You can pretty much guess what this episode will be comprised of. This includes Hannah pooped in Hannah's underwears, cupcake gate, and lots of whining about a divorce that even then was ages ago--over five years ago when this episode first aired!
This is like the T.V. version of clickbait on the internet, draw viewers in with what looks like new material, then bait and switch them with something recycled you've already seen before if not many times before. They seem to do this at least once every season and sometimes more. This episode seems even more gratuitous when you realize that only a few months later they are going to air a three hour clip show ("A Decade of Kate") of much the same drivel. There was only one other "real" episode between this clip episode and the Decade clip show! This is great for TLC's budget but very disrespectful to viewers.
Kate says she wants to look back on the old clips because she has annoying teenagers now and needs to remember when they were little. So go pop in a DVD and look at the old clips. Don't burden viewers' time with this. How rude.
As Kate has said on more than one occasion, it was so much easier to corral toddlers. Well right, you can child abuse a two-year-old into submission a hell of a lot easier than you can to a walking talking 10-year-old with opinions and who can run away and rat you out to mandatory reporters. That must stink for the child abusers.
Babies are so cute so that you don't abuse them, Kate essentially says. I'm not even joking, she actually says this. I'm glad Sherlock over there has figured out the morbid evolutionary reason why human beings are born with big heads and eyes. The editors immediately launch into a clip of Alexis having a diaper blowout as all babies will eventually, and Kate freaking out. So, like, if Alexis weren't cute, Kate would beat the shit out of her for that? Besides, she hit them anyway, cute or not, so I guess her theory doesn't apply to her.
There's no manual how to raise one baby, Kate says, let alone six. What? There are dozens of manuals about raising children out there, delving into all the nuances of babies practically week by week, so I'm not sure what she is talking about. What to Expect the First Year is a popular one, as well as On Becoming Baby Wise and many others. If you have six kids, I guess if you're Kate you just buy six of such books. Funny enough, just days after I wrote this portion of the recap, the Roseanne reboot, which is hilariously sharp and timely, made the same joke. Dan was telling Darlene look we did the best we could raising your kids, there's no manual on this. Darlene looks at him in disbelief and says yes there are! Heh!
They throw in so many little clips, many of which I nearly had forgotten about, and one of them is when Kate is in a battle of wills with young Mady, ordering her to put on shoes she says are hurting her feet. Kate's reasoning? Kate wears shoes that hurt Kate's feet so Mady should put them on. Even all these years later she still blows my mind. Kate is a consenting adult, and if she wants to wear shoes that hurt her feet that's her choice, but Mady is a kid and clearly doesn't want to do the same. Plus, she is a growing kid, so more likely than not, the reason her feet hurt are because she's outgrown the shoes. In any case, no one should wear shoes that hurt their feet--it is a warning sign something is wrong with the fit, and could eventually cause permanent damage in your later years. There are lots of shoes that fit properly and are still cute, this need not be such a big deal.
They show gum gate yet again, and Kate again doesn't take the opportunity to apologize to Aunt Jodi. She doesn't say anything at all about it this time.
Every moment of when the kids were young was hard. The grouchy moments were every day. That is a very pessimistic way to remember their toddlerhood. Sheesh.
They show the clip where Kate showed her post-pregnancy belly. At the time I thought that was brave of her to show that, but then she turned it into a freebie for tummy tuck surgery and my good graces vanished. I also don't believe Kate when she says that she never imagined someone would offer her free plastic surgery as result. Please. Today's Kate talks about her old stomach with absolute detest, calling it the jowls of a dog--ouch! That seems rather offensive to people who are carrying some flabby skin for whatever reason, and can't afford fancy surgery as a quick fix. A post-pregnancy belly isn't usually attractive, fair enough, but it's still you and it's the battle scar of bringing children into the world, which should be special. Kate marks the tummy tuck as the beginning of the rest of her life, and I just find this whole segment very shallow and inconsequential.
Kate reminisces about the one time they made Korean food with Jon, who is only shown from the hands down. It's amazing the way she is able to speak about this segment in such depth without ever mentioning why the kids are Korean in the first place, due to the sperm donor's ethnicity she selected perhaps online. What an elephant in the room, or shall I say Korean elephant!
This episode is a little disorganized as newer episodes tend to be because nobody in production cares, and we go from the producers feeding Kate things to talk about via old clips to suddenly the viewers asking questions. Can't she answer these questions on twitter?
Kate's favorite free trip was Australia/New Zealand, which is coincidentally without a doubt the most expensive free trip ever given to her, and she somehow swung it so she could go twice. We kill time reminiscing about the koalas for what feels like an eternity. I forgot how much the kids manhandled those poor koalas. Geez. Woo-hoo, the only old clip I ever enjoy seeing: Brad, the patron saint of haters, telling Kate about herself before pushing her off a high rise.
