Just for laughs

With Charlie Sheen out and Ashton Kutcher in, if you  are wondering whether ‘Two and a Half Men’ can still hold your interest, rest assured that the  laughs will remain, writes  Akhil Kadidal

Four years ago, CBS’s Two and a Half Men was the undisputed powerhouse of mainstream television. As a sitcom, it was immensely successful, garnering dozens of awards each year, and whose jokes and antics were frequently recounted at parties. The trend seemed set to continue until star Charlie Sheen’s seemingly-catastrophic break from reality in the latter half of 2011. Audience ratings spiked in the hope of seeing more spectacles, but then plummeted when it became clear that Charlie Sheen was not returning to the screen.

That was then. And this is now. To cover Sheen’s abrupt departure from the series, producers Chuck Lorre and Lee Aronsohn opened their season nine premier with a closed coffin containing the remains of Mr Sheen’s semi-fictional doppelganger, Charlie Harper. A eulogy is made by his brother, Alan Harper (played by Jon Cryer), and received by a room full of not quite unhappy sirens, harpies and other specters from Charlie’s past.

Lorre’s attempt to replace Mr Sheen with Ashton Kutcher, whose trademark act has revolved around the immature pretty boy, proved harder to sell to audiences. He enters the show through the ubiquitous back door, as a stranger, shivering and wet after a failed suicide attempt in the bay and asks Alan for the use of a phone. When asked to explain why he aborted his suicide, he laments, “The water was too cold.”

It is clear that Mr Kutcher is no Charlie Sheen. For starters, his character’s name is Walden. If ever Henry David Thoreau’s transcendentalist, beatific book on independent living can be applied to capture the ethos of a show, this is not it. Yet, maybe, Thoreau’s Walden was on Lorre’s mind. The poet’s ideas of self-reliance are used as a contrast to Alan’s lecherous attitude. As a moocher, Alan is unsurpassed. Much of the last and new season revolves around his petty schemes to stay at the Malibu mansion, taking advantage of Walden’s kindness, often abusing the trust of friends and family.

Sometimes, the efforts are painful. Surprisingly, they made him the lead star, even as Lorre scrambled to figure out how to play Kutcher as Walden.

Maintaining Sheen’s benchmark as a sneering, dope-addled womaniser is beyond Kutcher’s grade, but the producers have settled on making Walden an improved version of Michael Kelso of That ‘70’s Show. Yes, Walden is malleable and immature. But he is not dim-witted or shallow. He is also a billionaire computer guru and a hopeless sentimentalist, endlessly pining for his ex-wife, Bridget, or his new flame, Zoey. Social dysfunction is what drives great television, especially great sitcoms, and one of Walden’s failings is his inability to pick and resume life following the departure of a loved one. But Bridget is not gone.

In Two and a Half Men, no character is ever truly gone. They make surprise appearances to get the laughs rolling — unless of course, your name happens to be Charlie Sheen/Harper, and of course, if you verbally assail your producer.

But even Charlie Harper lingered for much of season nine. No, not in person. Burning a bridge is usually a one-time luxury. His spirit first possessed Alan (think Exorcist via the Playboy mansion), and then made a repeat visit as a ghost, through the body of the sexagenarian actor, Kathy Baker. The Oscar-nominated Baker, who clear relished the role, used the opportunity to deliver a salty, self-deprecating speech telling Alan to grow up and be his own man — which, in the end, turns out to be only a gag. In the end, while some pearls of wisdom intrude into the dialogue, we are ultimately reminded that a sitcom is really only about the jokes.

In the wake of Mr Sheen’s real-life downward spiral, however, large questions had loomed about the future of the show. In March, it failed to list among the 18 prime-time shows renewed by CBS. Even worse, the series hit a new low in the advertiser-coveted 18-to-49-year-old demographic in the United States. Ratings began to slip. Off-screen tensions also began to intrude into the script. Real anger permeated the punch lines of the season nine funeral opener. It was far from a smooth transition from Mr Sheen to Kutcher, hired to take on the mantle as King Leer.

But leering is harder than it looks. To keep viewers interested, the producers continued with the hedonism that marked previous seasons. It may be an open secret that Two and a Half Men’s continued success has to do, in part, with the same reasons why Baywatch was such a hit in the ‘90s — for its endless array of nubile women. Perhaps to encourage audiences to focus on the present and forget the past, Mr Kutcher also appeared naked in a few scenes, his private parts blurred for the camera.

But having had an entire season to familiarise himself with the role, Mr Kutcher seems to have slipped well into his on-screen persona. There is real chemistry between Walden and the other characters. The season 10 opener was not only memorable but genuinely funny, even if a cameo from the singer Michael Bolton stole the show. But old baggage continues to weigh down the series. Much of this is due to Rose, the pathologically creepy neighbour whose act is more akin to raising hackles than laughs. True, the success of a sitcom relies on familiar comedic situations, but nothing kills comedy faster than old gags.

Leaving baggage aside, there is no reason to think that the new series, post-Charlie Sheen, can fail to outshine its predecessor.