I have a lot of "favorite" sit-coms. Both animated comedies and the live-action comedies ("action" usually takes a backseat there, you just have to roll with it). If there's a puppet interacting with actual humans, and good comedy (like ALF and/or Greg The Bunny, but clearly excluding Happily Ever After), then I am all-in! Usually, the comedy will not even need to be stellar if the premise strong enough. Case in point, I cannot remember too many moments of "genius" comedy during the entire run of Saved By The Bell, but I was an avid fan nonetheless.
Then, there is Two & A Half Men. The show itself is often a punchline (not unlike Full House of yesteryear, a show I still admittedly enjoy when I can). To one-time viewers, it's absolute trash. To its avid fans, it's fantastic. To me, it's a comedy truly worthy of applause -- and tip the hat to Charlie Sheen for saving the show.
The dust cleared so quickly from his public dissent into madness that it is forgettable today, but based on how quickly things resolved themselves, I am more than a little skeptical that the whole episode was not Charlie Sheen trying to get out of his contract with CBS.
For years, Two & A Half Men had established itself as *the* Monday night comedy (and the Monday night line-up on CBS was arguably the best of its time, although not as great as what NBC had on Thursday nights during its best years). On the show, Charlie Harper was a rich & shallow man living with his brother Alan and nephew Jake. Alan carried all the stress of split parenthood and making ends meet while Charlie just enjoyed the best of life with minimal effort.
The glue that kept the premise strong, however, was often overlooked by its fans. Deep in the first season, Alan was divorcing Judith, and his lawyer was named Laura (and portrayed by Heather Locklear, Charlie Sheen's Spin City love interest). The simple premise was that Alan had been staying with his brother until things worked out with his divorce, but Charlie Harper could not resist an extended-but-meaningless fling with Laura, after which she vindictively sought revenge by conceding to all of Judith's demands, leaving Alan broke and homeless. Consequently, Charlie could never actually evict Alan from the house, regardless how many empty threats he levied.
After six seasons, Charlie started to settle down with a wonderful woman named Chelsea. The pair got engaged, but then she called off the wedding. Regardless, Charlie had developed a lot during the relationship, and he was a new, better man for his lost love.
Unfortunately, the writers started to reverse that development. Charlie returned to his shallow ways, but the show could not find its groove. Then, the writers put Charlie in a relationship with his long-time stalker Rose (whose one-sided obsession with Charlie had been a wonderful source of humour since Season 1) when he thought she was married. The entire storyline made Charlie look like a dope, and the timing coincided perfectly with his public meltdown.
When Charlie Sheen was fired, the writers killed off Charlie Harper as a victim of Rose, who admittedly shoved him into a train during a romantic trip to Paris. At that point, the clunky writing reached new lows for a short period. Following a path of highly improbable circumstances, Alan saved the life of a suicidal billionaire named Walden Schmidt (Ashton Kutcher) to again permanently earn his keep in the house.
Not surprisingly, the strength of the show weakened when it swapped out its main lead for another one. Although it started off as no better than a spin-off from one successful to another with mostly the same cast, the writers quickly found a storyline to make Walden interesting where he posed as a poor computer programmer to woo a would-be fashion designer in the same financial straits.
The chemistry of the revised cast was strong, which gave the show new life. Albeit, the show's title no longer matched the premise. Exit Jake, who no longer fit the "half-man" billing as a young adult. Enter Jenny (Amber Tamblyn) as Charlie's estranged lesbian daughter with identical tendencies of her father. Like Alan's rent-free resident, the concept was a big stretch, but it was enough to silence the lowest-hanging fruit of criticism of the show.
While it may not be the best sit-com anymore nowadays, it has endured more changes than most shows after 10 seasons, and it is still strong. I have no doubt that the show would not have lasted as long if Charlie Sheen remained, especially if the writer's ideas when he left were an indication of how things were headed. If only Anger Management were as entertaining.
