November’s big TV PR crisis involved Two and a Half Men star Angus T. Jones, his sudden conversion to paranoid Seventh-Day Adventist, and the moment of truth when he decided that the show that made him a millionaire was “filth” that will “rot your brain” and encouraged viewers to “do some research” and “please stop watching” his hit show.

It was no laughing matter, really; we found it quite depressing. Still, we knew it would only be a matter of time before someone took the opportunity to turn Jones’s spiritual and existential crisis into a promotional opportunity. Leave it to the cast of The Office to make light of this deeply disturbing episode by recreating the video:

We haven’t really kept up with The Office recently, and we feel like NBC made the right decision in passing on its proposed spinoff. Still, we have to commend the cast for recognizing opportunity in tragedy and jumping right on it.

We were more than a little amused yesterday to read news of one Angus T. Jones, an actor better known as “that kid on Two and a Half Men”, pulling what looked like an outright effort to sabotage his own show.

Jones appeared in a bizarre YouTube video that just happens to double as a promo spot for The Forerunner Chronicles, a multi-media project pushing the “end times” Seventh-day Adventist movement. He makes his new-found allegiance to God quite clear in the pseudo-interview while bemoaning his current gig, telling viewers to “please stop watching Two and a Half Men” and “filling your head with filth” and encouraging the public to “do some research on the effects of television and your brain” because “it’s bad news.”

This little incident provided the Internet with more awkward chuckles than a Charlie Sheen rant while creating a huge headache for anyone who makes money producing, promoting or performing on what remains one of TV’s top-rated sitcoms (and that’s quite a few people). Based on follow-up reports, it seems like the only folks happy with Jones’s online outburst are his friends at Forerunner Chronicles and the Valley Crossroads Seventh-day Adventist Church–because everyone loves free PR from a semi-famous “soldier of truth.”*

Anyway, we had to ask: why would a massively successful actor pull a stunt like this? And how can the show’s PR team contain the damage done?

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