[singlepic id=584 w=750 h=750 float=center]
Jon, try to stay awake while the mother of your children is speaking.
Dear Jon & Kate:
That’s right, I’ve come out of my self-imposed retirement from dealing with you two in order to address the recent season 5 premiere. Maligned as a “pity party” by critics, and under scrutiny for the faking of flash bulbs on video cameras by the production team (video cameras have flash bulbs?!), the episode was apparently second only to the finale of American Idol in attracting over 9.8 million viewers. Zounds! Hat-tip to you two. I’m not sure that attaching a price tag to your family’s health and well-being is the best recipe for long-term success, but you chose that path long ago, so who am I to judge?
You might want to read this blog post on two separate browsers, on two separate computers, to match your two separate couches and two separate lives. Wait. Are your lives separate now? Because last night’s episode wasn’t exactly clear on that point. What was clear is that you guys don’t want to sit next to each other if you can avoid it. And I totally understand that, because both of you are total assholes. No need to explain: you’re preaching to the choir.
So maybe you, Jon, could read read the post and then summarize the salient points on a Post-It®, and then leave it somewhere in your giant farmhouse mansion for Kate to find when she returns from one of her speaking trips. Because I get the feeling you guys aren’t really communicating directly these days. It seems like you don’t want to even sit on the same loveseat anymore, and though I knew that loveseat was trouble months ago, it still saddens me to see it.
I’ll start with you, Jon, since it seems like Kate’s got a lot going on right now. (Well, doesn’t she always?) But regardless. Strangely enough, I find that I’m predisposed to side with you, given the fact that I spent all of season 3 complaining about how annoying your wife is, and then after that I had to stop watching your damn show because I suspected it was fake and staged, and because you were either not getting along or making a big show of getting along, and I couldn’t stand it anymore. The good news is: I was right. It was fake and staged.
But let me make this clear, Jon: there is nothing that can absolve you from the responsibility of committing adultery. No, not even being married to a moneygrubbing shrew will get you out of this one. And even if what Kate’s brother said is true, that Kate told you that she wanted a divorce long before you ever got involved with the barfly 23-year-old, there is nothing that can explain away the beer bongs, my friend. You are the father of eight children. I don’t want to hear any sob stories about not having your crazy twenties and being left at home with eight kids and a nanny.
[singlepic id=585 w=750 h=750 float=center]
Jon, are you drunk here? Or just hungover?
To add insult to injury, Jon, you looked like you were tanked during the first interview scene of last night’s episode. Mr. Right-Click and I went back and forth on this, debating whether your slurred speech and flushed face might be the effect of tranquilizers, which I reasoned you could be on legitimately, what with the stress you’ve been under lately. But, as Mr. Right-Click pointed out, in the later interviews you are much more cognizant and on-the-ball, and you appear completely out of it in those early takes.
Egads man, if you want to maintain any credibility, get off the sauce. Or at least start learning to hide your drinking better. You’re making the rest of us alcoholics look bad.
[singlepic id=586 w=750 h=750 float=center]
Kate, you haven’t really changed, I’ll give you that.
And Kate, where to go with you. I will say that you’ve been consistent throughout the series. Sure, you’ve been made over and look much more Hollywood now than a few years ago, even if the rest of us grew out our Sliding Doors haircuts ten years ago. But listen, pretending to be interested in staying married to your husband for the benefit of the cameras is not doing you or your children any favors. We don’t feel sorry for you. We don’t listen to your complaints that you never signed up for this. Yes, you did. And maybe you signed up for it because you needed the money at the time, but if you had any kind of moral objection to it, you would have walked away by now. Surely you have enough now to call it quits, as Jon seemed to want to do at the end of last season. But you didn’t. You kept going, you opted for the bigger mortgage, and with all of your product placements and speaking deals, I’m just not buying that you have to do it for your kids anymore. You like it. So fess up.
I’m going to have to say goodbye to the two of you now. I’ve been convinced that you’re both horrible people for a while now, even if I was in love with your kids for the first few seasons and willing to look beyond the glaring character flaws that the two of you exhibit. Maybe you didn’t set out to sell your kids out, maybe it was a decision made because of financial need. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt on that point. But the time to stop selling their childhoods has long since passed, and I think it’s time the two of you start to act like responsible adults.
TWEET THIS
