My Two and a Half Cents

“You like comedy, well then you must watch “Two and a Half Men”, I had someone say to me this past Saturday night at a wedding reception. Believe it or not, I've been hearing this from people with some startling regularity.
No, I don’t really catch the show, or even when I have seen it, really liked it all that much; my mom loves it, sometimes when I’m over and in the other room, I can hear her snorting up laughter at the wacky hijinks of a single father and his crazy brother. However, my mother would also prefer me to not use the “F” word, shop for clothes at Montgomery Ward and watch Joel Osteen if I get the chance—our sensibilities have drifted apart.
Though I don’t watch “Two and a Half Men”, I do like it for one particular reason.

I have a soft spot for Jon Cryer. I had a professor in college that railed against Cryer one day during my Mass Media Theory class. Jon “F-ing” Cryer. As far as this 'Dr.' was concerned, Cryer should have taken his body of work and made millions producing fertilizer. We had about a 40 minute discussion (with tangents into both Judge Reinhold and Nelson, Allen Sheedy and Andrew McCarthy) about his past work and whether we would be behind a project with him involved. I even got caught up in the anti-Cryer fervor and was like, “Noooooo, no way, everything that guy is in drops like a lead turd!”

Though afterwards, I thought it was a silly discussion. I felt silly. When I got back to my apartment, my roommate said, “How was class?” and I was like, “Man, we just ripped Ducky a new one…” I was ashamed that I could get caught up so easily in the mob mentality. Since then, I’ve pulled for Cryer in any of his projects because I do naturally pull for the underdog. And I was sort of ashamed of how I jumped on the “Let’s kill or at least blackball Jon Cryer from the middle of no-where Maryland because he is just trying to make a living” bandwagon.

So to that degree, it is the only reason I could say that I like the show “Two and A Half Men”--John Cryer is finally apart of something successful. And, who couldn't be happy for Charlie Sheen? I like him because, like me, he isn’t welcomed into most bars anymore. But also I have as much admiration as I do starry-eyed bewilderment that Sheen was able to marry and impregnate Denise Richard’s after having a history with substance abuse, a very public scandal that involved Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss (with it’s revelation of Sheen spending thousands and thousands of dollars on hookers) and with Sheen also had having broken relationships with porn-stars Ginger Lynn and Heather Hunter. Can you imagine setting someone up with Sheen and having to pull out that track record when the prospective girl asked, “So why is he still single?”

Either Richards was researching a role for a Valtrex commercial when she got hooked up with Sheen and just fell in love with him, a passive and steamy sort of reverse-Stockholm Syndrome, or Richards is, well naïve. I imagine the later. I’ve sort of imagined some point early in their relationship, 3rd or 4th date, this exchange took place:

Charlie: Denise there is something I think I should tell you…
Denise: Charlie, ‘hat’ rhymes with ‘bat’.
Charlie: I know Denise…my God, I know…Sweetheart, in the past, there was a time that whenever I would get emotional my eyes would well up with Smirnoff…
Denise: I keep forgetting to breathe…
Charlie:… and there were days and nights where I used to snort lines of cocaine from the toes all the way up to the necks of various porn-stars and then lie on my back like if I were to make a snow-angel and use each of my appendages, hands, feet, “Lil’Chuck”, even my head, you name it, and stick them into every available orifice of anyone who was there…until we all formed one giant collective human snowflake.
Denise: I think I swallowed my spoon.
Charlie: Alright, no one can’t say that I didn’t warn ya...

I think that was a slight digression. Anyway, “Two and a Half Men”…I think it might be the last true sitcom on major network television, I’m not sure, but it’s got to be the most popular at the moment. I’ve heard this theory of its absolute hilarity more than a couple of times. This guy at the reception just went on and on about how the show’s comedic timing was “just, just, just outstanding” and apparently the little boy is something to behold.

Anyway, it made me sad in a way, thinking about the demise of the situational comedy with the advent of so many channels on cable and the rise of reality TV. I really hope it’s not the end--that this is just the ebb and flow of a trend; but it very well could be and I’ll just have the Thursday night memories from my childhood and whatever else they’re throwing up late at night these days.

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