The Charlie Sheen show, now playing on almost every channel, is just another in a series of self-deprecating screams that once would have happened in private, and now happen in front of everybody around the world. The fall of Charlie Sheen was predictable. Vegas should have odds on his death by now.
And yet...
In the last quarter hour of his interview on CNN's Piers Morgan Tonight, Sheen noted that the Charlie he plays on the CBS sitcom is more, not less, like the Charlie he is in real life. So what follows is a logical question: Why punish Charlie?
Isn't it hypocritical for a network and his studio to condemn Sheen for his "statements, condition and conduct" when that is what they have built the show around? Two and a Half Men is about a delusional, drunken, womanizing asshole. It stars Charlie Sheen. CBS and series creator-producer Chuck Lorre have gotten what they paid for. Exactly.
Typically, television ends enormously successful sitcoms by planning a final episode that sums up the series with a realistic ending that is true to the characters.
The honorable, honest way for CBS to end Two and a Half Men would be a very special episode in which it is revealed that a drunken Charlie has killed himself in a car crash. That's a typical way for alcoholics to die.
With Sheen now banished as a cast member but contractually attached to the show, we could learn of the crash at the beginning of the episode, and let the remainder of the half-hour fill up with wall-to-wall clips of Charlie in an alcoholic haze from the past seven seasons.
The entire cast could gather one last time to cue the memories of crazy Charlie that, if this were real life, would likely include domestic violence, unemployment, chronic sickness and a police record.
On TV, the laugh track would be in overdrive.
Fade to black out.