I Did Something I Swore I Would Never Do: I Watched ‘Two and a Half Men’…It Still Sucks

Once upon a time I saw a few minutes of the sexist, crude, comedy “Two and a Half Men”, changed the channel and left it at that. As time went by I came to understand that this series was incredibly popular with HUGE viewership in it’s prime Monday night time-slot. I peeked in now and again to see what the deal was, each time I was so offended, not only by the boundless misogyny of the characters, but that this mindset seems to be the heart of the show itself. The self-deprecating humour is so beyond unfunny that it feels cruel. The show is never being self-deprecating about itself, just outwardly towards its characters where it sees fit.

In my entire viewing career of “Two and a Half Men”, a show that is now entering its ninth season I have clocked in approximately 30 minutes of total viewing time, time I will never get back. I made a decision,  I swore I would never again watch the show and would race to the remote each time it came on after a re-run of The Simpsons, How I Met Your Mother, or whatever show I was casually watching in the after-work hour.

Last night I had a dark moment, the second (west coast) airing was half-way through and my curiosity about Ashton Kutcher overtook my resolve to never, ever watch (seriously, Tricia Helfer was on and I didn’t even peek). I did actually spend a good deal of time following the train wreck that occurred around the time Charlie Sheen went off the rails and was fired from the show. Now that was entertainment. It’s probably this highly public feud about warlocks, winning, bi-winner and other weird shit that fueled my dark curiosity last night.

I saw about 5-7 minutes of the premiere episode “Nice to Meet You Walden Schmidt”. Luckily I missed the funeral for Charlie Harper (Sheen’s character) which was apparently just women lining up to take digs at him. Stay classy Chuck Lorre.

What I did catch was a naked Ashton Kutcher (not all bad), but then jokes about the dead brother’s ashes in a dustbuster (ick), never ending mentions of the nude Kutcher’s dick, air headed women at a bar falling helplessly for a man they just met straight into bed, and terrible straight to the camera self deprecation on the part of Jon Cryer’s character who’s name I can’t be bothered to look up.

The moral of the story is, if you were thinking of checking out “Two and a Half” men just to see what Kutcher brings to the show it’s not worth it. It’s still the same show, just with a more attractive lead.

I’ll save you the trouble, this is all you missed:

Not really worth the pain of watching is it? There are actual good looking men on actually good (or at least palatable) shows.

Back to avoiding this show like the plague for me! It’s a marvel it’s still on the air. Now that I’ve had a brief refresher on what the show is I’m sad to know that this is the kind of crap that gets the through the roof ratings. It’s a bigger problem that bad jokes and bad acting, it’s the massive audiences that find this sexist crap acceptable and funny. The myriad of new “being a man is so hard” programming this season it doesn’t seem things are changing much for the better.