Irate producers call Charlie Sheen’s bluff

When Charlie Sheen peevishly and churlishly announced that he was quitting his hit sitcom, “Two and A Half Men,” members of the US TV industry were initially incredulous. What, give up the most popular show on television that paid him the top price of around $1.2 million per episode? The guy must be nuts!

Well, it looks like Sheen is going to remain “nuts” on a permanent basis, because the show has decided to call his bluff, and has announced his replacement—Ashton Kutcher.

No option

There was a time when Sheen was hinting that he wanted his job back, but that’s no longer an option as far as his former producers are concerned, because he’s dissed them too much and they’ve had it up to here—and, who can blame them?

Naturally, when his replacement by Kutcher was announced, Sheen immediately predicted that the show’s rating would plummet, because his younger replacement simply doesn’t have his comedic moxie. But, other and perhaps more objective observers, including this writer, don’t agree.

We think that the show’s producers have come up with an inspired countermove, and that “Two and A Half Men” will do quite nicely from here on in without Charlie Sheen, thank you very much.

Fact is, Ashton is no slacker in the looks, comedy and popularity departments. The “boy” husband of Demi Moore is popular in his own right, because he’s starred in his share of rom-coms, and it looks like there’s no place for him to go but up.

As for Charlie, he’s millions of dollars poorer, with no TV prospects in sight so far—and with reason. Which producer with his head screwed straight would want to work with a walking, talking land mine like him?

True, Kutcher is getting a smaller paycheck (less than a million bucks) than Sheen, but that’s OK for starters. And, after he proves himself as a ratings-racker in his own right, that amount is sure to increase.

It’s logical that the hit sitcom will continue to do well even without Sheen. Yes, Charlie was its madcap “engine,” but the show has retained its very smart and experienced production team, so it’s fair to bet that they will make it doubly and even triply sure that their sitcom, with its new star, will be at least as funny and popular as before. That would be such sweet

revenge, and they definitely want to savor that!

It’s also instructive to note that they’ve decided to “kill off” Sheen’s character, so Kutcher will be playing a new role. That way, he won’t be compared to the production’s previous hit-making star, and he can create his own waves.

This is so different from what transpired on local TV, when the sitcom, “I (Heart) You, Pare,” recently lost its female lead, Regine Velasquez. Similarly left high and dry due to the unexpected resignation, the local production decided not to replace Regine’s character with a new female protagonist, but merely to replace her with Iza Calzado in the same role.

Expectedly, despite Iza’s best efforts, the “band-aid” solution hasn’t been working, so the show is now on its last legs.

Obviously, the better gambit would have been to create a new character for Iza, as “Two and A Half Men” is doing for Kutcher. Another lesson learned—too late.