The highest-paid TV role of the last decade revealed

Television has enjoyed a profound renaissance through the 2010s, and the format itself has changed so radically, we now use the term "on the air" by cultural reflex rather than out of any actual truth — the same way we no longer actually "hang up" the phone. With all that change and growth has come bigger salaries for the brightest TV stars. Our television consumption culture has blurred so much with Hollywood's that TV personalities have turned into the kind of celebrity that mere decades before we reserved only for A-list movie stars. The top-earner of the decade certainly fits this bill in their own way, and enjoyed a bright spotlight there for a while – a spotlight in which we were also forced to learn about "tiger blood" and scandalous purchasing habits, unfortunately.

Yes, we're talking about Charlie Sheen, who was indeed the highest-paid TV actor of the 2010s. Sheen made a jaw-dropping $1.8 million per episode as the freewheeling and womanizing Charlie Harper on Two and a Half Men until being infamously fired in 2011.

Jim Parsons of The Big Bang Theory made a lot of news when he negotiated himself into a high-paying contract a few years later, but at "just" $1 million an episode, it doesn't really even come close to Sheen's take-home. Why? Because Two and a Half Men was one of the biggest sitcoms on television, and Sheen was by far the biggest household name and viewer draw. When Sheen left in 2011, Two and a Half Men averaged almost 13 million viewers and was on par with The Big Bang's ratings. 2011 was eons ago vis-à-vis TV cultural memory – it's easy to forget just how popular Two and a Half Men was, and how negatively the show was affected once Sheen was kicked off. If money talks, Ashton Kutcher as a substitute for Sheen simply didn't translate en masse: the series' ratings plummeted in its post-Sheen era and the actor replacement essentially ruined the show.