'Jon & Kate' recap: Lord of the Earrings

Image credit: TLC

THE BABYSITTER'S CLUB? That's what it's starting to feel like Jon & Kate is devolving into

'Jon & Kate' recap: Lord of the Earrings

Last night, Kate took the sextuplets on a beach vacation, while Jon stayed behind in the House of Usher Gosselin house with the twins. ''When I was in New York, I got Mady and Cara two sets of earrings,'' he said. ''I love them, Daddy!'' said Cara. Well played, J.G.! After two weeks on the bench, you're back in the game with some old-fashioned bribery.

Meanwhile, in the land of Oz, Kate took the girls on a horse-drawn carriage ride, ''The way every girl should ride everywhere!'' After that, it was off to a tea room. When Kate saw the tea set, she said, ''I'm gonna cry, it's so beautiful.'' How epic would that be?

Much was made of the triplets' inability to drop sugar cubes into their teacups. ''This is not ice, girls, this is sugar. What does sugar do?'' ''It makes it colder!'' (Bzzzzt, wrong!) Said Kate, ''It was nice to do really fun, girly things,'' inventing new definitions for ''girly'' and ''fun.''

Jon described how the twins had some fun playing with seeds. But we didn't see him there while they were counting out the seeds (they just talked to the crew), and his supremely disinterested description - ''They had to water them. It was kind of cute.'' — made me think that he heard about it secondhand from Alex the sound man.

Let's be frank: Jon's half of the episode felt more like deleted scenes. Maybe it's because Kate is more willing to play parent for the cameras, or maybe it's because Jon is a lazy clown man who peddles earrings to pre-adolescents, but TLC is clearly straining to fit him into this show.

Kate took the girls to a bead store. Like the tea room, it was curiously empty except for peppy service personnel. The girls made bracelets. Leah: ''That's how little my wrist is!'' Kate made bracelets for Mady and Cara. That's fair enough, K-Goss, but are you aware that J.G. just bought them earrings? Dangly earrings, from New York?

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