Fall TV Blog

Jon and Kate Gosselin continued to live separate lives on Jon & Kate Plus 8 Monday night. This time the couple, who normally spilt time with all eight kids, instead split the kids into groups.

On the episode, titled “Battleship & Barber,” Jon took 8-year-old twins Cara and Mady to a local amusement park, while Kate had a “special day” with the couple’s three sons, Collin, Aaden and Joel on a battleship near Bald Head Island, N.C., where she was vacationing. (The three youngest girls did not appear on the episode.)

Jon, who’d been overseeing the renovation of the kitchen at their home in Pennsylvania, said, “It was nice to see my girls. I hadn’t seen them in a really long time.” The newly single dad seemed pleased to hear the pitter-patter of little feet once again. “To have them come back, it was like, ‘Now I have someone to talk to,’ ” he added. “It was nice to have some company again.”

The trio went to a nearby arcade and amusement park where Mady and Cara’s different personalities really stood out. “Cara’s an outdoor girl and Mady’s an indoor girl,” said Jon. While Cara and her dad navigated an elevated rope course, Mady stayed put watching them from below.

“I’m not into climbing up and down nets and rock walls,” she said. “I don’t like being really, really, high, and that seemed really high.”

Jon, who is getting used to the fast lane in his off-camera life, enjoyed the adventure, especially driving some go-karts. “It was fun,” he said. “I wish they went faster — like super fast.”

Moving at a slower pace, Kate and the boys toured the U.S.S. North Carolina battleship, including the engine room, kitchen, sleeping quarters and ammunition room.

At one point, when navigating a particularly steep staircase, Collin told his mom he wasn’t afraid. “Mommy, boys are tough,” he said. When Kate then asked, ” ‘Are you going to take care of me some day?’ ” he, of course, answered, “yeah.”

Even as just a group of four, Kate and her boys attracted the attention of other tourists — and some paparazzi. While the kids pretended to fire the battleship’s gun, Kate jokingly encouraged them to aim at the photographers, labeled the “bad guys.”

The boys ended the episode with a trip to the barbershop followed by some ice cream. Reflecting on their day together, Kate said, “My favorite part was seeing you guys in little sailor hats. It made me cry. Yes, it did. Mommy’s cry. Yes, they do.” — Marla Lehner

Call it the case of the optimist vs. the pessimist, with Regis Philbin as Pollyanna, suggesting to Kate Gosselin on Thursday’s Live! With Regis & Kelly that one of these days her estranged husband Jon is going to come home, propose marriage again and that the two — with their eight kids — will live happily ever after.

“Now” said Philbin, “what do you think about that?”

“Wow,” responded Gosselin, who looked as though her breath had been taken away. After first joining in with the audience’s laughter, she said about her soon-to-be-ex Jon and herself: “We definitely have different goals at this point. A lot has changed. A lot of unexpected things have come up. It’s not ideal. And I can’t say you’re right at all.”

But Philbin pressed her on the subject. If Jon were to come back tomorrow, the TV host asked, and said, “Let’s put the past behind us. I want to spend the rest of my life with you and the kids … what would you say to that?”

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Claiming she continues to wear her wedding band because she wants the life adjustments for her and soon-to-be ex-husband Jon’s eight children to be gradual, Kate Gosselin’s decision even prompted debate among experts on Wednesday morning’s Today show.

But how do you feel about what Kate is doing?

Jon and Kate didn’t actually share any screen time on Monday’s episode, titled “Beach and Kitchen Reveal,” but that didn’t exactly quash their war of words, either.

While Kate was vacationing with her eight kids in Bald Head Island, N.C., enjoying the beach, a bacon breakfast and chocolate pudding, which the kids used as body paint, Jon was home in Pennsylvania supervising construction of their new kitchen. And, let’s just say, he was happy to do it — alone.

“Kate and I needed a break from each other so it was nice that she could take the kids to the beach and I could oversee cabinet construction,” he said earlier in the episode, though he did acknowledge that he misses the kids when they’re gone.

“It was good they were all away,” he repeated again, later, “especially Kate [who'd be] yelling, like, ‘there’s a mess’ and ‘clean it up’ constantly [which] would be annoying.”

