Two and a Half Men/Headscratchers

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Why the hell is Alan still so desperately poor? Yes, he's a cheapskate, but that's shown to be more out of necessity than any other reason. His business is still going strong, and that was enough to support him, Jake and Judith when they were married. And it can't be because of alimony, because Judith remarried and Kandi's got a well-paying job in Hollywood. So what's going on?
    • Actually Judith still makes Alan pay for stuff for Jake. She said in one episode "he needs the tutor, he likes the lessons and I'm not going to ask Herb to pay for them!" Why, I'd love to know too. I dunno about Kandi.
    • In some episode it's implied that he has money...but he just want to make his brother pay for him.
  • It's a small, throwaway, harmless gag but I still need to say it, in one episode Jake says something along the lines of "I've been driving for years, Grand Theft Auto one, Grand Theft Auto two..". It's a funny gag yes, but if Jake is 15 in that episode, and Grand Theft Auto came out in 1997 Jake was maybe two or three? O.K he might have bought it later but it is Jake I'm talking about. If they got the name of the game right then why not say Vice City or San Andreas?
    • Jake is a few IQ points away from being mentally retarded. He probably thinks that GTA I and II are Vice City and San Andreas.
    • Also, This troper is just under a year older than Jake (well, the actor who plays him) and I was playing GTA I,II and London when they came out and I started playing around '98, when I was five-ish (oh an before anyone starts, I know: 5 year old playing GTA = parenting fail, but that's a different topic completely and I'm not screwed up in the head too much...)
    • Chuck Lorre knows nothing about video games. Just try watching the episode where Jake rents Final Fantasy X without facepalming at Lorre's lack of research. The music from FFII plays from the screen, for the most egregious mistake. The lack of research on Grand Theft Auto is unsurprising.
    • You guys are totally thinking too literally. Why does he have to had played them as soon as they came out? The simple solution is that he bought the games recently and played them all through. It's not like you can't find copies of old video games online.
  • The Moral Dissoance and Jerkassery with the main cast can be prett unfunny to me. It really bothers me that Evelyn knew that she accidentally gave Charlie one of her drugs instead of some pain reliever and din't bother to see if she could stop him from embarrsing his Judge Girlfriend and making her break up with him. Don't get me started on Judith and Kandi...
    • Well this show is an equal opportunity offender, both the male and female characters are regularly shown to be Jerk Asses, I can definitely understand you being upset though, Judith does often act like a total bitch to Alan for no reaosn other then to make his life a living hell, the thing with Evelyn and Linda(the judge) didn't really bother me so much though, as since Linda was planning to run for state-senator, she most likely would've broken up with him eventually anyways even if he hadn't taken the pill and embarrased her. She certainly didn't look thrilled whenever a random woman that happened to "know" Charlie would come up to him and say his name. With Charlie's sordid sexual history hanging over her, they're relationship wouldn't have been too likely to last much longer even without Evelyn's "help"
  • Mia, specifically in season 3's episode Humiliation is a Visual Medium. Okay, so she insists that Charlie and she shouldn't have sex until a later point in their relationship. (1) While I understand that Mia is supposed to be a witty, confident woman who loves Charlie but, at the same time, doesn't take his crap, and wants to see whether Charlie is willing to sacrifice something for their relationship... even I - being female - can understand Charlie's point: What exactly does she sacrifice? Why is he supposed to be the only one who has to prove is sincerity? She admits herself that she doesn't need sex right now, so that doesn't count. And (2) What was her chain of argumentation anyway? "Usually Charlie is interested in sex and nothing else. I don't want to be another trophy, so he has to wait and let me see that he wants a relationship." What? Wouldn't them eventually having sex not make her an even bigger trophy for Charlie? If she wanted the truth, she should have slept with him. (Not on the first date, mind you, but they'd already dated for a while when that point came up.) If he'd still been interested in her even after he got into her pants - that would have been proof.
  • There's a two part episode (or at least I think it's in two parts) where Judith is getting married. In this one, Charlie seems to have a thing Dr. Herb's sister, Myra and they initially start dating. Then Judith starts complaining about this and tries to break them up. What bugs me is why should Judith care if Charlie and Myra are dating? I understand she's eventually going to be her sister-in-law and Charlie is well... Charlie but why should she give a damn? Doesn't she hate Myra? All they seemed to do is just bicker and argue at one another. Plus the only reason they seem to fight with one another is because Myra stands up for her brother and won't allow him to be a doormat.
  • Why does Charlie's friends and family push the Charlie/Rose pairing so much? She's proven to be manipulative, psychotic, and clingy. Yet when Charlie's dating a woman and Rose comes into town, all the characters lament that Rose was the only woman who ever loved Charlie and now she's gone, making Charlie break up with his current date to run off with his stalker. Do they seriously believe pairing a man with his stalker's a good idea, or are they such jerkasses that they would suggest the idea just to screw with him?
    • To be fair, he deserves that for being such a jerk to Alan and most of the women he's dated.
      • What. You might want to think that over.
  • Really now people?! Ashton Kutcher will replace Charlie? Did I see a shark jump there?
    • I thought the Shark had already been jumped long ago
    • To be fair they've actually gone out of their way to make sure Walden Schmidt is nothing like Charlie, including treating Alan like a human being instead of acting like he'd be happy if Alan moved to a toxic waste dump as long as he was out of the house.
  • When Charlie slept with Alan's divorce lawyer, why the hell didn't Alan sue the divorce lawyer for malpractice and then get the entire divorce agreement torn into shreds and set on fire?
  • So will Charlie's death drive an already a little schitzy Rose completely off the brink? Especially since it may be her fault, if he dies while they are on their romantic getaway. She might go all Miss Havisham, walk around the beachhouse in a dirty, torn wedding dress....
    • It's implied that she killed him.
  • Rose killing Charlie. What. Of all the hate and bile they throw at Charlie because of how much the producers hate Charlie Sheen, this was what bothered me the most.
    • You do realize that Rose is incredibly unstable and Charlie, knowing how cuckoo she is not only proposed to her, but then cheated on her afterwords, and was stupid enough to let her take him where she could throw him in front a of a train, presumibly secluded, and given how he probably was thinking he was about to have sex knowing his character, it's not out of character at all.
      • But Rose was never a murderess, and I highly doubt Charlie would cheat on her. The entire episode reeked of bitterness to Charlie's actor.
        • Whaddaya expect? Imagine you're a staff writer for a hit TV series, you've got the last four scripts in the can, and you're ready to call it quits for the summer break. Then the lead actor (who had troubles to begin with) gets tanked on coke, makes a very public ass of himself, and gets fired. You're told they have to cut the season short...so you dump over 160 pages of script, waste a lot of man-hours, yards of pretty good jokes, late night skull-sessions, and heaping pots of black coffee, and now you're trying to wrap up a planned six-ep arc in six minutes by basically pulling a miracle out of your proverbial ass, all because some overpaid pretty-boy blows his cork...who could blame them? Rose is cracked, and Charlie's not too bright. They worked well with what they were given. Now I wonder if Evelyn will pursue the matter further, or is she too afraid her own cupboard of skeletons might get to rattling? Does anyone really buy the "fish in a drawer" story completely?
  • I may be behind on something here, but why isn't this the first thing CBS airs on Monday nights? Given that it's their biggest Monday show, why do they air less popular shows first (like How I Met Your Mother)? I mean sure, HIMYM doesn't desperately need a lead-in like this, but still...
    • 1. it has more 'mature' content so moving it to the family hour might rub people the wrong way HIMYM isn't nearly as obvious w/ their dirty jokes 2. it debuted in its current time slot IIRC, if it ain't broke don't fix it and if it is, moving it might call attention to the damage 3. as the biggest show, in your words, in the middle of the schedule it can help 2 shows -- the show behind it has all its audience in place and only has to retain so many of them if 2.5 has X million viewers, as long as the next show on keeps 80% the retention rate gives them a pass even if they technically lose their time slot...--but also with a strong anchor at the front like HIMYM the show in between it and 2.5 gets a bump too as fans finish HIMYM and its now half past, they think well everything else is half over, and I'm going to turn it back to CBS for 2.5, I'll just leave it here and watch the show in the middle... -- too some extent this also happens with the show between 2.5 and Hawaii 5-0 as

