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Worst TV Show of the Week

Two and a Half Men on CBS

Viewers may notice a certain truism when it comes to sitcoms: No matter what happens in any given episode, the characters never really change.  Whatever lesson they may have learned one week is quickly forgotten by the next.  In the case of the CBS show Two and a Half Men (Mondays, 9:00 p.m. ET), however, one character is changing.  Alan’s teenage son Jake (played by Angus T. Jones) has grown up in front of America’s eyes from the time he began acting in the show at the age of ten.  As Jake marches inexorably towards adulthood, a key question arises:  Will he grow up to be like his unrepentant, philandering Uncle Charlie, or his spineless, lovelorn father?  In both cases, neither is an ideal role-model.  And in the July 6^th rerun of an episode that originally aired on October 6, 2008, both men have the opportunity to showcase their neglectful parenting skills.  For sexually suggestive dialogue and aiding and abetting the corruption of a minor, Two and Half Men rightfully deserves the title of Worst TV Show of the Week.

The episode begins with Charlie attempting to bake cinnamon buns.  During his sexually-tinged banter with is brother, Alan reveals that he’s dating two women at the same time.  Charlie isn’t impressed. 

“Wow, two women?”  Charlie asks.  “And yet you’re still tooting your own horn?  You know what’s fun?  When you can talk them into tooting each other’s horns.”

Later, Charlie munches on the cinnamon buns with Jake, who asks Charlie if he can wash down the pastry with some of Charlie’s beer. 

“When you’re fourteen you don’t ask your uncle for beer,” Charlie advises.

“Who do I ask?” Jake asks. 

Charlie replies, “I don’t know.  Try hanging outside a liquor store and look for a guy wearing house slippers and talking to himself.”

Meanwhile, Alan has a tough time juggling his schedule between the two women he’s simultaneously dating.  When one suggests a time that he has already reserved for the other, he uses his son as an excuse.

“Thing is,” Alan stammers, “I already made plans with my son who I love dearly.” 

Jake enters the room and asks, “What are we doing?”

“Nothing!  Go away!” Alan snaps back.  In lieu of actually spending time with Jake, Alan simply gives him twenty dollars to stop being a pest.

Alan’s date night eventually comes and he tells Charlie, "I might not be back until late, I'm planning to give my rose to bachelorette number two." 

"Wow,” Charlie notes, “only you can gay-up banging two women."  He offers some advice: "At some point, one of these broads is going to ask you a question for which you have no ready answer. 

"Like what?" Alan asks.

"Well, it could be as simple as, ‘What did you do last night?’  Or as tricky as, ‘Why is there a pastie stuck to your testicles?’  The point is, you need to be careful."

Eventually, Alan ends up in bed with one of the women.  But she deciphers from his odd behavior that he is seeing another woman.  When she asks him point-blank if he is, Alan immediately crumbles and confesses.  At the same time, Charlie is in bed with a woman who asks him the same question.  He deftly deflects her suspicions by offering some sad-luck story about being hurt before in the past.  They are about to have sex when Jake leaves a message on the answering machine: “Hey, Uncle Charlie.  It’s me, Jakey.  I’m drunk.  Are you with a girl?  Does she have big ones?”  Apparently, Jake followed Charlie’s advice and paid a guy $20 to buy him alcohol.  Charlie agrees to pick Jake up, but not before he finishes having sex with the girl. 

Alan, by contrast, has had no such luck.  The woman he was in bed with kicks him out.  He goes to the other woman and attempts to woo her.  But she is seeing someone else as well.  When Alan won’t leave the woman’s apartment, she zaps him with a stun-gun.   Alan limps back home to find Jake vomiting in the toilet.  Somehow this is supposed to be a lesson for Alan not to two-time women and for Jake not to drink alcohol.  Charlie gloats, “You know what the problem is?  The women, the drinking.  You guys look at me and you think it’s easy.  But what you don’t see is all the years of hard work and dedication it took to make me the happy-go-lucky, drunken ass-wrangler I am today.”

Some lesson.  If these two guys are Jake’s only role models, he’s in trouble.  What’s even sadder is that, if young men watching the show aspire to be like any of them, then we’re all in trouble. 

For sexually suggestive dialogue and for providing some of the worst male role models in television history, Two and a Half Men deserves the title of Worst TV Show of the Week.