Two and a Half Men -- Now with Ashton Kutcher -- (CBS)
02-22-15, 04:27 PM
#276
DVD Talk Special Edition
Re: Two and a Half Men -- Now with Ashton Kutcher -- (CBS)
Wonder if his grudge with Sheen will carry over to the Big Bang Theory?
02-22-15, 04:34 PM
#279
Re: Two and a Half Men -- Now with Ashton Kutcher -- (CBS)
One certainly has to wonder how Lorre thought he'd come off pulling this... he looks to be the only jackass in sight here. Just way, way too over the top - downright venomous.
Beyond the nastiness, however, what a note to end the show on. Lorre goes off on Sheen over the years, replacing him and "moving on." Then, you devote an entire *hour* of the series *finale* to... Sheen, and no one else? Makes it seem that this wasn't 2.5 men, nor an ensemble some dozen seasons long, but "The Charlie Sheen Show" - even four years after he's been gone.
Beyond the nastiness, however, what a note to end the show on. Lorre goes off on Sheen over the years, replacing him and "moving on." Then, you devote an entire *hour* of the series *finale* to... Sheen, and no one else? Makes it seem that this wasn't 2.5 men, nor an ensemble some dozen seasons long, but "The Charlie Sheen Show" - even four years after he's been gone.
02-22-15, 04:39 PM
#280
DVD Talk Legend
Re: Two and a Half Men -- Now with Ashton Kutcher -- (CBS)
Yeah it really seems like Lorre never got over Sheen leaving the series and carried that grudge to the end. There's really not a reason to have killed off his character on two separate occasions. Especially in the series finale which you would think would be dedicated to giving a good send off to the characters still on the series.
02-22-15, 04:44 PM
#281
Re: Two and a Half Men -- Now with Ashton Kutcher -- (CBS)
Yeah it really seems like Lorre never got over Sheen leaving the series and carried that grudge to the end. There's really not a reason to have killed off his character on two separate occasions. Especially in the series finale which you would think would be dedicated to giving a good send off to the characters still on the series.
02-22-15, 04:49 PM
#282
DVD Talk Hero
Re: Two and a Half Men -- Now with Ashton Kutcher -- (CBS)
I liked the finale until that dumbass ending. And, no, the card at the end doesn't make up for it.
02-22-15, 04:52 PM
#283
DVD Talk Legend
Re: Two and a Half Men -- Now with Ashton Kutcher -- (CBS)
Yeah the finale could have been a lot different (and better) had they actually been able to get Sheen to agree to it. The fact that they didn't and used the entire episode to take shots at him is what made it so lame. Not that the series was that great over the last how many years anyways, but the way it was done was stupid.
02-22-15, 08:40 PM
#284
DVD Talk Limited Edition
02-22-15, 09:44 PM
#285
Senior Member
Re: Two and a Half Men -- Now with Ashton Kutcher -- (CBS)
I absolutely fucking hated this finale. And this is coming from a big fan of the Sheen years. It was clear Lorre was just messing with Charlie the whole time (about the possibility of him coming back to the show). He spent the entire episode fucking over his fans in favor of continuing a feud that people stopped caring about 4 years ago.
02-23-15, 03:19 AM
#286
Re: Two and a Half Men -- Now with Ashton Kutcher -- (CBS)
I wasn't a huge fan of the show but I liked Charlie Sheen's character and obviously he was the main reason for the success of the show. So this finale comes off as kind of a slap in the face to the fans, as much as it is to Charlie Sheen.
02-23-15, 01:51 PM
#287
DVD Talk Limited Edition
Re: Two and a Half Men -- Now with Ashton Kutcher -- (CBS)
I simply cannot believe ANYONE thinks that piece of crap finale was even remotely watchable, let alone good. I was a fan of the show through the Sheen years, and no, it wasn't ever great TV, but it was at least watchable. This last episode was tripe.
02-23-15, 03:33 PM
#289
DVD Talk Godfather & 2020 TOTY Winner
02-23-15, 04:15 PM
#290
Senior Member
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Re: Two and a Half Men -- Now with Ashton Kutcher -- (CBS)
I meant the rest of the show. The animation was terrible. But I did like that they basically acknowledged they milked the show after Charlie. Because they did.
