Two and a Half Men is an American television
sitcom that was first broadcast on
CBS on September 22, 2003. Starring
Charlie Sheen,
Jon Cryer, and
Angus T. Jones, the show was originally about a hedonistic
jingle writer, Charlie Harper; his uptight brother, Alan; and Alan's growing son, Jake. Charlie's free-wheeling life is complicated when his brother gets divorced and moves, along with his son, into Charlie's beach-front
Malibu house. The series' premise was revamped in the
ninth season, focusing on Alan moving on with his life after the death of Charlie with help from his new best friend and housemate, Walden Schmidt (
Ashton Kutcher), who is also dealing with his own troubles following a bad divorce. Alan, Walden, and Jake eventually bond, becoming close friends, forming a surrogate family unit.
In 2010, CBS and
Warner Bros. Television reached a multi-year broadcast agreement for the series, renewing it through at least the 2011–12 season.However, on February 24, 2011, CBS and Warner Bros. decided to end production for the rest of the
eighth season due to Sheen entering
drug rehabilitation and making "disparaging comments" about the show's creator and executive producer,
Chuck Lorre. Sheen was officially fired from the show on March 7. The ninth season premiere, "
Nice to Meet You, Walden Schmidt", killed off Sheen's character and introduced
Ashton Kutcher as Walden Schmidt, his replacement.
In 2011, a blog hosted by
The New York Times referred to
Two and a Half Men as the "biggest hit comedy of the last decade".
On May 12, 2012,
CBS Broadcasting Inc. (CBS) renewed
Two and a Half Men for a tenth season, following the announcement that CBS had closed a one-year deal with stars
Ashton Kutcher,
Jon Cryer, and
Angus T. Jones. In November Jones, like Sheen, made disparaging comments about the show. Jones called it "filth" and urged people not to watch the show, but has since apologized.
OVERVIEW
The series revolved initially around the life of the Harper brothers: Charlie (Charlie Sheen) and Alan (Jon Cryer) and Alan's son, Jake (Angus T. Jones). Charlie is a bachelor who writes commercial jingles for a living while leading a hedonistic lifestyle. When Alan's wife Judith (Marin Hinkle) decides to divorce him, he moves into Charlie's Malibu beach house, with Jake periodically coming to stay. Charlie's housekeeper is Berta (Conchata Ferrell), a sharp-tongued woman who initially resists the change to the household but comes to grudgingly accept it.
The first five seasons find Charlie in casual sexual relationships with numerous women until the sixth season, when he becomes engaged to Chelsea (Jennifer Bini Taylor). However, the relationship does not last when Charlie flies to Paris in the eighth season finale in pursuit of Rose (Melanie Lynskey), who was introduced as his stalker in the pilot episode. In the ninth season premiere, it is revealed that Charlie died when he fell in front of a subway train in Paris; it is strongly hinted that Rose allegedly pushes Charlie in front of the train after learning that Charlie had cheated on her.
Alan's experiences are somewhat different from Charlie's. Throughout the series, Alan continues to deal with the results of his divorce from Judith, Jake growing up, and his generally little success with women. Even his marriage to
Kandi (
April Bowlby) at the end of the
third season was short-lived. In the
fourth season, Alan is back at the beach house paying
alimony to two women out of his meager earnings as a chiropractor. In the
seventh season, he begins a relationship with
Lyndsey McElroy (
Courtney Thorne-Smith), the mother of one of Jake's friends. Their relationship is temporarily suspended when Alan accidentally burns down her house and cheats on her, but the relationship eventually resumes.
In the ninth season premiere (after
Charlie's death) the beach house is sold to
Walden Schmidt (
Ashton Kutcher), an Internet billionaire in the process of being divorced from his wife
Bridget (
Judy Greer). Alan leaves to live with his conceited mother
Evelyn (
Holland Taylor) when the house is sold, but Walden wholeheartedly invites both Alan and Jake back to live in the beach house, needing friends to help him deal with his marriage breakdown, therefore forming a tight-knit surrogate family. Meanwhile, Charlie's spirit now lives on in
Hell in the form of a woman (
Kathy Bates) as eternal punishment for his womanizing ways during his lifetime. He continues to watch over his brother and nephew, still disgruntled by the fact they won't leave his former home.
At the end of the ninth season, Jake joined the army and only appears occasionally during season ten. In the tenth season Walden proposed to his English girlfriend
Zoey (
Sophie Winkleman) only to be turned down after he found out there was another man, because of this he became depressed. Meanwhile Alan gets engaged to his girlfriend Lyndsey.
