Two and a Half Men: Difference between revisions

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Ladies' man Charlie Harper is living the good life as a successful jingle writer in a seaside mansion in Los Angeles. That is, until his nerdy brother Alan's ex-wife throws him out and he's forced to move in with Charlie, bringing his ten-year-old son Jake with him. Now, not only does he have to cope with Rose, the stalker who lives next door, his conniving and guilt-tripping mother, and his sarcastic housekeeper Berta, but also Alan's various neuroses and Jake's complete lack of any sort of tact or personal hygiene. Sadly however Charlie's womanizing nature eventually catches up with him in 2011 when he [[Killed Off for Real|catches a train the hard way]]. Enter suicidal billionaire [[Ashton Kutcher|Walden Schmidt]] as the new owner of Charlie's home. After quickly becoming friends with Alan he continues to let him and Jake live with him while they get over the loss of Charlie.

 

* [[Aborted Arc]]:

** With Charlie Sheen gone, the story of the decidedly odd love triangle of Charlie, crazy Rose, and "Manny Quinn" will never be resolved. Well, the Charlie/Rose/Manny issue has been somewhat resolved due to [[Bus Crash|Charlie being dead]].

** Evelyn eats the souls of children, as Alan points out.

** Judith herself isn't the best mom, or human being, ever. Considering how both Charlie and Alan seem to suffer from [[Mommy Issues]] and possibly Oedipus Complex, one can easily deduce Judith is not much better than Evelyn. Seeing strange men in front of her underage son? Check. Verbally abusing him and his father? Check. [[Gold Digger]] and [[Hypocrite]]? Check, Check, Check.

* [[Adam Westing]]: Charlie Harper is clearly based on Charlie Sheen, the actor who plays him.

* [[Aesop Amnesia]]: Charlie seems to go through this every time he gets involved with an older woman. He ascertains that's he's fine dating one older woman and then goes through the whole thing all over again with another older woman.

* [[The Alleged Car]]: Alan's less-than-10-year-old Volvo is inexplicably this.

* [[Animal Athlete Loophole]]: There is an off-hand joke about a movie involving a dog playing hockey in one episode.

* [[Ascended Meme]]: When Alan believes he's Charlie, he states "Winning!" A reference to Charlie Sheen's [[Memetic Mutation]], "bi-winning."

* [[Ashes to Crashes]]: Charlie's ashes end up on the living room when Alan is startled by Walden.

* [[Batman Gambit]]: In "Kinda Like Necrophilia", Charlie manipulates Alan to get him to steal his girlfriend and dump her for him, while making Alan think he was hurting Charlie for it.

* [[Bigger Is Better in Bed]]: According to Alan, Walden is hung like an elephant. Berta and Judith are impressed when they see him naked.

* [[Black Comedy]]:

** The episode "A Sympathetic Crotch To Cry On". Dear. God.

** Charlie's funeral.

* [[Brain Bleach]]: Invoked in an episode, where the brothers discover that one of Charlie's former girlfriends has undergone a sex change and is now dating their ''mother''. Charlie's suggestion to dealing with this? "Drink until the part of the brain that creates mental pictures dies!"

* [[Brick Joke]]:

** In one episode, Evelyn asks Alan "More embarrassing when you were eleven and I caught you with the dog and the peanut butter?" In a later episode, Charlie tells a group of friends that he walked in on Alan and said "''Alan!'' The dog is supposed to lick the peanut butter off ''you!''" In "A Giant Cat Holding a Churro", when Alan tells Lindsey all his embarrassing secrets, he starts with this.

* [[Bring Me My Brown Pants]]:

** And this clip, where [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwJHSkFpn-o a father-son bonding moment gets a little messy].

* [[Bungled Suicide]]: When his wife left him, Walden tried to drown himself in the ocean. [[What an Idiot!|Apparently he didn't realize that the water would be really cold]].

** Charlie tries this too in an earlier episode. Same result.

* [[But You Screw One Goat!]]: Charlie tells his friends about when Alan was a kid and Charlie caught Alan licking peanut butter off a dog.

* [[The Cameo]]: John Stamos and [[Dharma and Greg]] showed up looking to buy Charlie's house.

* [[Car Meets House]]: In "What a Lovely Landing Strip", Bridget deliberately crashes her car into Walden's house after he dumps her.

