Charlie Sheen's 'Anger Management' Sitcom Premieres on FX
Charlie Sheen's new sitcom "Anger Management" premiered on FX Thursday night, marking Sheen's comeback to TV since he left CBS' "Two and a Half Men" in 2011.
The TV show is loosely based on the 2003 film "Anger Management," starring Adam Sandler, Jack Nicholson and Marisa Tomei. Sheen stars as ex-baseball pro Charlie with some anger issues turned anger management therapist. Co-stars include his real life father Martin Sheen as his father, Shawnee Smith as his ex-wife and Selma Blair as his therapist.
On Thursday's episode "Charlie Goes Back to Therapy" Charlie decides to return to therapy after a bad run-in with his ex-wife's new boyfriend. The only problem is he just happens to be sleeping with the one therapist he trusts: his best friend, Kate.
Sheen opened the show talking to an inflatable punching bag which he uses to manage anger. Note
he wasn't talking to his former bosses:
"You can't fire me, I quit. You want to replace me with some other guy, go ahead! It won't be the same! You think I'm losing! I'm not! I'm-anyway, you get the idea..."
TV critics had mixed reviews about yesterday's premiere episode:
"Anger is pretty tame stuff. As overseen by show runner Bruce Helford (The Drew Carey Show), Anger is a conventionally constructed show, and Sheen delivers his lines with snap; it’s the writing that’s dully vague," wrote Entertainment Weekly.
"But it seems like this show is part of Sheen's therapy back into celebrity normalcy. The flare-up got us watching, but business as usual is not going to keep us paying attention. Sometimes the jokes almost hover closer to "edgy," but they're quickly snapped back into familiar and safe territory with this weird need to moralize within the story," wrote Ryan Sandoval for TV.com.
On next week's episode "Charlie and the Slumpbuster" the new "evolved" Charlie has to deal with a ghost from his old carousing, baseball-playing days when an unattractive woman he slept with just to break a batting slump shows up as a new patient in group therapy, according to FX.
"Anger Management" airs Thursdays at 9:30 p.m. EST