The writers of Two and a Half Men are sending Charlie Sheen a message; we don’t need you to make Charlie Harper funny. “Thank You for the Intercourse” is the second straight episode where the late Charlie Harper was the funniest thing in the episode. Last week it was Charlie’s journal filled with various chestnuts about Charlie’s life, his feelings about women, even his feeling for Alan (Jon Cryer), including a grudging love for the clingy little parasite.
This week, Walden (Ashton Kutcher) is continuing with the redecorating of the beach house and that means getting rid of Charlie’s piano. The piano holds a lot of memories for Alan who watched Charlie compose jingles on the piano, found Charlie passed out underneath the piano and even walked in on Charlie having sex on top of the piano.
Before the piano is hauled away, Alan retrieved a few of Charlie’s personal items from the seat including some unfinished music, several pairs of women’s panties, a water pipe and a vibrator.
Walden: “So we have songs, thongs, bongs and schlongs”
Alan: “If he (Charlie) had an auto-biography that would be the title.”
The next night Alan heads out to a bar to drink away his Charlie related blues and decides to forgo his usual appletini for scotch. After watching Walden hook up with another beautiful woman, just as Charlie had so many times, Alan finds himself in an unusual situation, for him anyway.
A beautiful woman has followed her missing pooch on to the porch of the beach house where a drunk on scotch Alan makes the quick and effective decision to become his brother. The next morning Alan wakes up next to a woman that is completely out of his league and he snaps.
The thrust of “Thank You for the Intercourse” is Alan becoming Charlie, bowling shirt, shorts and all. While you can kind of sense that Jon Cryer’s heart isn’t quite in it, the idea is still rich with humor and the show mines this idea for some of the biggest laughs of the new Two and a Half Men.
So good is this idea in fact that the writers don’t even bother giving Walden or Jake (Angus T. Jones) a B-story. Every aspect of “Thank You for the Intercourse” is dedicated to Alan becoming Charlie with Walden left to deal with helping Alan, eventually checking him into a mental hospital.
The message being sent couldn’t be any clearer. The writers of Two and a Half Men want Charlie Sheen to know that they don’t need him for Charlie Harper to be the center of the show; even dead he dominates Two and a Half Men. They’re stating plainly that Charlie is their creation and the fact that the jokes are funny with Sheen long gone is a powerful message.
The question becomes however, how long can the show continue mining laughs from the late Charlie Harper? Alan has to go back to being Alan, likely by next week, and then what? Another journal? One of Charlie’s ex’s popping up? How can the writers maintain the Charlie related humor without Charlie?
The fact is, though “Thanks for the Intercourse” was the best episode of this season of Two and a Half Men, the episode demonstrates how the show is failing to move on with Ashton Kutcher.
Kutcher may be the marquee name on Two and a Half Men but the writers are no closer this week to figuring out how to make Walden funny. Alan is funny and Jon Cryer has shown that he is capable of carrying the show but Kutcher looms over the series and until the writers make Walden funny Two and a Half Men is in a holding pattern.
Random notes:
- The Ashton Kutcher ego strokes continued this week with two more women throwing themselves at him with no effort on his part. Moreover, the writers had the late Charlie Harper, in the form of Alan, complementing Walden on the size of his penis. If Kutcher doesn’t have references to his large member written into his contract I would be shocked.
- The bong in Charlie’s piano actually belonged to Jake who threatened to have a thoughtful moment with Alan as they remembered Charlie. Threatened being the keyword, Jake as a character is allergic to any kind of sentiment.
- This week’s Walden naked update found Walden in the shower and joined by Alan as Charlie. The streak is alive.
- Best line of the night is a Charlie Harper classic delivered by Alan to his one night stand: “I believe if a gal’s worth doing, she’s worth doing well.”
- Finally, Alan in the mental hospital was a delicious moment, “Winning.”
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