All good things come to an end – and all crap things that star a couple of awful bellends come to an end, too.

Yes, we mean Jon & Kate Plus 8. Apparently TLC has decided to ditch Jon & Kate Plus 8 in both its current and proposed Kate Plus 8 guises. So goodbye Jon and Kate Gosselin, you were one of a kind. You’ll always be remembered as the fame-hungry couple dreadful enough to unblinkingly gamble away the well-being of your own children for a few moments of fleeting celebrity. Nobody could ever take your place.

Except for the Balloon Boy family, obviously. Someone give them a reality show, pronto.

One of the things we hate more than anything is when a show gets axed before its natural conclusion. And it looks like that’s going to be the case with Jon & Kate Plus 8. All those burning questions we had – How long will it be before Jon finally bites the bullet and invests in a wig? Will Kate ever reach her dream of combining 12 bad hairstyles into one haircut instead of the current 11? Exactly how pitifully low will the self-esteem of those children be by the time they reach adulthood? – are just going to be left hanging.

That’s the downside to the rumour that TLC is going to prematurely bring an end to Jon & Kate Plus 8. The upside, of course is that there won’t be any more Jon & Kate Plus 8 on TV from now on. And both Jon and Kate Gosselin will stop being famous. And we won’t have to write about them all the poxy time. And maybe instead of grimly following every last twist in their pointlessly depressing personal lives we’ll be able to go outside and feel the sun on our skin. Oh, the sun. We miss the sun so very much.

So yeah, there are more upsides than downsides. Here’s The Boston Herald with the latest Jon & Kate Plus 8 rumours:

“Jon & Kate Plus 8” will end in mid- to late November… “They will eek out what they can in terms of more shows,” a source close to the situation said. “Obviously they are not shooting anymore, so they are taking what they have and seeing how many more episodes they can get out of it.” Jon has told the network they no longer have his permission to film the children, and TLC will not challenge it.

Finally. This is a big day for Jon Gosselin. His staunch refusal to allow TLC to film his children has effectively brought about the end of Jon & Kate Plus 8. History will see this day as the one time that Jon Gosselin did something that didn’t automatically make the world want to punch him square in his stupid face as hard as it possibly could. Well done, Jon. We’re proud of you.

Of course, this rumour could be quickly undone if, say, TLC realised that Jon Gosselin was primarily financially motivated and decided to offer him a large amount of money to let them film his children again, regardless of the cost to their emotional welfare.

But nobody tell that to TLC, OK? We’re almost in the sodding clear here.

Follow hecklerspray on Twitter

Advance warning: you probably won’t side with anyone in this story because, well, it’s about Jon Gosselin.

And his awful wife. And his awful show. You see, earlier this week Jon Gosselin was effectively fired from his TV show Jon & Kate Plus 8, which would continue without him as Kate Plus 8. Except now Jon Gosselin has decided that if he can’t be part of Jon & Kate Plus 8 then nobody can, so he’s banned the crew from filming his kids.

Oh, and he spelt his own name incorrectly on the sign informing the crew of this. He’s a catch, that one.

This is probably going to be the most morally complex thing you’ll read all day, so get ready. Ready?

Good. It’s about Jon & Kate Plus 8, the TV show where two intrinsically horrible people make their children perform for a camera crew 24 hours a day. Now, it wasn’t so long ago that Jon and Kate Gosselin split up, citing all kinds of reasons from media pressure to Jon’s infidelity to Kate just basically being the worst person you could ever be married to. Nevertheless, in the wake of the split – and an investigation into child exploitation – Jon & Kate Plus 8 continued, even though Jon Gosselin was quite vocal about his desire to quit.

Earlier this week Jon Gosselin got his wish. He was kicked off Jon & Kate Plus 8 and told that the show would continue and Kate Plus 8, with his estranged wife taking the lead. And here’s where things get interesting.

Because, rather than dancing a happy jig over the fact that his life is now free of the media scrutiny that tore his family apart, Jon Gosselin seems to be so annoyed about getting the sack that he’s banning cameras from filming his children at all. Do you see the problem? Jon Gosselin wants to put an end to Jon & Kate Plus 8 forever – which is undoubtedly a good thing – but he’s only doing it because he’s obviously a monumental turd. We just can’t work out who to side with. While we try to figure this mess out, here’s the New York Post with details:

Last night, Jon appeared on CNN’s “Larry King Live” to say he had “an epiphany” and no longer wanted his kids to be on the show. TLC called Gosselin “self-destructive and unprofessional… He and the family were shooting as recently as last Friday, without incident, and his latest comments are grossly inaccurate, without merit and clearly opportunistic,” it said.

