Yep, so I liked Two and A Half Men. It's a weirdly derided and reviled television show, getting a shitload of flak from various quarters. I'm not entirely sure why, other than the catch-all of people are fucking weird. I'm also not entirely sure how it got to be so popular, either, but the vitriol it gets seems...disproportionate. It's an entertaining bit of sitcom fluff by and large – you watch it once and then pretty much forget about it once the end credits have rolled. Kind of like you wish you could forget about that body in the garden, the one that keeps whispering about the monkeys.
No doubt I'll get a bit of stick for admitting I enjoy (or rather enjoyed) a show that's considered trash and a perfect target for ridicule. Fair enough. In a lot of ways I should have been part of the crowd catcalling the programme and decrying it as shit from the start. It's not as if I'm above that kind of thing, there are quite a few things I find myself getting on the bandwagon of disliking*, but I couldn't see what all the fuss was about.
In the last couple of series it's started to lose its enjoyment factor. It managed a half decent season after Charlie Sheen went off the deep end and started ranting about tiger blood and whatever else squirmed into his head through the coke-fuelled haze. Then it lost its way, and the fact there wasn't a 'half' man anymore became this great foghorn, blaring, "We have no idea what the fuck is going on! Keep watching anyway!" I can't help feeling they took their cue from ole Carlos Estevez.
What kept me watching when I first stumbled on the early episodes shown on Channel Five back in, like, the misty times of 2005 was that it was a little different from your average sitcom. It still had all those sitcom tropes: the canned laughter, the aggressive grip on the status quo and the growing implausibility of the premise. I mean it's the same with most sitcoms, the whole situation gets harder to maintain the longer they go on, like a frustrated erection. And Two and A Half Men is onto its eleventh series; it's starting to go a bit floppy. Friends only ran for ten series and by the last three it became a smear of unpleasant, mawkish shit**.
Mawkish has never been an accusation that could be levelled at Two and A Half Men. Yes it did go down the sentimental route on occasion and that was cool, it kept the characters feeling human – or as human as sitcom characters ever get. It needed a core of humanity because it had a gleeful air of cynicism, capering like a sadistic, sarcastic elf, giggling while it tells that guy with the broken back it feels so bad for him. Perhaps it was this that bothered so many people – the show wasn't about fluffy bullshit, it was about this narcissistic, partying, virtually sociopathic arsehole having his life invaded by his needy, slightly parasitic brother. There aren't a lot of warm fuzzies in that set up.
The cynicism continued in the portrayal of Jake, the kid in the show. He wasn't one of those smart arse moppets nor was he wise for his years and he certainly wasn't the hellion Bart Simpson was. He was a dumb, ordinary, kid and he mostly said and did dumb things, like real human beings of any age. Just like human beings of any age he would rarely say anything that was profound or smart, but on the one or two occasions he managed insightfulness it fleshed him out, made him feel a bit more real. The episodes where he was oblivious to all the adults' shenanigans were funny, though, and reminded me of myself sometimes..
Then there was Alan, played by Jon Cryer, who, before that was most famous for playing Duckie in Pretty In Pink. In the beginning of the show he was a sensitive loser, who managed to make all the wrong decisions. Most of these decisions had a habit of leaving him destitute. As the series went on it became clear he was shaped by the way he was treated by his mother and older brother growing up. Then Alan started veering into the land of the caricature. Out went the sensitivity and in came the amoral leech, changing him from a likeable, sympathetic character into one that makes you want to turn the TV off every time he's on screen.
This is where things get weird and it highlights the problem with US networks' obsessions with syndication – the magic twenty-two episode season. Long running US programmes start to creak very quickly because each series runs for so long. Stories get boring and repetitive, and you can almost see the whisky stains of burnt-out writers on the screen. It all gets stale and the networks obsess over it. This is where the greatest paradox comes in: change fucks everything up.
And not in a good way.
Fine, the production landed on its feet by creating a likeable, if a little boring new lead, Waldon, played by Ashton Kutcher†,. The changes made to Alan's character started to put a strain on the narrative abilities of the writers and the production as a whole. Then, in series eleven a new character was introduced: Charlie's niece, Jenny. Clearly supposed to be a substitute for Charlie Sheen's character. Jenny is a boozing, promiscuous narcissist, just like the Charlie‡ character; and, for some reason Waldon allows her to stay in his home§. There are three things wrong with this character: she's unpleasant, she's fucking boring and she doesn't fit. The producers should maybe have gambled on bringing a completely different character into the mix, maybe something that didn't make the, admittedly already shaky, internal logic of the show screech in unholy agony.
Since this character's arrival the stories have become unfunny messes. The programme meanders along trying to squeeze laughs out of us with increasing crassness and tastelessness. I've got nothing against crass tastelessness – I can get a giggle out of a good fart joke§§. A good fart joke. They haven't managed one of those in a fucking age.
But that was just a slow rot. What almost made me unplug the TV in rage and has properly put me off the whole show is Blurred Lines. That fucking song I heard about, but managed to avoid for most of last year. I avoided, at least, until I watched the generally trashy and sometimes amusing year-in-review type programmes over Christmas and they all fucking played this piece of shit. Everything about it, from the tone, the music to the lyrics just make anyone who likes it look like a cunt. Then they used it on Two and A Half Men. And I'm done. I'll muddle through to the end of the series and then it's getting wiped from the TiVo, because there are some lines that shouldn't be crossed, blurry or not.
* Finding my own way, you understand. I'm not some mindless sheep who follows things non-critically, I've told you this before. I can do independent intolerance.
** And then the final episode turned into this out-and-out nasty piece of fan service bullshit with queasy shades of misogyny just to get the skin really crawling. That's why any of us watch sitcoms, isn't it? To have our skin set to crawling. Right? RIGHT?
† Another unduly vilified figure as far as I can see. Fuck, I thought I could be intolerant. He's fucking Mila Kunis, yes we get it, move on.
‡ Charlie Sheen can't handle a character that doesn't share his stage name, it seems. He's been Charlie in Spin City and now again in Anger Management. There are probably more examples, but I just can't be bothered finding them. It's probably all the drugs he's done have turned his memory to mush. I have no real excuse for not researching this further.
§ The show already constantly jabs at the ridiculousness of him allowing Alan to stay, so they aren't unaware of the oddness.
§§ And that's just the tip of the tasteless iceberg. I'm actually quite hard to offend.
Will
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