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Sheen's Escapades Boost Show's Ratings
By
Ben Yakas
Published Nov 3, 2010
Modified Nov 3, 2010
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By
Ben Yakas
Published Nov 3, 2010
Modified Nov 3, 2010
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TV and advertising executives saw a silver lining to the whole Charlie Sheen cocaine-fueled escort-romp fiasco last week, believing that it would "open up the show to a whole new segment of young viewers, the 17-to-23 crowd." And they were right: 13.6 million people watched Monday's Two and a Half Men episode called "The Crazy Bitch Gazette." Perhaps viewers were hoping to spot a flake of coke in Sheen's nose, a la Neil Young in the seminal The Band documentary The Last Waltz.
It was a seven percent ratings increase from the previous episode of the CBS show, the hilariously titled "Twanging Your Magic Clanger," which definitely sounds like something Sheen did with psychic ladyfriend Capri Anderson. You know who was probably watching from a desolate cell somewhere in Europe? Austria's "incest monster" Josef Fritzl, who told an interviewer that, "My favorite show is Two and a Half Men with Charlie Sheen...It relaxes me, I need to laugh. Because it destroys the soul, if you are always sad." Raping your daughter for 24 years may be a bit more soul-crushing than not being able to laugh along with Jon Cryer's shtick, of course.
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Charlie Sheen
coke
escort
joseph fritzl
Two and a Half Men
Ben Yakas
Ben Yakas is a former Gothamist reporter.
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