TELEVISION REVIEW; Swinging Bachelor's Peril: Beware of Geek Bearing Kid (original) (raw)
Advertisement
You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.
TELEVISION REVIEW
- Sept. 22, 2003
With its title ''Two and a Half Men'' invites viewers to think -- half-think -- about fractions. It's the story of Charlie Harper (Charlie Sheen), a self-satisfied ad man who sleeps around; Alan Harper (Jon Cryer), his pompous, stuttering brother; and Jake (Angus T. Jones), Alan's clingy, bothersome son. None of these guys excite, or deliver a single inspired line. Still, CBS apparently puts the show's total virility at around five-sixths of capacity. Other tallies may get a lower number.
As on two other new shows, ''All About the Andersons'' and ''Like Family,'' characters in ''Two and a Half Men,'' in an effort to economize, move in with reluctant family. And just as on the first episodes of the other shows, the pilot of ''Two and a Half Men,'' being shown tonight, concerns a host's vain efforts to get the freeloaders out.
Here Mr. Sheen plays the beleaguered host, but it's not middle-class comfort that Alan disrupts when he shows up at Charlie's house with his luggage. Rather, Charlie lives in a swinging Malibu bachelor palace, and it's Alan who brings the banality, in the form of his tubby son. Charlie fears his nerdy kin will spook girls, but he fails to get rid of them.
No lifestyle gets a decent hearing on ''Two and a Half Men.'' Alan, whose lesbian wife has just left him, is almost despicably pathetic. Mr. Cryer's sloping profile and mannered geek delivery is not endearing; it's sad. And Mr. Sheen, who, as a notorious onetime frequenter of prostitutes, might be expected to work up enthusiasm for this womanizer, paces through his role as if disgusted and soul-sick. His face looks strained; his shoulders, narrow and sloped. Though Charlie's meant to be decadent and living large (''I drive a Jag, I live at the beach''), he appears to be having no more fun than Alan, who at least has a reason to be heartbroken.
Jake, the 10-year-old, must have been cast to bring freshness to the proceedings, except that even he seems to have a hangover. His precocity is irritating.
The show's one successful conceit involves a stalker of Charlie's, a madwoman who initially seems frightening but to whom Charlie finally turns to for advice. A stalker comes to seem like just the kind of useful and reliable supporter that everyone could use.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access.
Already a subscriber? Log in.
Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Advertisement