02-23-15, 06:30 PM
#291
DVD Talk Godfather & 2020 TOTY Winner
Re: Two and a Half Men -- Now with Ashton Kutcher -- (CBS)
From Grantland:
‘Two and a Half Men’: TV’s Worst Sitcom Ends As Terribly As It Lived, and I Watched Every Episode
TV
February 20, 2015
by Pilot Viruet
It’s fair to say that the most impressive feat Two and a Half Men pulled off is that it existed for so long: 12 seasons and 262 episodes, from Charlie Sheen to Ashton Kutcher, with a little bit of Amber Tamblyn thrown in. Since 2003, it has transformed from Two and a Half Men to Two and a Half Different Men to Two Men and a Kid Who Skypes From the Military to Two Men and a Random Lesbian to, finally, Two Straight Men Who Are Married to Each Other. It’s a sitcom that is simple but never makes any sense. It’s universally despised by culture critics, and the easiest of punch lines to jokes about the worst of television. But it’s also one of the most popular comedies on any broadcast network, ranking in the top 20 for its first 10 seasons. Who’s watching a despised program that is aggressively redundant and gleefully misogynistic, and just churned out a final season that is basically one 16-episode-long gay joke? As it turns out, millions and millions of people watched. And I was one of them.
As something of a defense: I have a compulsion when it comes to television, an obsessive nature where I have to finish every show that I start watching or else I feel a constant itch that I can’t reach. In 2008, while sick in bed, I made the fever-delirious mistake of watching the first few episodes and spent the following week watching five seasons. Since then, I’ve watched every new episode on a weekly basis — it’s actually been kind of nice knowing that I can easily predict what the lowest 22 minutes of my week will be. It’s the only comedy series that I’ve watched where I never — not even once — laughed at a single joke. Anytime I’ve come close was due less to humor and more to patent absurdity: a CSI crossover episode, or a visit from Chuck Lorre’s other creations Dharma and Greg. This compulsion makes me more familiar with Two and a Half Men than the vast majority of detractors who endlessly poke fun at its awfulness. I still agree that it’s terrible.
Yet after watching multiple episodes, it’s easy to see why it’s so popular — and why I kept going to the next episode immediately after one ended. Two and a Half Men has a very simplistic setup: Alan (Jon Cryer, who has won two Emmys for this role) gets a divorce and moves in with his rich, boozy, druggie brother Charlie (Charlie Sheen), bringing along his son Jake (Angus T. Jones, who later decried the immorality of the series). Alan is a pathetic, broke loser who drinks girly drinks and therefore becomes the butt of countless gay jokes. Charlie is a womanizer who drinks Scotch for breakfast and shrugs off his multiple threesomes. In one episode, Alan and Charlie squabble and then go have sex with women. In another episode, Alan and Charlie squabble and then go have sex with women. This continues for about eight seasons, until Charlie Sheen is replaced with Ashton Kutcher. Enter Walden Schmidt (Kutcher), another rich and attractive guy. He and Alan squabble and then go have sex with women. Soon, Jake leaves the series and is replaced by Jenny (Amber Tamblyn), a lesbian for no other reason than this show demands that every main character sexualizes women, even when they are women themselves.
The most (and again, only) fascinating thing about Two and a Half Men is that all of the critical complaints are about the same notes that make it popular. The very point of the show is that there isn’t anything intelligent or deep happening; you won’t miss anything if you skip a week, or even a season. It also means that it appeals to viewers who don’t necessarily demand complex story lines but instead are happy to keep their sitcoms simple, to be told when to laugh and for how long. You don’t have to be in on the joke to get the joke. Two and a Half Men is popular because it’s pure escapism. Men — and I’m sure some women — love to entertain the notion that maybe they, too, can be Charlie Harper, a man who wears a bowling shirt and khaki shorts but manages to get every single woman he glances at. They want the fat royalty checks for doing minimum work (Charlie wrote cheesy jingles; Walden is an Internet billionaire), they want the huge beach house with the beautiful view of the ocean. But those things aren’t attainable, of course, so instead we watch these characters every week, patiently wading through the endless jokes about Alan’s impotence or Charlie’s collection of STDs.
