Take the 28-year-old "unmarriage" between a multimillionaire rock star and a former Playmate of the Year, add children, and stir with reality show cameras. Voila, you have the predictably non-nutritious Gene Simmons Family Jewels, an A&E series that purports to show how "the most non-traditional, traditional family in America manages to make it all work."

If by "work" they mean "trump up drama for ratings purposes," that is.

Lizard-tongued KISS frontman Gene Simmons and his longtime partner Shannon Tweed appear to be in the midst of a relationship meltdown, at least according to outward appearances. The premiere of Gene Simmons Family Jewels showed Tweed's reaction to a TMZ photo that caught Simmons walking arm in arm with two young blondes—and apparently this one image is the philandering straw that broke her look-the-other-way back.

In the show, Tweed declared, "I'm sick of hearing it, I'm sick of seeing it, and I'm sick of living with it."

Right. Because after nearly 30 years of putting up with it while raising two kids with the guy, this surely has nothing to do with creating interest for their TV show.

In order to quietly and privately heal their damaged relationship, Simmons and Tweed naturally appeared on the Today Show where Simmons was asked about his claim that he didn't know the women from that TMZ photo. "Please," Tweed snapped. "What he means is he didn't know their names."

Next, the couple went on The Joy Behar Show where in a totally unscripted moment of raw emotional television, Simmons joked about the amount of women he has slept with, and Tweed ripped off her microphone and walked off the set.

I'm guessing if Shannon Tweed has stayed by Simmons' side for this long, despite his many unattractive qualities, she's made her peace with the fact that he's a cheating bag of incomprehensibly bad hair. This entire season has been promoted with the "shocking development" that she was going to consider dumping him, but I don't buy that what they're showing has anything to do with real behind-the-scenes feelings.

Tweed herself says she doesn't want to leak any spoilers for their own show by discussing the status of their relationship: "I don't want to give away everything, but it's not looking great."

Yeah, until the season finale where everything miraculously works out in the end but we get a cliffhanger for season 7, right?

What do you think about the Simmons/Tweed drama? Real life or reality show fiction?



Image via A&E