Incidentally, Jon Gosselin informed the TLC crew that it was banned from his property with a notice reading ‘NO FILM CREW OR PRODUCTION STAFF FROM TLC IS PERMITTED ON THIS PROPERTY UNDER PENELTY [sic] OF TRESPASS. JOHNATHON [sic] GOSSELIN’. He didn’t add the ‘[sic]’s, by the way. That would have demonstrated a frankly alarming level of self-awareness.

So, back to who to side for – should we side with Kate Gosselin, who wants to keep making the show even though it’s probably detrimental to the emotional well-being of her kids; or do we side with Jon Gosselin, who wants Jon & Kate Plus 8 to end, but only because he won’t be getting paid for it any more?

Here’s an idea – why don’t we fire both of them out of a cannon at a brick wall? The one whose internal organs leave the biggest lifeless, unidentifiable smear wins. Deal?

Follow hecklerspray on Twitter

Jon and Kate Gosselin have been through what’s possibly the most despair-ridden period of their entire lives.

But now they’re back. The divorce-postponed season of Jon & Kate Plus 8 resumes on Monday, and it promises to shine an unforgiving spotlight on a marriage torn apart by the pressures of fame. It will be bleak. It will be unrelentingly miserable. And yesterday we were given a tantalising hint at what dark scenes of emotional anguish we can expect from the Jon & Kate Plus 8 premiere.

Apparently Kate puts a tent up in a funny way. Oh, the agony! It’s too much!

If we had to pick one thing we enjoy about John & Kate Plus 8 over anything else, it’d probably be the show’s total obliviousness to anything that happens in the real world. Its production crew has access to one of the most gormless, never-ending soap operas in the entire world – magazines are constantly frothing on about Jon Gosselin’s purported infidelities or Kate Gosselin’s shrewish control freakery – and yet what does it actually broadcast? Interminable scenes of rollerskating children. It’s brilliant.

And it seems as if nothing will change when Jon & Kate Plus 8 returns to TLC on Monday. Look at all the things that have happened since the last episode was aired. Jon and Kate filed for divorce, causing Jon Gosselin to run away to Europe to dream up new ways of exploiting his children and possibly bang a load of pretty young girls on a yacht like some sort of sleazy, desperation-filled prematurely middle-aged pervert.

And that would make a great TV show – The Off-Puttingly Horny Adventures Of The World’s Most Utterly Average Man, they could call it. We’d watch. But that’s not going to happen, because yesterday the president of Jon & Kate Plus 8 network revealed exactly what viewers could expect to see when the show returns next week. People reports:

“You’ll see Jon struggle in the kitchen trying to make pizza for his kids,” TLC General Manager and President Eileen O’Neill said. “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.”

What? That’s it? No screaming? No moment when Kate Gosselin discovers that nobody wants to publish her book? No hard-to-bear scenes of eight distraught children failing to come to terms with why their parents don’t love them any more? No hilarious montage of Jon and Kate buying the kids a procession of ever-larger gifts in an effort to ease their guilt? That’s all we get? A chubby man trying to make a pizza?

Oh well, it’s better than nothing. And at least it maintains the tone of the show – which is bound to come in handy when Kate Gosselin loses the plot and hacks Jon to pieces with a medieval sword. That way it won’t look weird when TLC turns the incident into an episode that’s mostly about the best way to decorate fairy cakes or something.

Follow hecklerspray on Twitter

Jon & Kate Plus 8. It’s the show that nobody knew existed until it was in some magazines and crap, and now everybody loves.

And thanks to the tedious allegations of infidelity that have been rocking the Gosselin family since, oh, let’s say the dawn of time, the first episode of the new Jon & Kate Plus 8 season has drawn in record viewers for its network TLC.

In total, 9.8 million rubberneckers tuned into Jon & Kate Plus 8. That’s 9.7 million higher than TLC’s record – an episode of Mystery Diagnosis about a woman who thought she was being followed around by a goat.

If there’s one thing we know, it’s that misery sells. It’s why people wouldn’t have gone to see The Dark Knight if it was called Mr Flopsy’s Enchanted Rainbow, it’s why people have suddenly remembered that Jordan and Peter Andre are still alive, and it’s why everybody tuned into the season premiere of Jon & Kate Plus 8 on Monday night.