Two and Half Men hit a new low every season and then continued to sink even further underground. During this last season, the show went off the rails in terms of absurdity and offensiveness. After a death scare, Walden decides that he wants to adopt a child and, since he’d have more luck if he were married, he and Alan decide to wed and adopt the child together. What follows are a plethora of obvious jokes, mostly at Alan’s expense — no one is surprised that he married a man; they all assumed he was gay already — as he girlishly demands a fancy wedding, fawns over his new husband, and brags about Walden’s attractiveness to everyone he can. Isn’t that funny, these two straight men playing gay for a roaring laugh track? It’s as low as the show can go but then, again, it goes lower. They successfully adopt a child who is now in the home of two con artists. When their lie is discovered by their social worker, Ms. McMartin — she stops by on a day when Walden is, what else, having sex with a woman — Alan’s solution is to then sleep with Ms. McMartin. It works until they break up. In danger of losing their son again, this time Walden sleeps with her. This is the sort of plot you’d make up for a purposely terrible fake sitcom, but it’s one that Two and a Half Men trotted out proudly over multiple episodes. It’s so bad that it’s impressively bulletproof — how can critics try to make sense out of this nonsensical narrative without throwing up their hands and simply giving up?
Take last night’s two-part series finale, “Of Course He’s Dead.” In lieu of wrapping up any story lines or providing glimpses into the future of these characters that fans have spent years with, it instead provided something of creator Chuck Lorre’s revenge fantasy. The entire hour was dedicated to the out-of-nowhere idea that Charlie — killed in France, per an explanation in Season 9 — was still alive. We learn that he has spent the last four years living in a dungeon built by his former stalker turned current wife turned kidnapper (long story; not worth it) and now, recently escaped, he plans to kill both Alan and Walden. Charlie’s after Walden because he took over Charlie’s life (and house), and after Alan because, in Alan’s words, “He thought I was more of a supporting character in his life, but it turns out I was more of a co-lead” — one of the many meta jokes sprinkled throughout the two episodes. Sheen himself never shows up,[foonote]Lorre tried to get him involved, at least.[/footnote] but a look-alike does (shot only from behind) and, suddenly, we see a piano, absurdly delivered by a helicopter, fall down and crush him to death. The camera pans back to break the fourth wall and reveal a smirking Lorre in a director’s chair. He sneers,“Winning,” before he, too, is crushed by a piano. That’s it. That is the impossibly lame way the show ended after 12 seasons, once again offering something so ridiculous it defies scrutiny.
Two and a Half Men transcended hate-watching and found a loophole in the system: It became so unequivocally terrible that hardly any critics stuck around to watch it long enough and analyze how awful it was, instead checking in only periodically (such as the Season 9 premiere when Kutcher arrived). Two and a Half Men, for all of its stereotypical sitcom tropes, was actually a rarity in that it managed to escape weekly critical scrutiny. It was a show that existed solely for the people who loved it intensely, and who didn’t need the Internet to validate their opinion. The writers crafted a show that belonged to the fans — not the critics. And then they started dropping pianos on everybody.
<iframe width="853" height="480" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/0PByzajgpwA?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
‘Two and a Half Men’: TV’s Worst Sitcom Ends As Terribly As It Lived, and I Watched Every Episode
TV
February 20, 2015
by Pilot Viruet
It’s fair to say that the most impressive feat Two and a Half Men pulled off is that it existed for so long: 12 seasons and 262 episodes, from Charlie Sheen to Ashton Kutcher, with a little bit of Amber Tamblyn thrown in. Since 2003, it has transformed from Two and a Half Men to Two and a Half Different Men to Two Men and a Kid Who Skypes From the Military to Two Men and a Random Lesbian to, finally, Two Straight Men Who Are Married to Each Other. It’s a sitcom that is simple but never makes any sense. It’s universally despised by culture critics, and the easiest of punch lines to jokes about the worst of television. But it’s also one of the most popular comedies on any broadcast network, ranking in the top 20 for its first 10 seasons. Who’s watching a despised program that is aggressively redundant and gleefully misogynistic, and just churned out a final season that is basically one 16-episode-long gay joke? As it turns out, millions and millions of people watched. And I was one of them.
As something of a defense: I have a compulsion when it comes to television, an obsessive nature where I have to finish every show that I start watching or else I feel a constant itch that I can’t reach. In 2008, while sick in bed, I made the fever-delirious mistake of watching the first few episodes and spent the following week watching five seasons. Since then, I’ve watched every new episode on a weekly basis — it’s actually been kind of nice knowing that I can easily predict what the lowest 22 minutes of my week will be. It’s the only comedy series that I’ve watched where I never — not even once — laughed at a single joke. Anytime I’ve come close was due less to humor and more to patent absurdity: a CSI crossover episode, or a visit from Chuck Lorre’s other creations Dharma and Greg. This compulsion makes me more familiar with Two and a Half Men than the vast majority of detractors who endlessly poke fun at its awfulness. I still agree that it’s terrible.
