Everyone Deserves A 24th Chance: Charlie Sheen And Anger Management
With this level of public attention, it's not like Charlie will be dead in the water, squandering his last $20 million on his own private Sheen Island. Of course, on June 28, 2012, Charlie Sheen reluctantly left behind his Charlie Sheen-esque Charlie Harper character and donned the mindblowingly different role of the Charlie Sheen-esque Charlie Goodson (again, called Charlie). The new series was based on the 2003 film starring Adam Sandler and Jack Nicholson, which other than the fact that it features anger management therapy taking place, has absolutely nothing to do with the 2003 film starring Adam Sandler and Jack Nicholson. The television version actually details an ex-baseball player (Charlie) who ruined his career by way of his own anger issues. He is now an anger therapist, although still with anger issues, which surely would help his career path in any way, shape or form? But I digress. Charlie also continues to see his anger management therapist, Dr. Kate Wales (played by Selma Blair), while maintaining a balance with a whole array of different characters, including his ex-wife (played by Shawnee Smith), his daughter, his father (played by the still-brilliant Martin Sheen, whose character name is also Martin), his anger management group at a prison, starring such characters as Wayne, Ernesto, and two nameless "prison-gay" characters who I can only describe as Blaine Edwards and Antoine Merriweather. I'll give the show one thing, it has a hell of a cast. I didn't even mention two of Charlie's neighbours, played by Brian Austin Green and Sheen's old friend from Spin City, Michael Boatman (and you guessed it, he's also called Mike). The show itself started off extremely well, ratings wise, with 5.74 million viewers (an all time high for the premiere of a series on basic cable), and the show even had a few decent ideas and a few funny jokes going for it too. Thanks to it's impressive ratings, and it's rather bizarre production deal (if the first season of 10 episodes got a certain amount of viewers, then 90 episodes would be ordered into production immediately), Anger Management is now confirmed to last for an entire 100 episodes (Sheen advertised "after 100 episodes, I can stop whenever I want." Which has some truth, but the show will probably be cancelled before that time comes). Come to think of it, this show had rather intelligent and humourous advertising, such as the 24th Chance trailer below: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbOHhDyjuQ4 However, not too long into the show, problems started to arise, and viewers started to leave. By episode 40, the show wasn't even being viewed by 1 million viewers, usually dwindling down at the 0.6-0.8 million mark, which is pretty dire, even for basic cable. The show was so unpopular that the only news site that seems to report news on the show is TMZ. In addition to this, Selma Blair was also fired due to disputes with Charlie Sheen, who was reportedly a "menace" to work with due to his punctuality and work ethic. Did you not read the news articles over the last two years when you were hired to work on the same show as him? It's your own damn fault, really. So, Charlie Sheen has sort of won on this front. He's getting paid for 100 episodes that don't even have to bring in viewers or have any quality about them, and is surrounded by an ever-suffering supporting cast that would probably be pretty stellar if they were in a much better show, particularly those who were once in good sitcoms like Spin City's Michael Boatman or Becker's Shawnee Smith (who's acting is really sucking here. I love her in anything else, but with this she really sounds and acts like she doesn't care), and such brilliant classic actors like Martin freakin' Sheen!