Every time I see my dad, he always quotes episodes of Two-and-a-Half Men to me. Every time. No matter how many times I tell him that I'm never going to watch the show because it's not funny, he insists that it is funny and tells me that I should watch it. And then he repeats one of the jokes, even though I can usually figure out what the "funny" part is going to be before he gets there.
Fine, Dad. I watched Two-and-a-Half Men this week. I watched it all the way through. In a highly-publicized May sweeps stunt, the writers from Two-and-a-Half Men and CSI switched shows this week, so I figured I'd watch Two-and-a-Half Men just to see if it was any more enjoyable when different people are writing it.
Sorry, Dad. It wasn't. It just reminded me of all the reasons this show is not only unfunny, but actually kind of offensive.
After Charlie and Alan's mom marries Robert Wagner and Charlie proposes to Jenny McCarthy, suddenly Wagner is found dead in Charlie's bedroom. The police are called and now there's a big murder CSI-style mystery. Naturally, there were several CSI moments, like the CGI TMI-cam going down Jake's throat every time he eats something so we can see exactly what kind of food is in his stomach. Get it? Because he's chubby - therefore all he does is eat all day. Fat jokes! Hilarious!
Eventually, it comes out that Robert Wagner and Jenny McCarthy aren't father and daughter after all, but a couple of con artists who have been working to scam Charlie and his mother out of a bunch of money. This was one of those twists where it seems like it makes sense until, you know, you think about it for more than 30 seconds. First of all, Jenny McCarthy makes a big deal about how they need to call the police, which, if she's a con artist, she probably wouldn't want to do. But say she wants to stay in character as his daughter and the police are called, she then willingly goes to the police station where she has to know that she's going to get caught. Right. I find it hard to believe that she wouldn't have run away the second the police were even mentioned.
And, anyway, she was in the room, er, "pleasuring" Wagner when he had a hard attack and died. So... She left his pants down and left her lipstick on his, er, "Wagner Wanger"? For someone who is supposedly such an experienced criminal, she's really bad at... everything.
There was one funny part. One. That would be the Marg Helgenberger-esque actress who did a spot-on impression of Catherine Willows. When Charlie commented on her boob-baring shirt: "Is that shirt police-issue?" Yes, that was funny. You know why? Because they were making fun of CSI. The one part of the show that made me laugh didn't have anything to do with Two-and-a-Half Men. Yikes.
Here's what I hate about Two-and-a-Half Men: while most other sitcoms have evolved over the last few years to create well-rounded characters and multi-layered humour, Two-and-a-Half Men stubbornly digs its heels in and sticks with their "set up, payoff - set up, payoff" format. You can see every joke come from a mile away. One of the reasons Arrested Development was such a great show was that they would mention something and then a completely unexpected joke would pop up weeks later that would make you laugh so hard you would cry. Two-and-a-Half Men takes the easy road every time.
All of the show's characters are stereotypes. None of them ever do anything beyond the very narrow caricature the writers have drawn for them. The worst part of all is the character of Alan's ex-wife, who is presented as this humourless shrew who hates Alan for no good reason. The degree to which she verbally abuses him makes it pretty obvious that some of the male writers on the show have gone through one or two bad divorces and need to vent some of their anger by creating such a shrill, angry woman that nobody likes. Heaven forbid that they present her as a three-dimensional character who has some redeeming qualities. Oh, sorry, it's much funnier to emasculate Alan further by turning his ex-wife into an angry, domineering woman who treated him like crap during their relationship. Why pay a therapist to help you through your problems when someone else will pay you to put those problems into a television show? Extra points for marginalizing an entire gender along the way.
Every time I watch Two-and-a-Half Men, I feel as though the writers don't respect their viewers at all and are doing the absolute minimum needed to get their paycheques and residuals. Here's a tip to the writers: if I can figure out your punchline before the character on screen says it, then come up with a better joke. And if you can't figure out a way to make Alan funny without using his horrible caricature of his ex-wife, then don't put Alan in the episode. If the main characteristics of Jake are that he eats a lot or that he's kind of stupid, write a script where he does something different for once. If the best way you can come up with to spice up your show is to bring writers from a different show for one episode, then all of you should be fired. Out of a cannon. Into the sun.
Wow, apparently this show makes me a long angrier than I realized. But it does. It really, really does.
After the show was over:
Roommate: Huh.
Kat: Yeah.
Roommate: So then the writers from Two-and-a-Half Men wrote this Thursday's episode of CSI?
Kat: Yeah.
Roommate: I wonder what that will be like.
Kat: CSI this week will probably be an overrated piece of crap that keeps getting nominated for Emmys despite a complete lack of quality. So... It'll be the same as every week.
Roommate: Hey! I love CSI!
Kat: Yes. You do. Sigh.