Recap: DC Cupcakes Visit--8/7/11

Coming up on Kate Plus 8, it’s a two for one sale on child exploitation. Otherwise known as cross promotion. Mady and Cara just happen to love the TLC show DC Cupcakes, so Kate decided to go exploit them over there.

This cupcake trend, I don’t know, the focus seems to be more on making an amazing-looking cupcake, jacking up the price several dollars of course, and very little time seems to be spent on how it actually tastes. Me, I could care less how it looks, I want to know if I will enjoy eating it. And so far the answer ranges from “not really” to “please pass me a napkin so I can politely spit this out” (that was the “peanut butter“ one that tasted like rancid cotton). When I can buy a cupcake mix and frosting for under five bucks at the grocery store and make an entire dozen that taste great, I become less interested in all those little shops popping up everywhere with the cutsie names like Sprinkles or Crumbs or, ugh, Hotcakes. A Google map of my city showing all the cupcake shops looks rather like it’s a map of all the fast food joints. There really cannot be this many cupcake places! Oh, but there is.

Anyway, obviously not my thing, but hey, if Mady and Cara love ‘em and if they must be filmed, why not do something they actually want to do for a change? They also get to take along two friends, whom I won’t name since I think there are enough exploited kids to go around already. I question any parent who would allow their child to take part in this exploitation, but at least the girls’ mother was permitted to come along and observe.

The District of Columbia requires theatrical permits for minors working in television programs. They are issued by the Board of Education. They are unclear whether reality show kids are included in all these regulations, but these shows are still a television program, are they not? Who knows if TLC bothered to get permits for these four minors, I hope they did. Washington D.C.’s child labor laws are nothing to write home about. Performers between the ages of 7 and 14 can work up until 11:30 at night. Very similar to P.A. Why a seven year old should be up that late working is beyond me. Although take note, TLC. Violation of these regulations could result in jail time. Hope you saved your Chance card!

Because the children are being raised like mini rap stars, they can’t just drive up to DC Cupcakes in the family 2008 Toyota like everybody else and do what everybody else has to do--spend a good 15 minutes searching for parking in Georgetown. No, they have to get chauffeured up in a sleek limo. Did they take a limo all the way from PA? Good grief.

I’ve been to Georgetown several times, it’s a pristine little neighborhood and I had friends who went to the great university there and loved it. But unlike most of D.C. you might want to see, there is no metro stop (by design, I believe), so you either cab it or drive. And there is never anywhere to park. You can even see from this episode the streets are absolutely packed with parallel parked cars. The one flaw to a really wonderful and safe area.

The DC Cupcakes owners Sophie and Katherine, who apparently are sisters, are politely excited that there is going to be a crossover with another pair of TLC sisters. In the latest attempt to try to make these mind-numbing episodes slightly more interesting, there are these little factoids that keep popping up and blocking the left corner of my screen. Such as, the twins like chocolate cupcakes. Astonishing. But better still would be little factoids about Kate. Maybe like: Not-a-boob-job: $16,000. Family members estranged: 27. Interesting stuff like that.

The cupcake ladies get the four girls involved right away and are good with them. Kate helps out a little too, and ugh, she only has one glove on and is wagging her long straw hair right over all the cupcakes! A blogger here emailed DC about these frightening unsanitary conditions and DC’s reply I guess was kind of like, uh, um, well this was a special case. We shoulda known. Kate is a narcissist. They always demand, and often get, special treatment.

Pardon me, triple exploitation! Not only are the twins being exploited for both DC Cupcakes and Kate Plus 8, but the little kids are home with Ashley getting the crap filmed out of them without a parent present on set again. In some states this is illegal, but sadly, PA isn’t one of them. Yet. Again I ask Kate, how can she possibly know that all of this filming is good for her children if she’s not even in the same state to monitor it? Kate really is clever. Why just leave the kids home to rot, might as well make some money off them. Like making sure you put your cash in an interest-bearing account.

Ashley sets up “summer games“ activities, boys versus girls, because their entire lives they‘ve been groomed that everything is boys against the girls. Potato sack races and cute stuff like that. Ashley is so good with them, I hope she remains a part of their lives. The very idea of her possibly leaving makes my heart just ache for those kids. I remain so baffled that someone who is probably a 21-year-old kid could have such insight into what these little ones really want and need. And yet their own 36-year-old mother who birthed them ….. Wait, what is Hanna wearing on the couch?! She’s got on some giant pair of black glasses. I hate to say it, but these kids have learned that the wilder and crazier you act, the better. Ashley says the boys are sore losers. Wonder what camping trip they learned that attitude from. Yikes, Collin shoves Joel so hard he falls over. Collin was expelled from school, and here we are a year later. Again, could Kate please explain how all this filming is helping this poor kid?

Perpetually happy

Back at DC Cupcakes, Sophie the co-owner reminds me of one of those dogs who is always smiling. She is so happy and cheerful. Wow, people still say “da bomb”? I think Sophie is perhaps the only person left in the nation's capital who can pull that off. Peanut butter icing is Kate’s “favoritest.” Oh good God.

