After that Sopranos fiasco, network execs won't be taking any chances with creative, artistic series finales. Lesson learned. Leave things in the hands of the creative geniuses who made things a success in the first place and you're only asking for trouble. We need more focus groups, more decisions by committee, more tried-and-true formula.
Gene Simmons is no fool. Just ask him, he'll tell you. At length. At great length. While at first I thought he might need my help coming up with implausible plot lines for his "reality" show, once I saw him trekking out to the woods with his family in a corporate-sponsored RV, barking out advertisements as they cruised down the highway, I then knew that all was safe in Gene's hands. He may be one lousy lyricist. But he knows how to entertain. Yet, I can't resist. Here are possible ways he could end his program.
Use it as an introduction to the Gene Simmons Home Shopping Network: If Gene is as driven by greed as he says, then there's no reason to believe that once his family grows tired of being filmed that he'll lose the bug for TV exposure. If anything is frustrating him with his Family Jewels program, it has to be all the lost time in creating plotlines when he could be selling merchandise to the people. He could use the final episode to introduce his new all-merchandise network: the Gene Simmons Home Shopping Network, where everything comes with his tongue insignia or his face or his signature and is marked up accordingly. Need a new spatula? Gene has just the one for you.
Recount the 4,600 trysts he's had: You know we've heard that he's had all these adventures with the ladies. But what the show hasn't shown is him having these adventures with the ladies. He could break out his polaroids and invite some of these ladies back to discuss their experiences. Could be traumatic. Could be embarrassing. Could be amusing. Would be Must-see TV. Shannon might kill him.
Actually Play Music with Kiss: Allegedly, this guy is in a band. He's got plenty of Kiss merchandise around the house. But so do many of his fans. What would be more appropriate for the show than for him to actually have his band perform? Too obvious, you say. Whatever you do, Gene, don't do an Unplugged!
Give Away All His Money to Charity, Burn the House Down and Become a Monk: Now this would be earth-shattering. Forget global warming. Gene suddenly seeks spiritual enlightenment, goes insane and donates all his money to charity and lives in the woods with a bunch of bald guys in robes, muttering to himself the entire time. Shannon and the kids open a restaurant in Arizona and try their hands at flapjacks.
Marry Shannon Tweed on Pay-Per-View: Let's face it, if the price is right, he might. Hank Williams married the same woman twice for the box office receipts, so Simmons could claim he was just honoring a classic musician's tradition. Of course, he wouldn't do it just to end the series, but if he could find a way to make it a Pay-Per-View event and found enough people who thought they were signing up for a pro-boxing match, well, I think he'd say "I Do" as quickly as he could compute the profits. Happily unmarried? But at what price, Gene? At what price?