a week budget, had invaded his office to scream at him in front of colleagues at work, and prevented him from attending his own family's funeral. Make of this what you will. According to Jon, she even pulled a Wounded Gazelle Gambit on the cops when she was having a tantrum and he wouldn't let her in the house.
  • Double Standard: People sympathized with Jon's situation under the abusive Kate... Until he manned up and got a divorce. Then the media turned him into a douchebag manbastard (admittedly, some of his behavior was suspect and didn't help) and the formerly demonized Kate was made sympathetic.
  • Downer Ending: The show was canceled amid Jon and Kate's divorce proceedings. When Kate told the twins about the divorce, one broke down and cried while the other was all "Yeah, I kinda figured." Ouch. The sextuplets' reaction was "Okay, when's lunch?", but they were five at that point.
  • Follow the Leader: Nineteen Kids and Counting and Table for 12, whose commercials played uncomfortably during Kate's tearful final interview and the final episode.
  • Genki Girl: A few of the children, but Alexis in particular was one of the loudest.
  • Good Girls Avoid Abortion: Kate refused a selective reduction.
  • Granola Girl: Kate insisted on an all-organic diet for the kids.
  • Hula and Luaus: Jon and Kate went to Hawaii to renew their vows (coincidentally the same place as The Little Couple). That was also a chance for Jon's Hawaiian relatives who couldn't attend the original wedding to celebrate.
  • Important Haircut: Inverted -- After the show finished Kate got hair extensions that made her look a lot like Sharon Stone.
  • Improbable Hairstyle: And yet, there it is. You know you've got it when there's a Halloween wig of your hairstyle and at least two pairs of news anchors (including Regis and Kelly) dress as you for Halloween.
  • Law of Inverse Fertility: Jon didn't want any more kids after the twins. When he agreed to try for one more, he got six. A Good Housekeeping article mentions that Kate wants to adopt another boy from Korea.
  • Money, Dear Boy: Why Jon agreed to continue filming, at least initially.
  • My Beloved Smother
  • Product Displacement: TLC has started blurring Jon's Ed Hardy shirts in newer episodes.
  • The Professor: Aaden.
  • Sibling Yin-Yang: The girls and the boys (the somewhat bossy girls took after their mother while the more laid-back boys took after their father)
  • Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: It started out as fairly ideal, but like all on-screen marriages, was Too Good to Last. An article in the LA Times pointed out that after the stress of "An American Family"'s filming added to the couple divorcing, you'd think people would know better about letting cameras into their homes.
  • Spin-Off: Twist Of Kate where she travels the country giving people advice. It is unknown who thought this was a good idea.
  • Team Mom:

Hannah: Iw'll take care of da kids!

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