I am finally going to have to dump Two and a Half Men from my DVR line-up. I have not been happy with the way this season has started (neither has James), and it seems to be getting worse, not better. Jon Cryer's character has gone from being the lovable loser to completely unsympathetic and annoying. With Charlie Sheen's character already the lovably unsympathetic one there simply isn't room for another. And Charlie's character has gone from being merely unsympathetic to downright cruel. Additionally, as Angus T. Jones has gotten older and his "small child cuteness" factor has diminished, he has been given fewer lines and less of a role and has just become a parody of the "fat loser kid" relegated to one-liners.I don't know if the writers suddenly changed over, or if they felt that Alan Harper having a steady girlfriend was too upbeat for the character and they needed to completely change direction or what, but I felt like this season has been a real downer and just isn't that funny. Any trace of cleaverness has been replaced by crude sex joke after crude sex joke. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the occasional crude sex joke just as much as the next guy, but you cannot build an entire episode where the only comedic moments are sex jokes only marginally related to the plot.
I feel a little bit sad because I've been watching the show since the beginning, and I was a huge proponent early on. But now I just don't enjoy it anymore, it is no longer funny, and I have other things I can be doing with that 30 minutes (or ~22 once the commercials are fast-forwarded out).
Two thumbs down (although, to be fair, Cheryl never really liked it before, but now she actively dislikes it).
If you want a really funny Monday night comedy, watch How I Met Your Mother. That is a very funny show, and gets two thumbs up from the Sawyer household.NYC
2 comments:
I'm torn. One the one hand, based on your comments it appears we made the right call dumping this show after the first couple of episodes this season. On the other hand, like you, I liked the show and had been watching from the get-go, so it was depressing to see a show that I thought was really well done and well scripted take such a nose dive in quality.
I'm not sure what happened, but it has the feel of someone thinking "Our ratings are down. We got good ratings in our first season. So let's revert everything to the way it was then and exaggerate everyone's qualities, because if it was funny in moderation, it should kill if we overdose on it." Unfortunately in addition to just not being that funny this required completely ignoring any character development that occurred over the past three years.
On the plus side, now you can start watching Heroes. I believe SciFi is going to run a marathon on Wednesday.
We started Tivoing the marathon yesterday of Heroes and watched the first episode last night. It might be a keeper!
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