From winner to loser–and back again

CHARLIE Sheen

Charlie Sheen’s career has been on a roller-coaster ride this year—a harrowing trip that prospective entertainers can learn valuable lessons from.

For seven years, his sitcom “Two and Half Men” was a huge hit, eventually paying him more than a million bucks per episode.

But, instead of thanking the video gods that be, he launched into a monumental tantrum and bit the hand that had fed him so generously all those years, prompting his bosses to fire him. Refusing to admit his mistake, Sheen did a series of live shows that were sometimes poorly received by audiences.

To make things worse, “Two and a Half Men” was recently revived, with Ashton Kutcher stepping into Sheen’s stellar shoes, and the new edition’s telecast was viewed by close to 28 million viewers! Kutcher’s portrayal was praised to high heavens by TV reviewers. And Sheen’s character was killed off to give the sitcom a fresh start, with Kutcher making his grand entrance in a dust cloud created by Sheen’s spilled ashes.

Ouch, and triple-ouch! From high-flying winner to really sore loser in only one TV season—that’s the instructive, cautionary tailspin that Sheen’s career has taken, and we trust that other show-biz people will take their cue from its downbeat denouement and avoid committing the sins of pride and ingratitude in their own careers.

But that’s not the end of our story. Sheen may have lost his show, but it now turns out that he won’t stop making money from it: The latest twist to our tale is that Sheen will be paid a cool $25 million for leaving the show, and could later get as much as $100 million in residual payments for replays of the sitcom!

So the big loser is still a retroactive winner, after all. But without a weekly show to keep him in the public eye, his career prospects are dire, unless he’s able to convince the industry people, who now avoid him like the plague, that he’s learned his lessons—for keeps.

To speed up the “forgiving” process, Sheen has been making the rounds of TV talk shows, publicly eating humble pie and intoning his abject mea culpas for all the world to snigger at. He’s even come up with contrite statements to the effect that, if he were his TV bosses, he would fire himself, too!

Of course, congenitally cynical TV people aren’t all that sure if the penitent guy is sincere, so he’ll have to do much more than just piously intoning the Act of Contrition.

At age 46, he’s no spring chicken, despite his cockerel antics and barnyard swagger, so leery producers might be loath to offer him a new TV showcase ever again.

Well, he’ll have all of those residuals to keep him prosperous enough to sustain his sybaritic lifestyle for the next 46 years, if he’s still so inclined.

We suspect, however, that Sheen, who comes from a family of entertainers, needs a regular public showcase to make him truly happy. Without it, he could end up as a ghost of his formerly incandescent self—unloved, forgotten and un-Sheened!