Kate, meanwhile, expressed some sadness that Jon wasn’t there to share the vacation. “It was weird to pack alone,” she said. “It was minus Jon any way you looked at it. We get to the beach house [and] I’m the sole one making all the decisions.” Still, the reality star said the experience was eventually empowering. “I am looking at the positive, seeing the memories I’m making with the kids and trying not to feel sorry for us and for myself,” she later said.
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Jon & Kate Plus 8 returned to TLC with the first new episodes since the Gosselins announced their split in June. And considering how much drama has happened off camera, Monday’s shows were relatively calm.

In the first episode, which was shot in January nearly five months before their announcement, Jon and Kate put aside their disputes to work on a previously planned kitchen-remodeling project.

After Jon suggested “under the counter refrigerators,” Kate asked with her arms crossed, “What planet do you live on?” The comment sounds more scandalous out of context, but it was actually about translating contractor-speak. Still, you could cut the tension with a nail gun.

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A lot has happened since Jon and Kate Gosselin announced their plans to divorce on their TLC show Jon and Kate Plus 8. What can the family’s fans expect to see when the reality series returns Aug. 3 in the first episode since the Gosselins’ split?

“You’ll see Jon struggle in the kitchen trying to make pizza for his kids,” TLC General Manager and President Eileen O’Neill said at the Television Critics Association panel in Pasadena, Calif., on Thursday. “You’ll see what its like when Kate has to put a tent up for the first time for her kids, who love to camp in their backyard. And she gets a little advice from her daughter who doesn’t think she does it quite as well as dad.” (more…)

After last week’s announcement that Jon and Kate Gosselin will split, Monday’s episode, which will be the last until August, featured some of the best moments from the couple’s 10-year relationship.

How it all began: A young couple, madly in love, got hitched and enjoyed a Disney World honeymoon and a year of wedded bliss before welcoming two baby girls. Then, hoping to add one more child, they got six. And so Jon and Kate had their eight. The rest of the episode looked back at the best of the Gosselins childhood memories. Here are some highlights:

• When Jon tried to teach the kids about their Korean heritage by cooking some traditional cuisine, the little ones, with plastic chopsticks in hand, eagerly watched, waited and munched on hot peas while their father worked the grill. After dinner, the kids engaged in a little heritage one-upmanship. One of the twins declared, “I’m the Asianest person in the whole family.” (more…)

As Jon and Kate Gosselin go their separate ways, another famous couple are weighing in on how to “stay in love” under the intense spotlight of reality TV.

The Real Housewives of New York’s Alex McCord, 35, and husband of nearly a decade, Simon van Kempen, say that the key to keeping their family together while starring in a TV show is to make your relationship a priority.

“Remember that you [and your husband] were there first,” McCord told PEOPLE at the I Heart Gen Art 15th Anniversary benefit in New York City on Wednesday. “Remember that part of what makes raising your children a successful operation is having a successful relationship. And if you are not happy, I … guarantee you will foist that off on your kids and they will pick up on it.” (more…)

Before Jon and Kate Gosselin’s big announcement was revealed on Monday’s episode of Jon & Kate Plus Eight, the Gosselin kids got their newest toys, Crooked Houses, which Jon said were “designed to look like a kid built them.”

Cara and Mady each got their own, while their younger brothers and sisters shared. The boys’ playhouse looked like a pirate ship and the younger girls got a garden house, which Jon called “the pinkest house on the planet.” Mady made up her house like an animal hospital while Cara asked for a haunted house, a suggestion that made Kate a little apprehensive.

Snipping at each other over where to place the houses, Kate worried that the wooded area that Jon selected wasn’t close enough to keep an eye on them, while Jon wanted it farther away for fear of intrusion. It took the movers (with a bit of manipulation from Kate) to convince Jon that under the grove was the best spot for the new digs. (more…)

In a new teaser video from Monday’s special hour-long episode of John & Kate Plus Eight, a teary Kate Gosselin says, “We haven’t really known where we were going but we’ve been dealing with this a long time.”

She can only be referring to the couple’s marital problems, which she and Jon addressed in the season 5 premiere of their show.

“It just got worse and worse and worse,” Jon said, “And with all the tabloids and all that, it just made it even worse.”

A promo for the show, which aired Wednesday, promised that the couple, who’ve been married for 10 years, will make an announcement.

“People think I’ve changed,” Jon says in the new teaser. “And I have changed. I’m now the person I know I am.”

“We can’t go back now. We can only go forward and that’s what we’re going to do,” Kate says. “And we’re going to learn a lot going forward and I know that we’ll all come out of this on the other side, hopefully stronger, better wiser.”