June 28, 2012

I Would Very Much Like To Murder This TV Show Savagely, Please

President Bartlet's son, mind you.<a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:CharlieSheenMarch2009.jpg">Angela George</a>/Wikimedia Commons

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It was difficult for me to finish writing my review of Anger Management because every time I think about the show I see a hot flash of red, the veins in my neck tighten, and I wake up hours later, covered in entrails, in a location I’ve never been to before.

Anger Management (premiering Thursday, June 28 at 9 p.m. EST on FX) is a loose adaptation of the 2003 Jack Nicholson/Adam Sandler comedy of the same name—a film that precisely no one was asking to be adapted into a TV show. The new laugh-track-laden sitcom stars Charlie Sheen. Remember? Sheen? Charlie? Hot Shots! Part Deux? Charlie Sheen?

Never mind. Anyway, Charlie Sheen plays an unconventional anger management therapist with anger management issues. Selma Blair shows up from time to time to have sex with Charlie Sheen. Charlie Sheen lazily acts his way through stock narrative.

There is absolutely nothing redeeming about this show. It’s listlessly acted, crappily scripted, and a textbook example of faux-edginess. (It’s rare that prison rape jokes and “I shot my boyfriend in the dick” jokes fall this deafeningly flat.) The series does score high marks for irony, though, given its title and the fact that it enrages me.

It’s godawful. It’s insultingly bad and heartachingly dumb. It’s like someone took the abruptly cancelled ABC sitcom Help Me Help You, lobotomized it, put it on cable TV, and lobotomized it all over again. So just don’t watch it, ever. The feeling you get from doing so is akin to the feeling you get after sleeping with your best friend in a feverish drunken haze during a creatively themed New Year’s party at a Holiday Inn: You will regret it almost immeidately, you will hate yourself for allowing yourself to do it, and you will likely vomit out of nausea and sadness.

This TV show ruins lives. But if you still feel the urge to tune in Thursday night, please first take a moment to tweet me your contact info. We’ll have a long conversation about this, and I will do everything I can to walk you back from the brink.

Click here for more movie and TV features from Mother Jones. To read more of Asawin’s reviews, click here.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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