Charlie Sheen/Headscratchers


 * What is Charlie's whole ordeal? He wants his kids back and he is calling everyone a Troll now?
 * Hate being an Armchair Psychologist, but the ruling theory at the moment seems to be that he's suffering from an undiagnosed or untreated mental illness, and is right in the middle of a manic episode. I'm sure other tropers who know more about the subject and/or Charlie Sheen could fill that out more.
 * I think it all started because Sheen didn't like his boss, Chuck Lorre. He's always been an extreme sort of guy, but he's always showed up for work and he always delivered the goods. But Sheen upset Lorre and Lorre was worth more to Warner Bros than Sheen, so they shoved him overboard. And the unfortunate fact of capitalism is that, whenever there is an industrial dispute, labour is always, always, ALWAYS cast in a negative light. So Sheen's private behaviour was used to villify him leading to concern trolls coming out of the woodwork. Sheen, rightfully, feels isolated, attacked, and mistreated so he's lashed out, loudly decrying the Western European, middle class, heteronormative rules of behaviour in doing so. This has led to resentment and even more concern trolling, and now we find ourselves into a negative feedback loop. If people would just leave the man alone, much of his extreme behaviour might resolve itself. That being said, he may very well be ill, and taking the kids away is a safe precaution.
 * To play devil's advocate for a second and raise a point I think is interesting -- Sheen was sacked on the basis of his public behaviour, but I read he had a felony charge for assault (or something) in 2009 which obviously didn't get him booted. Again, I don't consider myself in Sheen's corner at all, but I just wanted to throw that in there. That said I also agree with the point made somewhere that if he wasn't rich and famous, and therefore perfect tabloid fodder, there would have been a much more concentrated effort to get him looked at properly by a professional. I also think his feeling of isolation is 100% his own fault -- if you were a colleague, would you want to approach him following the way he's been acting recently? I'm not even talking about the "bad PR", which should be irrelevant to a friend, I mean having no idea how he'd treat you. And if you've got a dispute with your boss, you hash it out with them , not slag him off in public. ...My word I blather a lot.
 * He could also be doing drugs again, he certainly is looking "coked out" lately and I'm having a tough time buying that he actually "passed" that drug test, and while i'm sure Lorre is a gigantic prick and is no doubt using Sheen to deflect blame from himself, Sheen hasn't exactly done anything to garner much sympathy from anybody. Especially attacking Jon Cryer and calling him a troll for no reason, by all accounts Cryer has been nothing but professional on the show and has done nothing to deserve Sheen's wrath.
 * Well see that's the thing. We don't know what's happened between Sheen and Cryer. For all we know, Sheen and Cryer have been bitching about Lorre since day one and now that Sheen is on the firing line, Cryer's nowhere to be found. It may not be the case, but the point is: we don't know. Which is exactly why you're not supposed to judge people.
 * Just something in the defence of the above troper re: Cryer... Sheen is making all this public, and so it's a bit much for him or others to expect people not to theorise/wonder about the background. If he's going to get onto a radio show and start tearing people to pieces without explaining the context (seriously, he called Cryer a "troll" and that's it) it can't just be simplified as "don't judge Sheen" . You can't have it both ways.
 * Being in an extended family where at least every third person has some form of mental illness, I personally think that at least some of his behavior fits in perfectly. Not all, mind you, but quite a bit is someone going through a high. Feeling like you're on top of the world and wanting to feel even better, it's easy to think sex, drugs, and alcohol will make you feel even better. They do, which explains some of his cokehead appearance and behavior. Family and friends don't seem so important, all they seem like are people who aren't on your level, so it's easy to see why he doesn't care about burning the bridges he has or his sons being taken away. It's like speaking a different language with other sometimes, like many of his incoherent babblings. But when the low hits with the force of a freight train, and it will, I say with all serious I will not be surprised to see his obituary on the news, because then nothing in the entire world will make him happy.
 * Why hasn't Sheen been thrown in jail by now? I know that a lot of celebrities get a slap on the wrist, but his antics have gone far beyond mere excessive partying.
 * Technically, he hasn't done anything that breaks a law. He hasn't been found with drugs on his person, been driving under any sort of influence, and while his sexual conquests range from TMI to rather abhorrent, it's not anything he can get arrested for. Give it time. It'll happen.
 * What bugs me is that some people seem to regard Charlie Sheen as a person of relevance, despite not having been in a good film for more than 20 years. And not having been a particularly good actor in the first place.
 * Because he was the lead actor on one of the highest rated tv shows on the air, and he was the highest paid actor on TV. So, he actually is fairly relevant because, he's a huge tv star, and while his antics are disturbing they are amusing too.
 * And now the higher-ups at CBS are actually BEGGING him to come back on the show, so obviously he's an important asset to them. Personally, I'm hoping he'll get back on the show so we won't have to hear anymore of his annoying rants.
 * And honestly, does anybody else think he might be deliberately fanning the flames in a cry-for-help sort of way? I don't think he's as insane as his banter suggests... his manner seems over-the-top in a forced, rather than genuinely delusional, way. He sounds like a guy who's hit rock bottom, and is making his life as much of a debacle as possible, because the only "fun" left to him is to continue to one-up his own insanity/debauchery -- anything else would force him to clean up the mess he's made, which is the one thing he seems incapable of doing. It's hell to face the person you've become while you were trying to escape life, in my limited experience.
 * Here's a real headscratcher. How is he still alive? By his own admission, he's done things that no normal person could have survived. Has he taken so many drugs that his body runs on them now or something?
 * Some people just have higher resilience to drugs than others. For instance, Winston Churchill drank like a fish and smoked like a chimney, yet he lived to the ripe old age of ninety. And Hunter S. Thompson, who's entire persona is built around how he took an almost frighteningly large amounts of drugs for most of his life, lived through to his late sixties (when he committed suicide, but still...).
 * Don't forget Ozzy Osbourne, it took four times the normal dose of sedatives just to put him under, which stunned doctors.