Yet after watching multiple episodes, it’s easy to see why it’s so popular — and why I kept going to the next episode immediately after one ended. Two and a Half Men has a very simplistic setup: Alan (Jon Cryer, who has won two Emmys for this role) gets a divorce and moves in with his rich, boozy, druggie brother Charlie (Charlie Sheen), bringing along his son Jake (Angus T. Jones, who later decried the immorality of the series). Alan is a pathetic, broke loser who drinks girly drinks and therefore becomes the butt of countless gay jokes. Charlie is a womanizer who drinks Scotch for breakfast and shrugs off his multiple threesomes. In one episode, Alan and Charlie squabble and then go have sex with women. In another episode, Alan and Charlie squabble and then go have sex with women. This continues for about eight seasons, until Charlie Sheen is replaced with Ashton Kutcher. Enter Walden Schmidt (Kutcher), another rich and attractive guy. He and Alan squabble and then go have sex with women. Soon, Jake leaves the series and is replaced by Jenny (Amber Tamblyn), a lesbian for no other reason than this show demands that every main character sexualizes women, even when they are women themselves.
The most (and again, only) fascinating thing about Two and a Half Men is that all of the critical complaints are about the same notes that make it popular. The very point of the show is that there isn’t anything intelligent or deep happening; you won’t miss anything if you skip a week, or even a season. It also means that it appeals to viewers who don’t necessarily demand complex story lines but instead are happy to keep their sitcoms simple, to be told when to laugh and for how long. You don’t have to be in on the joke to get the joke. Two and a Half Men is popular because it’s pure escapism. Men — and I’m sure some women — love to entertain the notion that maybe they, too, can be Charlie Harper, a man who wears a bowling shirt and khaki shorts but manages to get every single woman he glances at. They want the fat royalty checks for doing minimum work (Charlie wrote cheesy jingles; Walden is an Internet billionaire), they want the huge beach house with the beautiful view of the ocean. But those things aren’t attainable, of course, so instead we watch these characters every week, patiently wading through the endless jokes about Alan’s impotence or Charlie’s collection of STDs.
Two and Half Men hit a new low every season and then continued to sink even further underground. During this last season, the show went off the rails in terms of absurdity and offensiveness. After a death scare, Walden decides that he wants to adopt a child and, since he’d have more luck if he were married, he and Alan decide to wed and adopt the child together. What follows are a plethora of obvious jokes, mostly at Alan’s expense — no one is surprised that he married a man; they all assumed he was gay already — as he girlishly demands a fancy wedding, fawns over his new husband, and brags about Walden’s attractiveness to everyone he can. Isn’t that funny, these two straight men playing gay for a roaring laugh track? It’s as low as the show can go but then, again, it goes lower. They successfully adopt a child who is now in the home of two con artists. When their lie is discovered by their social worker, Ms. McMartin — she stops by on a day when Walden is, what else, having sex with a woman — Alan’s solution is to then sleep with Ms. McMartin. It works until they break up. In danger of losing their son again, this time Walden sleeps with her. This is the sort of plot you’d make up for a purposely terrible fake sitcom, but it’s one that Two and a Half Men trotted out proudly over multiple episodes. It’s so bad that it’s impressively bulletproof — how can critics try to make sense out of this nonsensical narrative without throwing up their hands and simply giving up?
Take last night’s two-part series finale, “Of Course He’s Dead.” In lieu of wrapping up any story lines or providing glimpses into the future of these characters that fans have spent years with, it instead provided something of creator Chuck Lorre’s revenge fantasy. The entire hour was dedicated to the out-of-nowhere idea that Charlie — killed in France, per an explanation in Season 9 — was still alive. We learn that he has spent the last four years living in a dungeon built by his former stalker turned current wife turned kidnapper (long story; not worth it) and now, recently escaped, he plans to kill both Alan and Walden. Charlie’s after Walden because he took over Charlie’s life (and house), and after Alan because, in Alan’s words, “He thought I was more of a supporting character in his life, but it turns out I was more of a co-lead” — one of the many meta jokes sprinkled throughout the two episodes. Sheen himself never shows up,[foonote]Lorre tried to get him involved, at least.[/footnote] but a look-alike does (shot only from behind) and, suddenly, we see a piano, absurdly delivered by a helicopter, fall down and crush him to death. The camera pans back to break the fourth wall and reveal a smirking Lorre in a director’s chair. He sneers,“Winning,” before he, too, is crushed by a piano. That’s it. That is the impossibly lame way the show ended after 12 seasons, once again offering something so ridiculous it defies scrutiny.
