DVDSetCollection.com / 2010-04-30
Celebrities threatening to leave shows that put them at the top of their game for more money are as common in TV land as dollar bill Kleenex dispensers.That’s because it usually works. The star uses their awesome celebrity super powers to strike fear into the network heads’ hearts (assuming they have one) and gets them to sign bigger and bigger checks, simply by threatening to walk. It’s happened on almost every great show worth watching.Now it’s happened again. This time, ‘Two and a Half Men‘ star Charlie Sheen wants out of his contract at the end of this season. Some say it’s because of his recent chemical dependency and domestic disturbance problems. Others say he just wants more money. I say, call his bluff. Let the Sheenster run free.Testing the show in familiar waters without its prime star would do it and our eyeballs a world of good. Sure the show is riding high on the ratings and shows no signs of stopping, but longevity doesn’t always equal quality in the TV world. In fact, the only thing missing from this textbook definition of “jumping the shark” is an episode centered around one of the main characters actually jumping a shark.Scandal and off-screen tabloid news might do good for ratings, but it only keeps people tuning in for all the wrong reasons and Sheen is one of those celebrities who has been in the fish wrap pages for so long that he should start paying rent to the National Enquirer. Granted, not all of the news has been fair or probably even true, but he’s a firestorm for controversy and seedy celebrity gossip and Sheen seems to have acknowledged it, embraced it and poked fun at it so many times that he could pencil it into his calendar.The problem is, of course, when your top star gets a boatload of bad publicity and keeps your show’s ratings’ high, there isn’t a need to make the show any better. You can coast by on any old cliche and as long as the ratings are up, everyone, except the audience, is happy. ‘Two and a Half Men’ had a good run at first, but the quality has fallen and landed with a loud thud. There are more groans than laughs in just about every episode and the characters seem trapped in some kind of bizarre time warp where no one moves on, people age twice as long and no one changes. It’s like watching ‘Lost’ for drooling morons.Sending Charlie on his merry way could change and improve or break this long-suffering show. Losing the aging man-whore character/actor crutch could either breathe new life into the show or put it out of its misery ‘Old Yeller’ style.Either would be fine by me.
Friday, April 30, 2010
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