Two and a Half Men

my rating:

OK, so there actually is something new worth watching on TV this year. And a sitcom, even. It's called Two and a Half Men, and it's on CBS on Monday nights. The "sit" part of "sitcom" is that Jon Cryer's wife has dumped him, so he and his young son move in with his bachelor brother Charlie Sheen. Hence the title. So you get something resembling a gay couple with a child... but with the only gay character being the infrequently-seen ex-wife. The "com" part comes of course from the fact that Sheen would kinda rather they hadn't moved in, but puts up with them because that's what brothers do.

Believe it or not, what drew me to check out this show was not the homoerotic undertones of the title. Not even Fox or UPN would put on something racy enough to actually live up to the image that brings up. No, what led me to give it a look was the producer: Chuck Lorre. He was the creator of Dharma & Greg, which was about a metaphysical odd couple who reminded me of my ex and me: a flaky pagan of hippy ancestry and an uptight nihilist child of capitalism... who happen to be in love. The show helped get me through the loss of my ex. Even though you could tell that Lorre was more on the sociopolitical side of the flake and her family, he didn't hestitate to poke fun of them or to portray the overclass family as likeable people. And it was amusing. He also inserted a different vanity card at the end of each episode, each with a brief textual musing (VCR/TiVo with freeze-frame required) that made it clear that this was a thinking person's sitcom.

But enough eulogising D&G. On to 2.5 Men. It's not so wildly good that I'm grabbing people on the street and telling them to watch it. And - rather obviously, now that I think about it, as the female characters all have the word "supporting" attached to them - it lacks the feminine coziness of D&G. But so far it's been funny without pandering to the stoopidity of the usual sitcom audience. And the vanity card message from the second episode (cribbed from Lorre's web site) gives me the assurance that it's the kind of sitcom I'm looking for:

We assume an intelligent audience holding remote controls. The only laughter you will hear is the laughter of real people. We will do no "very special" episodes. Nobody's having a baby. No one's getting married. Someone is getting divorced. Our characters are flawed, yet smart. The kid is, and will remain, a real kid. There will be no bachelor auctions. No one's getting stranded in a cabin or stuck in an elevator. There will be no dream sequences, talent shows, or fantasies.... at least in the first season. Ditto for homages to "Rashomon", "It's a Wonderful Life", and "A Christmas Carol". A car horn or other random noise will never be used to cleverly disguise naughty words. We will never have a character enter a scene if it reminds us of Lenny and Squiggy. Pop culture reference jokes are cheap, easy and date the show. We will not do them. There will be no pedantic, socially conscious stories. No matter how poignant the moment, we will never broadcast our studio audience going, "ahhh". Similarly, no matter how titillating the moment, we will never broadcast our studio audience going "wooo!". If we see 'it' coming we assume you see 'it' coming and we will therefore do our utmost to avoid 'it'. No fat jokes (unless they're really, really funny). The same goes for penis jokes. And finally, unless Chuck gets hit by a bus and Lee takes over, there will be no wacky scenes with little people or night-vision goggles.

What more can you ask for? Well, a lot, really. But this'll do for now.

# 2003-10-14 12:00 PM | TrackBack