* [[Catch Phrase]]:

** Charlie's "Are you out of your freakin' mind?" usually said to Alan.

* [[Chuck Cunningham Syndrome]]: Jake's new baby sister, especially considering on how the show played up on whether if Judith's new baby is Jake's half-sister or his sister. (Judith and Herb had a fight and separated in which a depressed Judith seems to be nicer to Alan and they are in a sexual relationship in which Judith seems to want to get back together with Alan. However shortly before Judith and Herb reunited, Judith began hating Alan again and told him to go away. Shortly after Herb and Judith have reunited Judith is pregnant, before and after the baby was born Alan believes that he is the father of the child while Judith strongly denies it due to her hatred of him.) However shortly after the baby was born, the child was never mentioned again and only Jake was accounted for when it came to Judith's children (though it was briefly brought up in "A Giant Cat Holding a Churro", where Alan tells all of his embarrassing secrets to Lindsey, and again in "Frodo's Headshots", thanks to a dream whipped up by Alan's guilty subconscious).

* [[Code Word Coitus]]: Charlie, natch.

* [[Comedic Sociopathy]]:

** Charlie to disturbing levels.

** Also Alan, via his ventriloquist's dummy, "Danny O'Day".

** And Rose, who has yet to be prosecuted for Charlie's murder despite in effect confessing it to the assembled crowd at his funeral.

* [[Companion Cube]]: For Alan, Danny the dummy, for a short string of episodes.

* [[Covert Pervert]]: Alan's pregnancy fetish when Berta's daughter Naomi shows up.

* [[Crapsack World]]: From Alan's perspective, you live with a brother who's [[Comedic Sociopathy]] is well known, and gets more then you do, not to mention having an ex-wife who spends alimony payments for inherently selfish purposes, all love affairs you attempt have a [[Failure Is the Only Option]] promise, and virtually every single person you meet is a [[Jerkass]] or a [[Gold Digger]]. Alan has it pretty bad.

* [[Cultural Translation]]: Parodied when Charlie has to write a theme tune for an [[Anime]] dub. [[Hilarity Ensues]].

* [[Deadpan Snarker]]: Pretty much everyone fits this role at one time or another, but Berta most frequently.

* [[Depraved Kids' Show Host]]: Charlie, when he becomes a Children's Song Star.

* [[The Ditz]]: Kandi and Jake.

* [[Do-It-Yourself Theme Tune]]: Though in appearance only.

* [[Doppelganger Dating]]

* [[Double Standard]]: Egregiously done towards ''both'' sexes, including the [[Running Gag]] that is Rose. Think about it for a second: [[Gender Flip|if she'd been a guy and Charlie a woman]]....

* [[Drowning My Sorrows]]: Walden tries it, but he can't stand the taste of whiskey.

* [[Enter Stage Window]]

* [[Everybody Has Lots of Sex]]:

** [[Butt Monkey|Except Alan]].

** Continued briefly with Walden's addition.

* [[Everyone Has Standards]]: Charlie found there were lines he wouldn't cross.

* [[Failure Is the Only Option]]: Both Alan and Charlie have received a load of this such as their respective love lives, whether Alan would ever move out of Charlie's home, etc.

* [[Fan Service]]:

** How many gratuitously naked sexy women can fit into one show?

** And then for the ladies, Ashton Kutcher's first episode featured him walking around in his birthday suit.

* [[Fetish]]: Alan has a bit of a thing for [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FiNOcWY9KRI pregnant women.]

* [[Flanderization]]:

** Jake has become more stupid as the show has gone on, almost to the point of being a [[The Ditz]]. Recently he has shown to be good at cooking, so he is not totally helpless. More jokes have been made about his weight as well, even though he seems to be evening out. Makes you feel sorry for Angus Jones. Additionally, since he began smoking pot, he has gone from lovably dense to damn near inert.

** Every single character on the show. Charlie is a hedonistic man-whore and is worse than when the show started, many recent episodes made jokes about his recent love for prostitutes, despite having a fiancée. Alan is a cheapskate who literally will not pay for anything ever and he started out just having internal struggles paying for stuff.

** Judith is nothing but a giant bitch to everyone for little reason. Season 9 nicely [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshades]] this

* [[Flirty Stepsiblings]]: Charlie and Evelyn's fiance's daughter, played by Jenny McCarthy. It was later revealed that she wasn't actually the guy's daughter too (they were both con artists) so there was a TON of [[Not Blood Siblings]] going on.

* [[Four-Temperament Ensemble]]: Charlie is choleric, Alan is melancholic, Jake is phlegmatic, and Rose is sanguine.

* [[The Fun in Funeral]]:

** In "A Sympathetic Crotch To Cry On", the family attends the funeral of one of Evelyn's exes; a lot of jokes are on the dead guy in the coffin.