Everybody else is working. Kate is slurping. Slurping up bits of frosting off cupcakes, directly out of mixing bowls, out of a cup, pouring some into a child's mouth directly from the pastry bag. Could she be anymore annoying? It kind of reminds me of when she was eating off Jon’s plate at the restaurant. Keep your paws to yourself, and on your own food! Oh, by the way? Kate is totally the type you catch drinking the milk directly out of the milk carton and putting it back. She has the manners of a college freshman guy.

Commercials, and I just saw a promo for upcoming episodes. “I would die for these kids, but I can’t spend one more moment with her,” Ashley says tearfully as she kisses the kids goodbye. I think she would indeed die for these kids, she has been very invested in them for years and she’s a nice girl with a good heart and likely one of the only sincere adults these kids have left. I don’t care if she was talking about Kate or Jamie or her pet lizard, this has got to be one of the most disgusting things I have ever in my life seen a network do to a family--filming every last second of a departure of a child’s beloved nanny. Where the hell was Kate to put a stop to this? Because it sure looks to me like she was standing right there just letting it all be filmed. TLC has sunk to the lowest of lows with this one. I admit I did not like Ashley for the longest time, but lately she’s been growing on me and I think she really does put these kids first. I won’t go on about this right now because I’m sure I’ll have a lot more to say when I recap that one later.

We’re back. Um, okay, we’re taping cupcakes to headbands and putting them on. I just….don’t….get the fun of this stuff. Maybe I’m too much of a tomboy? Or an overpriced trendy cupcake hater? Back at the house, soccer. Event number six? I thought I’ve only seen two so far. Interesting choice of music, TLC, a Spanish-influenced “Ole” thing. Why, because it’s soccer and Spaniards love their futbol? How cliché of them. I went to my first professional soccer game last month and can I just say that leaving the game with a tie of 0-0 is the most unsatisfying feeling in the world? It’s sort of anti-American not to designate a clear loser. I see why winning-losing/good guy/bad guy obsessed Americans just never got on board with this sport. Hannah just mocked Joel on the couch, imitating him when he was trying to explain the soccer game. I don’t like that at all. This is the problem with no parent there to correct a child behaving like that. It’s a drag enough to have to do all these couch interviews, now Joel gets to be mocked by his sister too?

Ha, typical, Kate messed up some guy’s order. She was probably too busy sucking on a pastry bag to pay attention. It’s her new boxed wine. She goes out to give the guy, who is working very hard to be patient, the correct order, and on the couch is going on about how accidents happen and you just have to go with it. This from the same woman who wrapped her counter in a garbage bag like she was expecting it to catch an STD from her kids and declared that if any of the children spilled anything they would get down on the floor and pick up every single crumb. So I get it, Kate can cause all the accidents she wants, but if anyone else makes a misstep they are instantly done. Kate claims she loved interacting with (read: accosting) the customers. I’m not getting that the feeling was mutual.

Is it Georgetown cupcakes or DC cupcakes? That’s two entirely different names. I don‘t care enough to try to figure this out. Sophie and Katherine rave about how creative the girls are. I love adults that just sort of accept a child’s contributions for what they are and don’t say annoying stuff like “how about a little more blue here, or a bit more sprinkles there?” Why is it that the most supportive adults in the children’s lives are always complete strangers? By the way, the kids have also learned if it’s free, take as much as you possibly can. It’s a bit embarrassing to hear them explain that the girls basically made as much cupcakes as they could to take home, upwards of three dozen a piece. With these kind of cupcakes, that‘s a bill in the hundreds of dollars! Did no one ever say to them, when someone offers you a cookie, take only one? Maybe a dozen cupcakes each is reasonable, but three dozen??? You’ll get sick before you eat them all. This cupcake thing is just getting, well …. tacky. Uh oh, Sophie and Katherine are going on a bit too much about how awesome the girls are and not enough about Kate. Any moment now Kate is going to have to make a scene to ensure the attention gets back to her. And three….two…..one:

“Who’s that guy standing over there?” Kate demands.

The camera pans across the street and there is an absolute dead-ringer for Steve waiting to cross the street. The twins and their friends look kind of disinterested in this spectacle as Kate flags down her pimp, Steve, snapping at him to go pull his doppelganger off the street. You can’t miss him, rat claws, he looks just like you! Kate brings out a cupcake to Steve 2.0, and it’s rather like we’re back in time and it’s seventh grade and you’re trying to tell a boy you like him so you give him your Cheetos. It’s all very awkward, and gets even more awkward when the guy wants a gluten-free one! Ha!

Wouldn’t you know it, they have gluten free cupcakes for Chad, which Kate bestows on him. “Do you know who gave you that cupcake?” a producer asked.

Chad is like, uh, no?

“Kate Gosselin,” the producer says, as if she just told him, Barack Obama, or Jesse Jackson, or Princess Diana.

