Track record not good for reality TV marriages

When singer Jessica Simpson made her famous remarks about tuna (shouldn’t Chicken of the Sea actually be chicken?), I knew her marriage to fellow singer Nick Lachey would probably crumble.

The couple’s MTV reality show, “Newlyweds,” lasted three seasons in 2004 and 2005. Like with most reality shows, the producers manipulated the footage to characterize Simpson as a ditzy anti-homemaker and Lachey as a down-to-earth, laundry-doing normal guy.

Whether those images are correct doesn’t really matter now. MTV, Simpson and Lachey made their money, and the pair became almost exponentially more famous. But that success came at the cost of their marriage.

I shouldn’t have had an opinion on the prospects of a lasting union between these two, but when their relationship was on display for hours on end on a popular cable channel, it’s hard not to care. Maybe Lachey just saw the warped view of his wife the rest of America was seeing.

And when the split became public, the couple’s cry for privacy was almost a slap in the face to their fans, who couldn’t understand why they could watch the first year of marriage yet be cut off from the divorce drama.

Even Lachey himself admitted the damage the show did to his relationship in an interview in Rolling Stone.

“Jessica and I began playing these parts even when we were by ourselves. It became a really blurred line. There was a question about what truly was our reality,” he said. “When you are on a reality show, your life ceases to be reality. It becomes TV.”

Over the weekend I ashamedly watched another marriage-on-display, that of “Brady Bunch” alumnus Christopher Knight and tenuously famous Adrianne Curry, winner of the first “America’s Next Top Model.” Their show is called “My Fair Brady.”

Curry met Knight on the set of another VH1 reality show, “The Surreal Life.” Her career, her relationship, really her entire life at this point, are all tied to reality television. When Curry finally realizes that real “reality” is not TV “reality,” she might go a little more crazy than she already is.

The track record for reality marriages is not good.

Within the past month, two couples featured in MTV shows have called it quits. Model Carmen Electra and rock musician Dave Navarro broadcasted their weird 2004 nuptials on a gothic-themed show called “Til Death Do Us Part.”

I guess that whole “til death” thing was only until the glow of reality show celebrity started wearing off. Then again, Electra did marry basketball bad boy Dennis Rodman in 1998, so her sense of “reality” was already questionable.

Then there’s Blink 182 drummer Travis Barker and beauty queen Shanna Moakler, whose marriage ended in divorce after two years. The two had starred in “Meet the Barkers” on MTV. The really sad part here is that the couple’s children had been paraded on television as well. But at ages 2 and 8 months, at least the kids will be able to see their parents in a loving relationship, even if it has been edited and set to music.

It’s interesting that possibly the strongest marriage to be shown on reality TV was actually set up on reality TV — that of “Bachelorette” Trista Rehn and Ryan Sutter. They were married in 2003 and appear to be going strong.

And here’s one to watch: Britney Spears and Kevin Federline. The pair qualify as a “reality” couple through “Chaotic,” the UPN show that documented much of their early relationship and some of their engagement. Cameras have certainly not helped the couple gain any more respect, but will cameras destroy their relationship? Only time will tell.