After a long and eager wait Two and a Half Men has finally returned, sans Charlie Sheen. The show has never managed to produce great comedy instead preferring to string together one-liners which are occasionally good enough to justify to leaving the show on when there's nothing else good on TV. This presents quite a difficulty when attempting to introduce a rather huge plot change.
Sheen's character, Charlie Harper, is written off in a pre-credits funeral scene. As Alan attempts to deliver a eulogy the "mourners" repeatedly interject to spew insults at Charlie's corpse. It is a familiar set up for Two and a Half Men, eschewing plot for one-liners, except in this case there isn't even much of an attempt made at making the one-liners funny, sticking instead to vitriol.
The rather poor and directionless urinating on Charlie's grave is followed by a string of cameos as potential buyers of Charlie's Malibu mansion swing by. John Stamos pops in to insinuate that Charlie was a bit gay and Jenna Elfman and Thomas Gibson show up as Dharma and Greg. Elfman and Gibson seem to be doing their old producer and current Men producer Chuck Lorre a favour by filling some time in the episode. Elfman does well, Gibson is the very definition of phoning it in.
Eventually the moment we've been waiting for arrives in the form of Ashton Kutcher's suicidal billionaire Walden Schmidt. The show picks up from here on in, moving on from the incessant Charlie bashing to something resembling a plot. Kutcher does well as the fairly socially clueless Schmidt but he's a bit of a blank canvas at the moment. He plays his scenes as plainly as possible leaving plenty of room for the writers to work on fleshing out his character later.
Kutcher is funny and the potential relationship with Alan does come across as something which may have legs. Jake however, is largely absent from the episode, he has two lines in the whole thing; one of them being a rather weak punchline/fart. There may be a reason for this, part of the set-up for the show has always been Jake's cluelessness and how he deals with bad advice from both father Alan and Uncle Charlie, but now Walden is the clueless one, things may run into trouble as the two characters double up on each other. Things could turn out to become One and Two Half Men.
Kutcher does a great job and Jon Cryer really rises to that, seeming to fit better with him than he ever did with Sheen. It remains to be seen how Jake will fit into the equation. It's very apparent that Ashton Kutcher really does deserve to head his own sitcom, it's just worrying that it's one as poorly written as this one.
Two and a Half Men is set to stumble around for a while yet but could eventually find its feet, it remains to be seen. Meanwhile Charlie Sheen seems to be finding his. He seems to be leaving behind his bizarre meltdown and is just about ready for employment. His good wishes for the Two and a Half Men cast and crew at the Emmys show a much more stable man, his recovery makes Men's season open seem extra mean-spirited.
Speaking of mean-spirited, Comedy Central aired its Roast of Charlie Sheen last night just an hour after the new episode of Men. The show featured some pretty nasty digs at Charlie and dredged up a lot of sore points, but Charlie took his beating with good humour, he tweeted his respect for his roasters as the show aired and closed with "Thank you @comedycentral..! I'm moved... speechless and grateful! (and glad it's over...) Well done my friends. Well done! xo c" at its conclusion. The Roast managed to both highlight how Sheen's craziness hurt other people but also provided an outlet for at least some of the anger. Enough catharsis may come out of the night for Sheen to move on, and so far that seems to be happening. Sheen and his old bosses at Warner Brothers finally coming to a conclusion over payment deals following his Two and a Half Men departure. Bad blood there seems to be simmering down.
Sheen has also been cast in the indie movie A Glimpse Inside The Mind of Charlie Swan III opposite Jason Schwartzman and he is also working on a new TV sitcom version of Adam Sandler/Jack Nicholson movie Anger Management. That's not a lot of projects for a one time A-lister, but it's a good start considering how far Sheen had fallen.
Richard Duffy
