Did you see the show last night? If you didn’t and you plan to live under a rock today, you’d ought to stop reading here (and then come back after you’ve watched it, of course!)

Nearly a year ago, I wrote this post about how much my Kate enjoyed watching the show, but how I had some reservations about the interests of their kids. Now those days of questioning whether the world watching their potty training experiences was going to harm the kids’ future psyche seem almost quaint.

We had no idea what a train wreck we were about to witness.

In case you missed it, Jon and Kate Gosselin announced last night that they intend to separate and end their marriage. They plan to split time at their house, so the kids will remain there consistently while their parents swap in and out.

The whole show last night was just so depressing. Kate looked like she’d been hit by a bus, and Jon just looked like an idiot (nice earrings, too bad you’re still a 32-year-old man with eight children). The kids looked… well, I don’t know how the kids looked, because we hardly saw them at all. The show was nearly exclusively focused on Jon and Kate’s marital struggles, and what lies ahead.

A couple things kept running through my mind:

1) I feel so bad for the older girls, Maddie and Cara. I can’t begin to imagine all the inappropriate things they hear at school every day; I bet they get more information from their classmates about their family than from their parents. I wonder how many times they’ve insisted to their friends that their parents are not getting divorced, and at what point they’ll find out that yes, they actually are. I wonder what rumors they’ve heard about their dad’s soirees with co-eds and their mom’s alleged relationship with the body guard. It seems to me that Maddie and Cara might just get the shortest end of this stick.

2) At what point should Jon and Kate put a stop to the wild ride that their show turned out to be? I have to think that their intentions were good at the beginning, and honestly facing the prospect of raising eight kids, who are any of us to say that we’d turn down a lucrative opportunity like that? Especially since in its inception, the show was a wholesome documentary of sorts. What was it, exactly, that made this spiral out of control?

And 3) To quote one Jenny Rapson, here’s a tip: don’t have a tv show if u want to stay together. I mean, let’s look at the statistics here. Did it work for Nick and Jessica? For Jon and Kate? For Flava Flav and that tall scary chick? I don’t think so. They’re great for notoriety, C-list fame and fortune, but as far as maintaining marriage vows, reality shows just aren’t a good plan.

So what are your thoughts on this whole thing? Let’s discuss.