Kate says she wouldn't let the younger kids do this jump today. They are now the same ages as Mady and Cara when they jumped (age 10). Why? It's perfectly safe. Probably safer than crossing the street to get there. Usually parents get more lenient with subsequent children, not less. If a kid wants to do it and you can afford it, let them. Such drama over nothing and you run the very real danger of imposing your fears on your kids. Contrast this was Amy Roloff, who with gumption and style, jumped out of an airplane to celebrate her one year anniversary with her new boyfriend Chris. She acknowledged she was terrified but stuck to her goals to try new things and do something wild with Chris to mark the occasion. She was optimistic and pleasant the whole time, and as a viewer, I was rooting for her, and eager to see how this would shake out. I had no doubt she would go through with it. I had been cautious of Chris, I suppose I'm always going to worry about someone having ulterior motives when dating a little person, but he seems to have developed into quite a thoughtful and supportive boyfriend for Amy, and she's giddy in love with him. It's cute, and I hope he is what he seems.
Kate reveals the real reason she finally jumped i.e. was pushed off the building by Brad. Because she didn't want her 10-year-olds to be braver than herself. Well, of course the reason has to do with some kind of imaginary competition with her own children from Joan Crawford here. Typical.
Invariably somebody asks her what's with Kate showing no interest in dating, does her blood run cold or something? Kate says she can't meet anyone because she spends all her time in the kitchen or grocery store. The hell? I would almost buy this excuse if she had even a part time job, but she doesn't work. You do not spend 16 hours a day in the kitchen or grocery store, it's impossible. She then goes on to say something even more absurd, in that she would love to get out of the house and check out the great new local restaurant but the right person hasn't come along yet. Just, the f. The F! This woman cannot be implying that one must have a boyfriend in order to have a nice and novel evening out. Abraham Lincoln called, and he wants his century back. Yeeshhhh. We know now that Kate is only interested in dating if she's getting paid to do it, hence her new dating show. Heh.
We launch into another long and boring justification for why they had to get the mansion because their perfectly adequate solidly middle class house was just way, way too small. From all the clips they showed, the old house looks huge. The toddlers have plenty of places to run, the grounds were big, the dining room is plenty big enough for a long table, and the kitchen, although not huge has good flow to it creating the illusion of more space. There is something rather funny about all their excess back in the day happening right smack dab in the middle of a bad recession. They really alienated so many viewers by being so greedy. Kate actually says now the mansion is starting to feel too small too. No, she really says this. I really think that for many adults one of the hardest things to come to grips with is to be happy with what you have, to not always be wanting more. This usually applies to material things like your house and all your stuff. But it can also apply to things like how many children you will have, and your marriage. I've read quite a bit about this because I struggle with it too in some ways and I don't want to get sucked into this "creep." Like when the new iPhone comes out, something in me just wants it. Even though my current iPhone works just fine and I paid a lot of money for it. It's hard to not buy the newest thing, but I'm getting better.
The best way that helps me conceptualize all this and not worry about the Jones is to think of life not as a fixed pie 500 meter dash where it's you versus the world and if you don't win the next guy is. Rather think of it as a recreational sport, things like cycling or hiking (non-competitive). You can play it alongside people you like and enjoy, but you're really only ever playing versus yourself. How high you can climb, how far you can peddle. You could enjoy it alongside an elite athlete because how he does is irrelevant to you. So don't worry about a co-worker getting a promotion, or that perfect wife of your second cousin's on Facebook, or that great house on the market that's just a little more expensive than yours, so, you can afford it right. Because they're all hiking their own hikes and you're hiking yours.
I believe the number one reason adults find themselves unhappy or unsatisfied in adulthood is because they never really worked on being happy with the way things are. And Kate is clearly one of those. She has a house that should make even the saddest person happy for a dozen lifetimes, and yet there she is, feeling unsatisfied with it. The pathetic thing is Kate doesn't even seem to recognize her own unwarranted dissatisfaction. At least a lot of people recognize it and try to address it.
We then go into a long recap of all about when they first got the German shepherds. There are a couple telling comments in the old clips, too. One, after the only thing the dogs did was pee in the house (they were very, very little puppies!) Kate has a meltdown and barks at the distraught children "He's going back and I'm not kidding!" Because when a living thing doesn't function just perfectly you return to the manufacturer. See Collin.
Kate then says when she sent the dogs back to the trainers, she knew they were coming back, or "at least one" would be back. So, all along she never intended to take Nala back, but tricked the kids into thinking they were both going to get training and come back? Vile.
Nala was high strung and would make a good police dog, Kate remarks stupidly. High strung is not really what they are looking for in police dogs, how dumb is she? And besides, even if Nala would have made a good police dog, Kate probably ruined it by keeping her for as long as she did, interfering with training that often occurs during a puppy's formative years to try to make a police dog out of them.