** Charlie's funeral in "Nice to Meet You Walden Schmidt" is similar.

* [[Gasshole|Gasinass Syndrome]]:

** Jake. Alan squeaks a few off now and again as well. He once admits red wine causes him to fart.

** Who could forget a less-than-affectionate Lyndsey telling Alan to back off [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gM7IZMscSkE in no uncertain terms]? One appearance has her getting back together with Alan, one of the reasons being she can fart "like a buffalo" and he still won't leave her. She then proceeds to do so.

* [[Genius Ditz]]: Walden is great with computers but has trouble picking matching shoes.

* [[Girl of the Week]]

* [[Groin Attack]]:

** Jake mentions getting "a soccer ball to the nads" at least twice.

* [[Has Two Mommies|Has Two Daddies]]

* [[Henpecked Husband]]: Herb and Alan are both abused by Judith.

* [[Hilariously Abusive Childhood]]: Charlie and Alan's childhood was like this.

* [[Hypocrite]]: Judith. For one thing, she chews out Alan and Charlie for the women they bring to Charlie's house while Jake is around, whom she deems as inappropriate, while she has been known to bring strange men to her house while Jake is around just the same.

* [[I Can Change My Beloved]]: When Charlie's mother meets his first serious [[Love Interest]], they square off like a confrontation is about to take place. Instead, the mother simply asks desperately, "Can you fix him?" Exasperated, the girl confirmed, "I'm trying." She is, but it doesn't work.

* [[Idiosyncratic Episode Naming]]: Episodes are named for throwaway lines of dialogue in the episode, thus leading to a [[Title Drop]] as well.

* [[If I Had a Nickel]]: "An Old Flame with a New Wick" has, "If I had a nickel for every time a girl broke up with me and came back as a man, I'd have a ''nickel''!"

* [[Informed Ability]]: For a [[Big Eater]], Jake [[They Wasted a Perfectly Good Sandwich|never seems to finish a meal]] on the show, often going off to do his homework with his plate still mostly full.

* [[Informed Flaw]]: In Rose's earliest appearances, the major characters reacted to her as if she was ugly; this was phased out and replaced by sheer creepiness relatively quickly, though. Rose's actress is, by most standards, very pretty.

* [[Inherently Funny Words]]: [[Crowning Moment of Funny|SQUAB!]]

* [[Inventor of the Mundane]]: Walden Schmidt is billionaire after developing a website that he sold to Microsoft for $1.3 billion. No one has ever heard of it because Microsoft decided to bundle it with the Zune.

* [[It's All About Me]]: This arguably applies to everyone, but especially Evelyn, the two brothers' mother. She frequently reacts to news that affects anyone except her with "Do you have any idea what you put me through?!"

* [[Jerkass]]: Most characters, but especially Charlie, Judith and Evelyn.

** Virtually every character on the show--primary, secondary, ''and'' tertiary--is a [[Jerkass]], except for Alan and Rose, though even those two have their moments.

* [[Karma Houdini]]:

** Judith is always abusing Alan and she never gets any payback for it.

** When Alan runs a Ponzi scheme on his family and friends, he manages to get enough money {{spoiler|from Rose}} to pay everyone back before they find out what he did.

** It's heavily implied that Rose murdered Charlie, and made it look like an accident. Alan and Berta both realize this, and Alan casually tells it to several people, but nobody does anything about it.

* [[Karmic Death]]: Charlie went to Paris, and married Rose, then cheated on her. Let's just say he scorned the wrong woman and she pushed him into a train.

* [[Killed Off for Real]]: Charlie dies between seasons by "falling" in front of a train. The only "witness" is Rose and while she's talking about it the camera cuts to Alan with a knowing look on his face.

* [[Long Runner]]

* [[Manly Gay]]: Chelsea's father and his partner, played by Stacy Keach (Mike Hammer) and John Amos, respectively.

* [[Mars and Venus Gender Contrast]]: Driving force in plot, characterization and dialogue.

* [[MD Envy]]: Alan is a chiropractor who gets made fun of constantly for his work.

* [[Mistaken for Gay]]: Charlie and Alan on several occasions. Neither of them ever seem to want to point out that they're brothers.

* [[Mr. Fanservice]]: Walden. Every female character who met him (except for Danny, a lesbian) expressed attraction towards him in some way.

* [[Ms. Fanservice]]: Kandi, including a few subtropes, most memorably [[Catholic School Girls Rule]].

* [[Never Speak Ill of the Dead]]: Subverted during Charlie's funeral; Alan tries to say nice things about him in his eulogy, but Charlie's ex-girlfriends interrupt him with insults. Later subverted by Alan himself:

* [[No Pregger Sex]]: Inverted; Alan says that the most sex they had with Judith was during the time she was pregnant with Jake. This led to him having a pregnancy fetish.

