Spark pay finale inventory
Related: Jon Cryer Breaks Down His Funniest ‘Two and a Half Men’ MomentsĪfter eight seasons of increasing popularity, the wild life Sheen had been leading off-camera overtook Charlie Harper’s swinger shenanigans. By the time Jones grew up enough to condemn his meal-ticket as “filth” (as he did in 2012), his presence was no longer needed anyway.
As originally conceived, Men was to have been about two men parenting a third male, but, very quickly, the “half” man, Jones’s Jake became little more than a short straight-man to the two stars, a kid shuttled in and out of scenes as quickly as possible. Both smart, quick actors, they understood their characters and helped the writers shape and refine Charlie and Alan. In the early seasons, there was real spark in Sheen and Cryer’s exchanges. Soon enough, both men’s pasts were overtaken by the popularity of Men. Sheen was perceived as a once-serious actor ( Wall Street, Platoon) who was lowering himself for a big paycheck. In many interviews, the delightfully self-aware Lorre frequently said that if Men had aired first on pay-cable, its content would have been perceived as tame, but telling jokes about private parts and sexcapades in primetime to the broadest audience possible placed Men in a context in which it came off as daring, in a wink-wink, nudge-nudge sort of way.Ĭoming into the show, Cryer was known mostly as Duckie in the 1986 John Hughes film Pretty in Pink. The jokes on Two and a Half Men were simple, blunt, and frequently vulgar - if the show can claim any shred of originality, it was in Lorre’s belief that the mass-American audience that composes the CBS viewership would enjoy humor that was more crass than most network shows dared. Related: 'The Odd Couple' Review: Are the New Felix and Oscar Funny?
Charlie was wealthy, thanks to a career as a jingle writer Alan was always grubbing for money and angling to stay in his brother’s guest house for, basically, ever. From the start, the key dynamic was clear: It was prissy, insecure, neurotic Alan versus the confident, decadent, uninhibited Charlie. At the start, Cryer’s Alan Harper moved in with Sheen’s Charlie Harper, after the brother had been - a detail cribbed straight from The Odd Couple - kicked out of his house by his wife (played by Marin Hinkle). (And proving there’s little new on network TV, a re-worked version of The Odd Couple premiered on CBS just before the Men finale.) The difference between Men and a hundred other Odd Couple variations is the canniness Lorre and Aronsohn had in rejuvenating the premise, and its uniquely unpredictable casting. Co-created by Lorre and Lee Aronsohn, Two and a Half Men was, if you break it down, just another variation on The Odd Couple.
Two and a Half Men has always been a sturdy little sitcom. Make no mistake, though: This episode was Lorre’s revenge for having to put up with Sheen’s real-life antics for so many years. He turned to the camera and uttered Sheen’s trademark manic phrase: “Winning!” Then a piano dropped on him. The camera pulled back to reveal co-creator Chuck Lorre in a director’s chair. In the final scene, a body-double meant to be Charlie, his back to the camera, approached Walden’s house, only to have a baby grand piano dropped on him, obliterating the figure. Walden: “Amazing that you’ve made so much money with such stupid jokes.” (The stars of the show all turned and looked pointedly at the camera after that one.) To quote just two:Īlan: “Start from the beginning.” Rose: “You mean the pilot?” The final hour was stuffed with self-referential jokes about the show itself. She recounted this during a sequence featuring an animated version of Charlie. Then Melanie Lynskey’s Rose told Alan, Walden (Ashton Kutcher), and Evelyn (Holland Taylor) that Charlie wasn’t killed and cremated, but has been kept for the past four seasons in a pit in the basement of Rose’s house. Pretty soon, various women from Charlie’s past, including Amber Tamblyn as daughter Jenny, were shown in a montage, each receiving a large-sum check to “buy yourself something nice.” The finale began with Jon Cryer’s Alan getting a letter saying Charlie was owed a lot of money in composer royalties: Two and a half (get it?) million bucks. Two and a Half Men wrapped up its 12-season run Thursday night with an hour that centered on the idea that Charlie Sheen’s Charlie Harper was still alive - even though Sheen himself never actually turned up in the flesh.