Product Description
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Two and a Half Men: The Complete First Season (DVD)
Charlie Sheen and Jon Cryer star along with young Angus T. Jones
as three males from two generations, each learning what it really
means to be a man. Charlie is a well-to-do bachelor with a house
at the beach, a Jaguar in the garage and an easy way with women.
His casual Malibu lifestyle is interrupted when his tightly wound
brother, Alan, who's facing a divorce, and Alan's son, Jake, come
to stay with him. Together, these two and a half men confront the
challenges of growing up--finally. Complicating matters are the
brothers' self-obsessed, controlling mother, Evelyn (Holland
Taylor), and Alan's estranged wife, Judith (Marin Hinkle).
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Hedonistic bachelor Charlie (Charlie Sheen) is a jingles writer
who, he blithely states, makes a lot of money for doing very
little work, s with beautiful women who don't ask about his
feelings, drives a Jag and lives at the beach, and sometimes, in
the middle of the day, for no reason at all, likes to make
himself a big pitcher of margaritas and take a nap out on the
sundeck. His brother, Alan (Jon Cryer), evicted from his house by
his soon-to-be-ex-wife, is "rigid, inflexible, uptight, obsessive
and anal-retentive." Charlie and Alan are "twisted Jungian
archetypes," according to series co-creator Chuck Lorre in one of
this set's bonus features. If by "twisted Jungian archetypes," he
means O and Felix from The Odd Couple, then yes, Charlie and
Alan are "twisted Jungian archetypes," and this inaugural season
finds rich comic tension in their period of adjustment. Charlie
is a Man Behaving Badly, whose idyllic life is upended when
"fuddy-duddy" Alan moves in, accompanied by his impressionable
10-year-old son, Jake (Angus T. Jones), with whom he shares
custody with his iceberg-cold, sexually confused (a comic conceit
thankfully abandoned by season's end) estranged wife, Judith
(Marin Hinkle). Alan is a single her who is appalled by his
amoral brother's lifestyle and by the influence Charlie might
have on Jake ("Uncle Charlie, I understand the point spread, but
I'm still confused about the vig"). And then there's Berta
(effortless scene-stealer Conchata Ferrell), Charlie's
formidable, tart-tongued housekeeper who is initially driven out
the door by Alan's fussiness ("The peanut butter stains on Jake's
shirts really require an enzyme presoak").
Two and a Half Men is a guy show that sets feminism back a good
three decades. Women are portrayed as either bimbonic objects of
lust (Transformers' Megan Fox guest stars as Berta's teenage
granddaughter), vengeful and retaliative (Heather Locklear as
Alan's divorce lawyer), crazy hot (Jenna Elfman as an unstable
single mother on the run), or emasculating (Holland Taylor as
Charlie and Alan's mother, or, as Charlie refers to her, "Mom,
the Impaler"). The charming Melanie Lynskey's is a particularly
thankless role, that of Rose, Charlie's "inful and
disturbing" stalker, who becomes Jake's babysitter. While
Charlie's "bad-boy act" could quickly get old in lesser hands,
Sheen, in the past not the most natural of comic actors, is in
his element. Charlie's genuine affection for Jake goes a long way
toward redeeming his character (and lack of it). Two and a Half
Men, a People's Choice Award-winner its first season, really adds
up with a crudely funny sense of humor that is all kinds of
wrong, but also smart and, at times, even sweet. --Donald
Liebenson