Two and a Half Men V 2.0

Few TV shows get the opportunity to hit the reset button. When a program does get that rare chance to replenish itself, it's usually because a star has died or left in a contract dispute.

In the case of "Two and a Half Men," the sitcom was forced to reinvent itself because its former star, Charlie Sheen, went insane.  Now that's a new one, gang.

You all know the histrionics behind Charlie Sheen's very public mental collapse.  I would argue that he was already halfway there on his very best days, but that's just me.  Anyway, Charlie went cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs and his longtime hit sitcom was clearly in play.  Should it stay?  Should it go?  And did anybody really care?

I, for one, would check off the third option.  When "Two and a Half Men" first came on about 100 years ago, I was a fan of the Brothers Harper.  Not the greatest situation comedy ever conceived, but it certainly was an amusing way to waste a nighttime half-hour.  Admittedly, the worst actor in the cast was always Charlie Sheen.  He'd punch across his lines as if he was Mike Tyson and he had all the acting subtlety of an anvil in your favorite Road Runner cartoon.  It was always confounding to me that he got the best reviews of all and yet was indeed the weakest link in the cast.

This usually happens with most hit sitcoms, the writing and acting gets incredibly lazy over time and it's all phoned in from some phone booth on Barham Boulevard in Burbank.  What used to be a class production starts to look like it was produced in the space of 45 minutes.  The lack of effort clearly shows up on the screen as the easiest gags in the world are beat to death over and over.  Penis this, fart that, sex this, screw that.

It wasn't long before "Two and a Half Men" started to resemble a toilet bowl in a truckstop on the highway to Las Vegas.  You know, the rest room that hasn't been cleaned since Harry Truman was in diapers.

As time and taste wore on and grew thin, I always wondered if the creative demise of the series was paralleling Sheen's rise to stardom.  Because, as the gags grew more vile, so did Charlie's character and subsequently his performance.  I found myself tuning in only to see the brief weekly appearances from Conchata Farrell as housekeeper Berta and Holland Taylor as mother Evelyn.  As far as I was concerned, "Two and a Half Men" should have been renamed "Two Sassy Women."

Last spring, Sheen's mind finally leaves for insanity and beyond---a trip that was a long time in the planning stages.  And, as the public deliberation ensued, showrunner Chuck Lorre was fully intent on keeping his Monday night cash cow udderly alive.  I thought this was a golden opportunity to reboot the whole show.  Spotlight the real actors like Jon Cryer and the aforementioned gals.  They've been hiding in the trenches for years.  It was time to come up with a vehicle that finally showcased them all.

That's what I would have done.   Um, nobody asked.

When Lorre decided to move forward despite the now permanent absence of his star who should have been commited to a mental institution years ago, he signed on the popular Ashton Kutcher as Charlie's "replacement."  Okay, I thought, Kutcher can be amusing.  He's developed a bit of a big screen presence and appeal.  And it sounded like they were going against the grain.  Rumor had it that Ashton's character would be the polar opposite of the already bipolar Charlie Harper.

I was intrigued.

The premiere episode in September started off promising.  Charlie was really gone.  Apparently tossed in front of a Paris metro by an irate woman.  The opening scene was his memorial service populated by a rogue's gallery of previous girlfriends.  What was Charlie's legacy with them?  Most of them cited a slew of venereal diseases.  Okay, still a little vile, but we did need to close out Charlie Harper the way we knew him.  I was still sniffing a little promise.

By the second act break, Walden (Kutcher) had made his first appearance wading through Charlie's ashes, which had conveniently been spilled onto the floor of his living room.  Walden had been jilted by his wife and was trying to drown himself in the ocean behind the Harpers' Malibu homestead.  For about ten minutes, it really looked like this series had been successfully re-launched.  The dynamic had completely changed.  Good and smart comedy would ensue.

Er, not so fast.

By the end of Episode #1, Kutcher was naked, involved in a three-way with two bimbos, and the rest of the cast was commenting endlessly on how big his penis is.

I was done.

A golden opportunity was left in the dust by perhaps the laziest writing staff in the history of television.

I checked in a few more times to find that, week after week, the show had been completely reduced to the level of a conversation between some eleven-year-old boys who just discovered a peephole into the girls' locker room.  I'd cringe.  I'd grimace.  I'd shake my head.

The one thing I never ever did was laugh.  Even once.  Even the women in the cast were now reduced to leering and oversexed embarassments. 

Performances that used to have a soupcon of shading were now labored and obvious.  All of a sudden, the Charlie Sheen School of Acting was sporting a few more graduates.

Shame on them all.

Last week, when Kutcher's character slept with Charlie's mother, my shark jumped higher than ever.  Monday nights at 9PM on CBS were now officially forbidden in my home.

Sadly, it didn't have to be.  The "Two and a Half Men" producers and writers were given a second life to redeem themselves.  But, like the sloppiest of teenage boys, it's always easier to leave your dirty gym socks on the floor of your room.    Too lazy to clean up.  Definitely way too lazy to try and be creative.

Dinner last night:  Eye round roast beef with German potato salad and cole slaw in my New York living situation.