The Gosselins have been another of my guilty pleasures ever since my husband, flicking channels one night after a day of moving house with a six-month old, a two-year-old and a five-year-old, came across Jon attempting to put all six toddlers into ski suits and we settled in for a good bout of schadenfreude. I resisted their pull last season as the marriage imploded (just too prurient) but I can watch Kate parent her eight on her own with only a few qualms—and who could resist the fabulous juxtaposition of two cultural trends that is the spectacle of Kate Plus Eight … getting chickens?

Because, of course, I want chickens. I envision them pecking around the yard, the kids caring for them and gathering up the fresh eggs, us adding an element of responsibility and authenticity to the kids’ world–and listening to Kate as she tells the camera how she thinks the chickens will add to their lives, I hear all my chicken dreams reflected back to me. But I live in rural New Hampshire, and I have plenty of friends with chickens. I already know that, like so much else in the Gosselins’ heavily planned but so often gone awry lives, chickens aren’t likely to live up to their bucolic promise.

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