Are you sitting down? Good, because the following bit of news will likely rock you to your very core. Just weeks after Jon Cryer felt so threatened on the set of 2.5 Men Two and a Half Men that production was temporarily shut down, another issue is threatening to deprive the citizens of the world of the one thing that they value most: new episodes of the hit CBS sitcom. Yes, that’s right, thanks to the legal troubles of Carlos Irwin Estévez, a.k.a. Charlie Sheen, the future of Chuck Lorre’s baby and the Tiffany Network’s wildly profitable cash cow is in jeopardy.
As you will no doubt recall, the Hot Shots! Part Deux! star was arrested on Christmas morning and charged with second-degree assault after his wife called 911 and told cops that he threatened her with a knife. His wife, who was legally intoxicated when she made the call at 8:34 a.m., would later try to have the charges waived, but by then it was too late. And now, the Los Angeles Times reports that when the case goes to trial this fall, Sheen could very well be unavailable to shoot new episodes of the show for weeks, if not months. Making matters even dicier, blue-chip companies may decide to funnel their advertising budgets elsewhere now that rumors are beginning to surface that Sheen has fallen off the wagon and his wife is going to rehab to battle her addiction to crack.
Unseemly tabloid fodder aside, the real issue here is how this affects you, the loyal Two and a Half Men viewer. After all, in the five years since Everybody Loves Raymond bid farewell to the airwaves, this nation of ours has depended on Sheen and Cryer to lift us out of our collective doldrums. If Sheen ends up being convicted, he could be sent behind bars for upwards of three years, which would mean that the show would likely be canceled and we all would be forced to survive on syndicated reruns for the rest of our days on this mortal coil. Best case scenario is that Sheen gets acquitted, and even then we’ll almost certainly have to deal with a series of repeats on Monday nights for the months of September and October. So, either way, we’re screwed. Thanks for nothing, Chuck!
Charlie Sheen’s legal woes could affect ‘Two and a Half Men’ and CBS [LAT]