Jon & Kate Plus 8 - My Take

I'm going to jump on the observation bandwagon and give my take on the Jon & Kate marriage woes.

I've been a fan of the show since the very beginning, starting with their very first hour long special "Surviving Sextuplets and Twins". I thought they were a cute family that wasn't play acting for the cameras.

It wasn't until the debut of their series that we got to see the overly organized and slightly neurotic Kate. But in all honesty, who wouldn't - at the very least - try to be that organized when you have that many kids running around. I have one and at times wish I could have her organizational skills. And with just one child, I am probably just as crazy in some aspects as Kate is in others. Who can fault her for that? She's got a lot on her plate.

As the series continued though, I started to find myself cringing when Kate would open her mouth. I would wonder why, with this great gift she had of staying home with her children to watch them grow and participate in their every day lives, she was too busy scrubbing bits of dust out from the inside of bookcases. And would the kids really drop dead if she served them a non organic lunch of pizza and frozen french fries? She could have found so many more ways to spend time with her children than to run off doing her own thing in the house, alone.

There were a lot of episodes in the following seasons that I wanted to jump through the tv and yell at her. When she picked up the habit of insulting her husband, I labeled her a real PITA and wondered why Jon stuck around. I certainly wouldn't want to put up with her BS. But then again, I also wouldn't be strapped with child support times eight if I hightailed it out of there...

Fast forward to the past month or so, with all the cheating rumors flying around and the pictures of him out late at night with college girls and I see everything in a very different light.

I watched the repeats TLC has been playing (and play them they have - every time you turn that channel on there's another repeat on). Am I the only one who sees Jon just sort of drifting around, not doing much? The "Twins Turn 3" episode was on the other night, where Jon and Kate's brother, Kevin, put together the carnival stands. Has anyone actually watched what Jon did? Kevin put together the stands, Kevin painted the stands, Aunt Jodi helped, Kate set up the yard, and Jon was... absent. Until the final product, that is. Then he was there telling the world just how tired he was.

Watch a couple of episodes with this in mind and there starts to be a pattern. Jon starts a project and then disappears. The family goes out and Jon wanders off, lost in his own little world. The kids are in a tizzy, running in five different directions and Kate has to scream at him to pay attention. It happens a lot in the show. No wonder Kate was neurotic and would yell at him.

Eventually the yelling changed though and it got ugly. It's one thing for a couple to be snippy with one another when they have the weight of eight kids and a hectic household on them. It's another when your wife is complaining about the way you breathe, right?

Look at it the other way though:

Have you ever been so upset with someone that you just going looking for something to complain about? Have you ever been so fed up with all the big things bothering you that the smallest thing sets you off?

Today's divorce rate is at 50%; I'm sure that more than a small handful of people have felt like this on one or more occasions. And I wonder if we haven't been watching the breakdown of a marriage for a very long time.

We'll never know if it was Kate's nagging that led Jon to stray. Or if it was Jon's lackadaisical attitude toward everything that led Kate to nag, which then led Jon to stray, which may have led Kate to stray.

Ultimately, we don't even know for sure if either of them cheated on the other. All we can do is play arm chair psychologist to a reality show. And if I were to hang a shingle out today and give my opinion, it is this:

I love the show but they've let it tear them apart. They are both at fault but not for the reasons everyone else thinks. They are both at fault for now seeing themselves through a camera lens. They've had their most annoying traits magnified - not for the world to see - but for each OTHER to see.

In a "regular" person's everyday life, annoying habits are centered in only that moment. If I do something to annoy my husband, it happens, we move on. For Jon & Kate, their annoying habits are captured, replayed, analyzed, talked about, played again for the world and then rehashed again when the couple has to experience the moment over and over. That can't be good for a relationship.

Keep the show going for years and years and what outcome did we all expect?

Let's face it though, we've all loved watching it play out. Whether it was because we enjoyed the show, we thought the kids were cute or we wanted to see what would happen next. I'm sure there will be record numbers tuning in for Monday's show, when they will release some more big news.

Till then, we can all just sit back and speculate.