Two and a Half Men transcended hate-watching and found a loophole in the system: It became so unequivocally terrible that hardly any critics stuck around to watch it long enough and analyze how awful it was, instead checking in only periodically (such as the Season 9 premiere when Kutcher arrived). Two and a Half Men, for all of its stereotypical sitcom tropes, was actually a rarity in that it managed to escape weekly critical scrutiny. It was a show that existed solely for the people who loved it intensely, and who didn’t need the Internet to validate their opinion. The writers crafted a show that belonged to the fans — not the critics. And then they started dropping pianos on everybody.
<iframe width="853" height="480" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/0PByzajgpwA?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Last edited by Decker; 02-23-15 at 06:38 PM.
02-23-15, 07:49 PM
#292
DVD Talk Legend
Re: Two and a Half Men -- Now with Ashton Kutcher -- (CBS)
Honestly while it was never a great series by any means I think the Sheen years were at least decent for what they were. It really wasn't until Kutcher was brought in that things seemed to go to hell.
05-13-16, 02:34 PM
#294
DVD Talk Legend
Re: Two and a Half Men -- Now with Ashton Kutcher -- (CBS)
So I have decided I need to start collecting Two and a Half Men on dvd, I have always watched the show in syndication, but they always show them out of order. Does anyone here own the show on dvd? I have never watched the show from beginning to end, I wondered if seasons have any season long arc to them.
05-13-16, 02:51 PM
#296
DVD Talk Legend
Re: Two and a Half Men -- Now with Ashton Kutcher -- (CBS)
Every episode seem to be about Charlie is man whore, Alan is a tight wade. Not that I am complaining, but I want to watch every episode.
05-13-16, 03:51 PM
#297
DVD Talk Hero
Re: Two and a Half Men -- Now with Ashton Kutcher -- (CBS)
With the exception of Charlie's handful of long term girlfriends/fiancées, there's not many large story arcs throughout the series. I stopped watching once Sheen left so I can't say what story arcs the Kutcher era had.
Everyone loves to bag on the show but the one thing this series did better than any other sitcom I've ever seen was writing for the child. Jake was better written as an actual kid than I've seen on any other sitcom. Every other show either writes for a cartoony "lovable delinquent" Bart Simpson type kid or a unrealistic "genius" child who spends most of his time speaking like no other child on Earth has ever spoken and making the adults look stupid.
It was refreshing seeing Jake act like a normal kid.
Everyone loves to bag on the show but the one thing this series did better than any other sitcom I've ever seen was writing for the child. Jake was better written as an actual kid than I've seen on any other sitcom. Every other show either writes for a cartoony "lovable delinquent" Bart Simpson type kid or a unrealistic "genius" child who spends most of his time speaking like no other child on Earth has ever spoken and making the adults look stupid.
It was refreshing seeing Jake act like a normal kid.
Last edited by GoldenJCJ; 05-13-16 at 03:58 PM.
05-13-16, 04:02 PM
#298
DVD Talk Legend
Re: Two and a Half Men -- Now with Ashton Kutcher -- (CBS)
With the exception of Charlie's handful of long term girlfriends/fiancées, there's not many large story arcs throughout the series. I stopped watching once Sheen left so I can't say what story arcs the Kutcher era had.
Everyone loves to bag on the show but the one thing this series did better than any other sitcom I've ever seen was writing for the child. Jake was better written as an actual kid than I've seen on any other sitcom. Every other show either writes for a cartoony "lovable delinquent" Bart Simpson type kid or a unrealistic "genius" child who spends most of his time speaking like no other child on Earth has ever spoken and making the adults look stupid.
It was refreshing seeing Jake act like a normal kid.
Everyone loves to bag on the show but the one thing this series did better than any other sitcom I've ever seen was writing for the child. Jake was better written as an actual kid than I've seen on any other sitcom. Every other show either writes for a cartoony "lovable delinquent" Bart Simpson type kid or a unrealistic "genius" child who spends most of his time speaking like no other child on Earth has ever spoken and making the adults look stupid.
It was refreshing seeing Jake act like a normal kid.
I saw some of the Kutcher stuff. It wasn't bad but there didn't seem to be anything fresh. I was surprised the ratings stayed solid. Then again I'm the worst one to judge what a popular show should be because I always guess wrong.