* [[No Sense of Personal Space]]: Walden thinks nothing of hugging Alan while in the nude.

* [[Not Blood Siblings]]

* [[Odd Couple]]: Charlie and Alan. Walden and Alan later on.

* [[Once Per Episode]]: An attractive woman shows up for one or two episodes. If Charlie isn't sleeping with her, Alan will be. This was dropped when Charlie was dropped.

** Walden, originally. He no longer shows any shades of this, though.

** Charlie too, the guy depends on other people for ''everything''. As Alan put it: "You are a child. A high-maintenance child!"

** How does Alan's fetish for pregnant women make him a [[Jerkass]]?

* [[Parenting the Husband]]: Being fed up with this sort of situation is what causes the split between Bridget and Walden.

* [[Pet the Dog]]: Berta has some of these moments.

* [[Played for Laughs]]: Anytime Alan is almost suicidally depressed, Charlie is always thinking of himself no matter what.

* [[Pretty in Mink]]: Alan's literal dream woman is a [[Lady in Red]] who mentions she has several fur coats, that all feel the same in the dark.

* [[Queer People Are Funny]]: Especially with Chelsea's dad and Walden.

* [[Quip to Black]]:

** Parodied when Charlie and Alan are watching a crime show that's an obvious [[Expy]] of ''[[CSI: Miami]]'', with a female in the Horatio Caine role. After she makes her [[Glasses Pull]] and snappy one-liner, they cut to "Squeeze Box" instead of "YEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAH!"

* [[Real Life Writes the Plot]]: The reason for Season 8's sudden halt in production, and ultimately why Charlie is revealed to have died between Season 8 and Season 9, is because of [[Charlie Sheen]]'s erratic behavior.

* [[Sensitive Guy and Manly Man]]: [[Sarcasm Mode|Go ahead. Take a wild guess]].

* [[Servile Snarker]]: Berta.

* [[Sexy Santa Dress]]: A lady with... issues about Christmas wears one.

* [[Shallow Love Interest]]: Kandi. She really showed no signs of wanting to know what Alan was like on the inside, just interested in the sex. And it really doesn't help that she dumped Alan soon after he got a gambling jackpot... But it was said that she dumped him because he did not wanted to have children with her.

* [[Shoot the Shaggy Dog]] Chelsea's entire relationship with Charlie becomes this in universe and for many fans as well.

* [[The Sociopath]]: Charlie shows enough signs to be diagnosed as one.

* [[Something's Different About You Now]]: Inverted.

* [[Something We Forgot]]: In "People Who Love Peepholes", Alan moves out of the house and leaves Jake behind.

* [[Stylistic Suck]]: Charlie's jingles.

* [[Suddenly Sexuality]]: Judy.

* [[Title Drop]]: As mentioned above, every episode is named after a throwaway line of dialogue from that episode.

* [[Toilet Humor]]: Greatly emphasized ninth season that it's arguably much more gross then funny, the episode "Not In My Mouth" stands out in particular as you can see in the [[Vomit Discretion Shot]] entry below.

** Jake also suffered from this. At first, he was a naive, but pretty nice kid. But as he got older, he became a lot more rude; making snide comments to his father and uncle, shows insensitivity to other people's feelings and barely appreciates the hardships his father goes through for him.

* [[Unproblematic Prostitution]]

* [[Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist]]: Most of the cast.

* [[Vomit Discretion Shot]]:

** Both played straight and averted in "Not In My Mouth". Lindsey gets terribly drunk and vomits everywhere on Walden's private plane. Though we never see it coming out of her mouth, puke appears on Alan and Walden's shirts, and a [[Squick|great huge splat strikes the window]]. Also seen in the Charlie era, where following a night of binge-boozing he excuses himself to the kitchen to retch loudly in the sink.

* [[Weather Dissonance]]: Whenever Alan wants to take Jake on a camping trip or some similar outdoorsy bonding experience, it rains.

* [[What Did I Do Last Night?]]: Charlie. A lot. But one example in particular had him wake up the next morning finding out he tried to mail his pants back to the manufacturer because he [[Groin Attack|snagged himself]] zipping up.

* [[Woman Scorned]]: This is ultimately the reason why Charlie died, in-universe.

* [[Yank the Dog's Chain]]: Alan on many unfair occasions.

* [[You Look Familiar]]:

** The actress who plays Chelsea, one of Charlie's few meaningful relationships for a long time (some would say ''too'' long) had already appeared in other roles in previous episodes, including the Pilot.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Moving Picture Company]]

[[Category:American Series]]

[[Category:Zoic Studios]]