by Margaret Merrill

Created on: October 23, 2009

Through the use of eight young children over the last five years, TLC has kept many viewer entertained with some very cute childish antics, and other fun everyday activities. What makes this show, Jon and Kate Plus 8, different? Not that there are eight children in the family-there are quite a number of those in the United States. The biggest difference is the twins, then the sextuplets born to Jon and Kate Gosselin-after the use of in vitro fertilization.

Jon originally started out as an IT worker, and Kate a nurse, at the beginning of the show, when the kids were very little. As time went on though, Kate gave up her job to become a stay at home mom. Focusing on the kids seemed to be her priority, while Jon went to work. Each milestone, including potty training, was duly documented by Kate and the TLC crew.

Field trips to many different places-zoos, plays, being on Oprah, Disney and a beef farm to pick up their organic beef-all made for interesting episodes. It is challenging with one, or even two little ones when they decide to go into meltdown mode-imagine six at one time! Or the torture of having to make potty runs twelve times in an hour because of potty training-the patience that the Gosselins had to have! Seeing that on television was sometimes quite funny, other times very sad.

Involving Kate's brother for a while, and some of their good family friends on the family outings made the show all that much more real, more homey even. Jon started to work from home, seemingly in an effort to help Kate out more. After a while though, those other important people seemed to have disappeared, and it wasn't apparent at first, but the children's milestones kept on coming. Birthday parties that were planned down to a T, trips to see American Girl and a trip for all of them to the dentist. TLC kept the fun coming.

Jon and Kate renewed their wedding vows during the very early part of the fourth season, which was very sweet and romantic to see. They have always bickered on camera, and during the fourth season, it was obviously worse. This was upsetting to many viewers, for two reasons. One reason was because of the type of show that Jon & Kate Plus 8 is-a family show with eight little kids on it. And the second reason is that those little children will be, and are, so heavily influenced by their parents' actions, seeing Jon and Kate fight like cats is not good for them.

Discontent between Jon and Kate became more visible when they started doing interviews completely

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