“Okkkkay, so she’s the owner of the, uh, the baker?” the guy stutters, clueless. Butcher? Baker? Candlestick maker? Nope, still don't know who the hell she is. A little help here please. I really love this little part, because it's so representative of reality. Most folks of which? Are oblivious to one woman's deep-fried, skanky heeled quest to take over the world on the backs of her children.

Of course Kate assures us this did not bother her at all that he didn't know her. Just like that yeast infection did not itch at all, right Kate? Well, no matter, as Kate wants nothing to do with someone broken like him anyway, she has enough people to feed at home she says. I hate how all the adults are giggling and encouraging all this. Did anyone look at the kids? Because they are not amused.

Back at the Dionne compound, tug of war. The boys are losing pretty much every event, and the boys are starting to get frustrated. Some of the kids have lost their front teeth. I cannot believe we’ve been filming these kids long enough to see them lose teeth. They were babies who couldn’t even talk for pity sake when they first graced our screens.

The kids pass out their cupcakes to random strangers. Eh, it’s one thing to wag hair over your own cupcakes, but should you really be passing them out to others?

They’re a great group of kids, Katherine says. Of course they are, Katherine. Try telling Kate that.

Oh, wow, the kids thanked Kate “two billion” times for taking them here! Once again, we never see any of this alleged gratitude on camera. All I saw were kids kind of over Kate making an embarrassing spectacle of herself. And once again, shouldn’t Kate actually thank the kids instead? They thanked Kate for what? TLC set this trip up most likely, it was their shows and they wanted to cross-promote. If it were Kate’s idea, she would have been sure to tell us. Kate did nothing. All Kate did was steal frosting out of the mixing bowl, screw up some orders, and snap her fingers at her pimp to go bring over his broken twin.

They finally leave and pile into the limo with so many bags of cupcakes it looks like the Beverly Hills shopping montage in Pretty Woman. Embarrassing. They head to Annapolis and meet up with Jon’s aunt and uncle. Kate tearfully explains that it means a lot to her that the divorce didn’t divide them. I don’t think Kate understands that, especially two years into a divorce, most well-grounded, secure people who put kids first are able to put any kind of divorce behind them and be there for the kids. They never ceased to be their great-nieces and nephews just because Kate didn’t like that Jon wanted the exploitation to stop and filed for divorce from him. It is Kate who has let the divorce cause division in the family, not other relatives. Other people have commented how sort of sad Kate looked when she asked if they had seen Jon. It is kind of sad to see her look like that. Deep down? This woman is terribly unhappy, she really is. Deep down, I think she knows the divorce did not make her life better, it made it worse. She doesn’t quite get why Jon seems so happy with “what little” he has. She doesn’t understand why, even though she has everything you could need or want, she isn’t able to exude the same kind of attitude. Because you’re not really happy, Kate. None of these things make you happy. And it is rather sad. When it comes down to it, the one thing Kate Gosselin really is, is pathetic. And I never want to see anyone be this pathetic.

Of course, the relatives have seen Jon. Why wouldn’t they? In normal families you don’t estrange everyone away until you have no one. He actually stopped by to visit them with his girlfriend. That’s typical Jon, a guy who goes out of his way to stop by to see his aunt and uncle.

They break into some crabs. The girls love this, but Kate is shrieking of course. At some point the friends got ditched, I’m a little unclear when.

Back at the orphanage, of course the girls won the summer games. They won everything.  The boys are so sweet, happily clapping for them. The kids loved it. Oh, Ashley, please don’t leave.

Annapolis is lovely, I’ve been there once. They close out the day with a relaxing boat ride. Uh-huh, this visit with Jon’s family has caused Kate to re-think her relationship with her parents and letting them see the kids. How convenient after five years she would just start thinking about this, and just as her most reliable babysitter can’t take it anymore!

I have a question for Kate. Maybe this could be answered on her upcoming episode where she takes questions. Why were the grandparents estranged in the first place? Presumably, if you’re going to prevent grandparents from seeing their grandkids, block a relationship as special as that, there should be a darn good reason. And if so, why would she be reconsidering letting them see them? Does that reason no longer exist? Or really, is it because there was never a good reason in the first place? If there were a good reason to estrange them, it doesn’t really make sense to let them see them until that reason goes away, does it?

I am imposing far too much logic on Kate, I know. The long and short of it is I suspect it was never about protecting the kids from toxic people; she more likely had some kind of personal disagreement with them that had absolutely nothing to do with their appropriateness as grandparents, and has been using the kids against them to punish them. Much like she has punished many people in her life who disagree with her, Jon notwithstanding, by using the children as pawns. Now, she just wants free babysitters, so she‘ll put aside any old disagreement if it means she gets something free. Checkmate. Yes, Kate, fragmentation is a word, for once. Make up words enough and you’re eventually going to hit on something that actually is a real word.

Maybe pictures will help Kate. Families should be like planaria. Cut them up and they should find a way to grow right back.