Charlie Sheen's Meltdown
If you're a fan of awkward TV moments, March was a sublime month. It all started in late January, when Charlie Sheen, then star of the hit show Two and a Half Men, was rushed to a Beverly Hills hospital after a drug-saturated romp with porn stars. It was the latest in a string of incidents that included the trashing of a suite at New York City's Plaza Hotel, and it led to rampant speculation that the hard-partying Sheen had gone off the deep end. The actor did little to dispel those rumors. For a couple of weeks after his release from the hospital, he was everywhere; asked in interviews if he were on drugs, he'd reply, "I am on a drug, and it's Charlie Sheen!" When ABC's Andrea Canning suggested that he might be bipolar, he replied, "I'm bi-winning." All this eventually proved too much for Two and a Half Men creator Chuck Lorre; on March 7, the studio fired its erratic star. (Later that day, Sheen was seen on the roof of a building pounding a bottle of "tiger blood" and waving a machete.) Of course, the public meltdown was prime fodder for everyone, from major media outlets to paparazzi to late-night comedians. By the fall, with a moderately successful comedy tour under his belt and a new series on tap with FX, Sheen appeared clean and sober, and even made light of his meltdown. "That was one weird phase," he told Matt Lauer in September. "I was this guy before it started, and I can be that guy again."