You know the Jon & Kate Plus 8 story by now. It goes like this – boy meets girl, boy knocks girl up more times than is really necessary, boy and girl spend two years making interminable TV shows about their stupid family that nobody cares about, boy possibly sleeps with someone else, girl literally turns into a monster, everybody starts watching their show. It’s a good story, really. No, wait, did we say good? We meant awful. Our mistake.

But because everyone cares about Jon & Kate Plus 8 all of a sudden – partially because they’ve been on the front cover of every single magazine in America over the last month pulling a succession of more and more harrowing facial expressions, and partially because Kate Gosselin has yet to grasp the irony of complaining about media intrusion when you’re the star of a reality show – a total of 9.8 million people saw the first episode of Jon & Kate Plus 8 season five on Monday, approximately double the amount who saw the season four finale.

And what happened in Jon & Kate Plus 8? Not a lot. Some kids had a birthday party and Kate looked a bit sad briefly. But that didn’t stop Jon and Kate Gosselin from releasing this statement directly after it finished:

“As many couples do, we are navigating a very difficult time. Our current situation brings us together around the children and some times sets us apart. We keep our faith that we will make the right decisions for our family.”

A joint statement full of bland words that barely mean anything? Oh no, this means that Jon and Kate might have put their trouble behind them! This is going to be terrible for the Jon & Kate Plus 8 ratings. Quick, kids, it’s time to break out that emergency misery procedure we discussed! Kid 2, start smoking! Kid 7, accidentally drown yourself in a pond! Kid 5, catch meningitis! The rest of you, self-harm! For the love of God, self-harm for everything you’re worth! We need these numbers!

But let’s say that Jon and Kate Gosselin do manage to move on from their relationship woes. It’s not the end of the world – we can always move on to one of TLC’s other reality shows about exceptionally large families, like Table For 12 or 18 Kids And Counting or I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant or I Literally Just Shat Out A Baby, Just Now, Right Out Of My Arse, And Oh God Here Comes Another One.

See? There are plenty of options.

You! Follow hecklerspray on Twitter!

It seems only yesterday you were hangin’ with Puff Daddy with your corn rows and white jeans while he didn’t shoot Tupac. Then came the Ben Affleck phase, which cursed us all with morphing celebrity couple names into one obnoxious word, but you moved on to get married to a gaunt lizard man like Marc Anthony and have babies like we always hoped you would.

Well, looks like there’s nothing left for you to do. What’s that, Jennifer Lopez? You’re making a reality show? No. Listen carefully – there’s nothing left for you to do.

Admit it. You know the words to at least one Jennifer Lopez song. It’s okay. It’s not your fault, because Jennifer Lopez has gotten her mitts into all genres of entertainment and money making. There’s no avoiding the infestation to some degree. Our society owes a great debt to Jennifer Lopez for so many things: combining celebrity couple names like Bennifer, butt appreciation, new heights of studio-altered music, and an array of simply horrible movies. She even has her own fragrance line and whatnot. The smell of lilies and Marc Anthony’s embalming fluid have never really appealed to us, but to each their own.

Anyway, Jennifer Lopez seemed to slip under the radar somewhat after she married Marc Anthony and his apparent tax problems. Pictures of her would regularly surface of when she’d dare to take a quick rest from sucking in her stomach and the media would declare her as impregnated. Yawn. Where’s the Jenny from the block? The Jenny with spunk that will gladly perform live with her husband, showcasing her abysmal ability to sing live and still step out in public? And most importantly, where’s the sellout Jenny?

Oh. She’s right here. TLC has announced that Jennifer Lopez will help produce, create, and star in what is being referred to as a ‘docu-series’ which will demonstrate Jennifer’s ability to balance work, babies, and constantly keeping her husband away from direct sunlight and cloves of garlic. She’s a busy gal. The series is already in production, but an air date has yet to be announced

We wish Jennifer Lopez and her family the best with this new endeavour. Everyone knows that the best thing for a celebrity’s personal life is a reality show. Just ask Nick Lachey and his wife Jessica Simpson, or Carmen Electra and her husband Dave Navarro, or the drummer from Blink 182 and his wife, or any of the well adjusted kids from Laguna Beach and The Hills. Exploitation onward!

Read more:

Jennifer Lopez: Reality TV Star! – People