If there's a silver lining to the endless tabloid drama that is Charlie Sheen--it's the way the Two and a Half Men screenwriters killed off his character on last night's season premiere: death by subway train. The gratifying demise came about when his character, Charlie Harper, ran away with his neighbor Rose to Paris to get married. When she caught him cheating on her with another woman, "Naturally, she pushed him in front of a train," reports The Hollywood Reporter. As Rose's character described it in the episode, "his body just exploded like a balloon full of meat." Sheen was of course fired in March after publicly disparaging his bosses in a series of bizarre, meat-headed interviews. It sounds like you could feel the producers reaping their revenge on Sheen in the narrative of the show:

The episode began with a funeral scene in which Jon Cryer's character, Alan Harper, said that it was a sad day for everyone.

"Speak for yourself," one woman shouted from the audience.

Now Ashton Kutcher, playing an Internet billionaire, will fill the void of testosterone left by Sheen in what's sure to continue the laugh track-fueled sitcom's legacy of mediocrity.

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John Hudson