well, but 5-0 being a drama: the mood whiplash from dead hooker jokes to dead hookers might send people to bed early or to another network

  • I know this point is sort of redundant now, but something bugged the hell out of me in Season 8 - Charlie continually tells Alan to move out, even rejoicing when Alan finally does for one episode... WHY DOESN'T HE JUST TELL HIM TO LEAVE? Charlie's already the World's Biggest Jerkass, and it's been shown repeatedly that Alan is no longer unable to financially support himself, he's just sponging off Charlie.
    • He's told him to leave before. It didn't work, and Charlie is the sort of drunk who, if he discovers after the fact that Alan ignored his order to leave, will (the vast majority of times) worry about enforcing it "later".
  • Didn't Cinnamon's Buns star someone other than Lindsey during the Charlie series, when the focal point of an episode was a character having been discovered to have once starred in it?
    • No. The previous time it came up was when Lindsey was living at Charlie's after Alan burned down her house.»
  • How can Walden and his wife be high school sweethearts if Walden skipped high school?
    • Without having any idea about it, I would assume that for Walden, MIT was high school. Walden's wife could very well be older than him, if they had met at MIT, and she didn't skip any grades.
    • Because they first met when they would have been in High School; or they were high school sweethearts to her?
  • This has probably been addressed somewhere else, but I got to ask: How come neither Molly Ringwald or James Spader have ever guest starred on the show?
  • How come Judy Greer, who already played Myra in season 6, was cast again as Bridget? Nobody noticed the two unrelated women look extremely alike?
    • The actress playing Chelsea had already appeared twice before, both times as a different woman.
    • Jenna Elfman was Frankie in a two-part Season 1 episode, and Dharma in Season 9. Kandi was "Bubbles" and "Kimber". Apparently we're just not expected to notice.
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