When Sarah Palin met Kate Gosselin

Upon arriving in Wasilla, Kate Gosslin attended a class on how to survive a bear attack while camping.

(Image credit: TLC/ Gilles Mingasson)

last updated 8 January 2015

The video: Last night, in what's being called "a TLC match made in heaven, or hell," the worlds of two of the channel's biggest reality stars collided. For an episode of "Sarah Palin's Alaska," the former governor took Kate Gosselin and her "Kate Plus 8" brood on an Alaska camping trip. (Watch a clip below.) "We'll stoke the fire and stoke some fun!" Sarah said, exuberantly trekking around with Kate's kids, joking about the relative visibility of Russia. Gosselin, meanwhile, complained about the rain and the bugs, among other things. "They did this before there was houses, why do you do it now?" she asked Palin. "You really like this?"

The reaction: "Palin attempted to politicize Kate's appearance," says Jessica Grose at Slate, portraying Gosselin as a clueless New York City girl, a member of the liberal elite. Too bad "Kate Gosselin isn't really a New York City red-carpet denizen. She's just a priss." Yes, "poor Kate was set up to be Sarah's foil," say Jason Easley and Sarah Jones at Politicus USA. But while Sarah was supposed to be the "rugged tough one," the camping trip showed that "Palin is as clueless about the outdoors as she is about politics." Whatever the political takeaway, last night's episode "was a symphony of OCD, madness, and family-fun-based mania," says Scott Wampler in the Examiner. "It might have been one of the most entertaining hours of television that I've seen all year." Watch a clip: