The hit CBS comedy just celebrated his 100th episode. In its fifth season, Warner Brothers has gone the usual "cash cow" route and sold the reruns into syndication.
And therein lies a problem. In Los Angeles, the local station plays two episodes back-to-back from 7-8PM. And that presents a wonderful contrast of how a good show can go bad. The first half-hour is usually culled from the first two seasons of the series. The second half-hour is more recent, from the 2006-07 primetime season. When you watch a few of these hours on consecutive nights, it's akin to looking at a baseline x-ray of your lung and comparing it to one after you're diagnosed with a tumor.
In its initial years, "Two and a Half Men" didn't blaze any great creative trails, but it did provide a quite serviceable forum for a weekly belly laugh or two. While Charlie Sheen is clearly way overrated as a comedic actor, the rest of the cast was terrific. As Jake, the ultra-bratty small fry, Angus T. Jones stole one scene after another. He became a comic device that you craved like chocolate. Just as you would wait for Estelle Getty to show up on "The Golden Girls" years before, Jake's weekly appearance was the series' true drawing card. When you mix in some welcome contributions from co-stars Conchata Farrell as Berta the housekeeper and the always reliable Holland Taylor as the boys' mother, you wound up with a decent half-hour that could be easily "season passed" on your TiVo.
And then something happened. Perhaps showrunner Chuck Lorre was locked up and terrorized in a female correctional institution. Whatever the case, the show, in its later stages, got nasty. And vile. And immature. And downright gutteral. I now cringe at most of the humor, which is amateurish at best. Rarely does a week go by without at least one reference to a small penis. While Farrell and Taylor are still welcomed, the comedic gold, once mined by young Jake, is now buried inside a potty-mouthed teenager who ceased to be cute two years ago.
"Two and a Half Men" got lots of attention a few weeks back when they hit #100. But, I'd like the producers to watch that local station from 7 to 8PM every night and explain to me what happened. They are clearly two different shows. The only consistent thing across the entire series? Charlie Sheen still can't act.
Dinner last night: Cajun Chicken tenders at the Cheesecake Factory.
1 comment:
I disagree. He was quite funny a long time ago in that Musketeers movie for Disney. Don't know if he's good on his show since I've seen it maybe twice.
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