"Kate Plus 8"

Credit: TLC

Can you believe it? Kate Gosselin is not adjusting well to not having a television show! Of course, that's probably true for a lot of people (and will be true for a lot more people once the fall TV season gets well underway and shows start getting picked off like dead ticks), but most people don't land on the cover of People magazine to complain about it.

"I'm freaking out. Big time," Gosselin tells People, and the magazine asks "Will her kids be OK?" on the cover, just so we can all feel really, really guilty for not watching "Kate Plus 8" anymore. 

But what's disturbing to me isn't that Kate's "really scared" about life without a TV show. It's that, after everyone seemingly accepting that her fifteen minutes were up, she's right back on the cover of a magazine, this time with a new sob story. If her divorce piqued our interest in 2009, her kids having nervous breakdowns for want of a camera crew should do the trick in 2011! 

Kate's assured her enormous brood she'll "work my fingers to the bone to make sure that they can stay here and go to their school." I have no doubt she'll do exactly that, but I'm not thrilled that Kate keeps finding ways to make herself (and her kids) interesting to the tabloids. She must have figured out by now that in order to keep an audience -- at least an audience large enough to keep a show on the air -- she needs to have drama in her life, whether that's a useless husband or disposing of said useless husband. Now, with no husband drama, the only real chaos she can promise to the public is either finding a new useless husband (not likely), going broke or pimping out her kids.

So far, Kate's been surprisingly vigilant about protecting her children. But how long will she be able to stand by her ideals after she and the kids get sick of eating ramen and canned beans? While reality TV provided the Gosselins with a good income and a lot of perks, a TV show doesn't come with a retirement plan. But what it does tend to do is get reality TV stars hooked on the good stuff -- attention and the many good things that come with it. Those kids may be missing the camera crew now, but they're also old enough to notice how dramatically their lives change as the flow of money and vacations come to a screeching halt. 

The final episode of Kate Plus 8 airs Sept. 12 on TLC. 

Liane Bonin Starr
Sr. Editor

• Follow

Liane Bonin Starr is an author, screenwriter and former writer for EW.com. Her byline has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Variety and a lot of other places. Her last book was called "a scandalously catty, guilty pleasure" by Jane magazine. Expect the same from Starr Raving.