By the way, just this winter a police dog in California undeniably saved many lives when he bolted for and pinned down an erratic and dangerous criminal who had just abandoned his stolen car to try to run away from the cops on foot. The driver had tried to plow over a female cop with his truck a few weeks before and has a long criminal history and is looking at life in prison for this little stunt of his. The dog's attack was so fierce it accidentally smashed the poor pup's teeth out on the curb! Here is the incredible video. Thank you, Officer Puskas!
We talk about the then-five years ago divorce for awhile. It's boring, except the part where Kate claims the bright side of this is the divorce taught the kids things, like about trust and people's intentions. The F! One, she just made a totally uncalled for and very nasty slam at Jon, directly implying the kids learned they couldn't trust him and that he has bad intentions. Of course some of the children are estranged from Jon, this has been the narrative they've been brainwashed with for these past five years. One need not literally spell out "You can't trust your dad" in order to implant the idea firmly in a young child's head. And two, no TFW, a divorce is never good for children, no study has ever shown so. Sure, some kids may be better off not having two parents together who are miserable under the same roof, so in that respect it's best for everyone to split up and something that just has to be done, but the divorce itself is never beneficial to the kids.
How do you say so organized, a very dense fan asks. Kate doesn't! She's a slob.
Emeril when he visited was so gentle and soft-spoken with the children, it's like they just shut down, mouths agape, having no idea how to interact with someone so kind and low key. Kate reveals that all the time she name drops that Emeril cooked in her kitchen. Lol, that must be obnoxious to what few girlfriends are around to hear that.
In a rare sweet moment between Kate and one of the kids, she helps Leah learn to swim in Hawaii. Kate's reaction is appropriately proud and excited, like a mother who adores her kid should react when her little bird finds its wings. You can tell how much this makes Leah happy in turn, not just to swim, but to make her mom proud. The kids desperately needed so much more of these quiet moments and less of all the anger and stress.
Is there anything more irritating than a grown woman trying to make whale sounds at a whale? That is all.
With only 13 minutes left in this episode, the editors for some strange reason decided now was the time for Kate to recap what we're doing here. Like if you came into this episode midway you'd be really confused I guess? Kate sums it all up in a really....slow....manner, weirdly emphasizing random words. Is she reading a cue card, just took her meds, or what is going on here? And couldn't she just say "it's another God damn clip show, people" and that's all anyone would really need to know to understand?
Since I'm really getting bored and the clips they are showing at the moment are absolutely pointless--(we still have 13 minutes left of this, yeesh!), I'm just going to say a few thoughts on the TLC app for Amazon Fire TV. It's basically wonderful. The TLC app I was using before on my computer was and still remains a piece of crap, showing endless commercials every few minutes and refusing to remember the place I last left off. The Amazon Fire app keeps me signed into it unless I don't log in for months, it always remembers my place in the episode even if I leave the app for a long time, and has simple and easy to use one-click commands to play, pause, add closed caption, fast forward at different speeds and the like. I only wish there weren't ads that you can't skip, but there's a handy countdown when they do run the ads (Ad 2 of 5 and so on) so you more or less can guess how much longer you have to go grab yourself a coke with a lemon before the show starts up again. Well done to TLC and Amazon Fire. All the Amazon Fire apps have been good to excellent, which leads me to believe they have extremely strict guidelines for developers that keeps them in compliance with smooth operation.
Nana Janet is dead by the way, and I don't remember Kate ever mentioning that other than in this clip show just now. Google explains that she died in October 2009. Except there are no tears or any emotion from Kate when she explains this. She could just have easily been explaining how one of the children missed her because she was gone to have tummy tuck surgery, as she will a bit later. It's all the same affect, all the same chipper explanations, just literally a short run-down of how helpful Nana Janet was and then out of left field Kate says Nana Janet left us all too soon. She left us.....all too soon? She's ..... DEAD??? Good Lord, I'm glad I knew this before this moment due to reports on the blog, because this news really would have hit like a ton of bricks, wouldn't it have?
We come to that dreaded moment in the episode where the editors realize they're only at 37 minutes and they've got to make it to 43. To kill time they add in some loosely related to not-at-all related clips about everything from bedtime to "I have a weiner" to ice skating. A really long explanation about how the kids I guess remember better because of the show, which I suppose is another excuse why they needed to do this show? But Kate's explanation doesn't make any sense. I'm convinced the kids are not "remembering" the actual experience at all, they are simply remembering the episode. And I still don't know how home movies you make yourself couldn't accomplish the same thing.
Kate is adamant she will never regret the show because of all the memories she made. So like, if you don't have a TV show you can't make good memories with your kids? The hell is she even talking about? And I really can't stand people that go around stubbornly refusing to have any regrets about choices they know damn well were poor ones or at the very least questionable. There have been a heck of a lot of downsides to filming these children she refuses to acknowledge, a little humility about that would do wonders. Let's take it there. God forbid what if someone one day were to ever hurt themselves due to the pressures of this damn show and the fame? Would Kate regret all of this then? I'm just curious how far it would have to go before she would finally give this line up. Time will tell.
