Marking the end of a truly baffling era, TLC has canceled Kate Plus 8, the itching phantom limb of a series that’s been hanging around ever since husband Jon Gosselin left wife Kate holding the whelping box while he pursued all the finer things in life, such as draping himself entirely in Ed Hardy and getting laid by smirking college girls who thought it would be hilarious at the time. The long-running reality show—which followed eight children and the two awful people who used them to become just famous enough that they would no longer have to be stuck at home with eight children—will hit its 150th episode soon, which the network noted in the same press release announcing its cancellation with an implicit sense of shock.
Still, TLC promises that they may “check in with Kate and the family periodically with specials in the future,” presumably to gauge the after-effects of Kate’s rapidly fading celebrity and the growing embarrassment of her aging children. But hopefully this, like our dwindled national interest in the Octomom, signals the end of our bizarre collective fascination with people who have too many kids, and the beginning of a more enlightened era when we demand more from our reality television—like 19 kids, plus creepy parents who think they’re breeding some kind of Jesus army or something.