Given the large amount of page views that my posts regarding this season of Two and a Half Men have gotten, I’ve decided to start blogging about my thoughts on each episode, and all in all, I really liked this episode for the most part.
I personally thought the whole scene with Charlie’s funeral at the beginning of the episode was absolutely hilarious even though a bunch of his previous girlfriends were there trash talking him, asking to spit on his dead body and were all saying various STDs that Charlie had given them, such as chlamydia, herpes and genital warts. I’m not sure what to make of that because while Charlie did have at least one episode that I can remember him thinking that he might have an STD, but he never mentioned having any of the incurable STDs that they were saying that he had given him. Although, he was rather promiscuous, so it wouldn’t surprise me if he did have at least one STD.
One of my favorite parts of the episode was Alan saying that he wasn’t planning to have a Q and A at the funeral when people kept asking him questions. I thought that was hilarious. It was also strongly implied that Rose killed Charlie because when she was talking at his funeral, she said that Charlie had proposed to her, which she of course said yes to and that the next few days were the happiest days of her life until she came home and found Charlie in the shower with another woman. Rose said that she had forgiven him, but was “shocked” when an oncoming train hit him the next day.
I’m surprised that Charlie would end up cheating on Rose when he spent the last part of the previous season saying that he couldn’t live without her, but I guess Charlie is truly incapable of giving up his promiscuous ways for anyone. However, I guess that all of the trash talking of Charlie and the implication that Rose killed him could very well be a product of anger and resentment that Chuck Lorre feels toward Charlie Sheen for trashing him in that radio interview that he gave, which resulted in him finally being fired for all of his real-life antics.
This episode did have some rather dark humor in it, but than again the humor on show has always been rather crude and a bit dark to begin with, so the show still feels the same as always in a lot of ways, minus Charlie Sheen.
This episode really was a star-studded event with many surprise cameos, including John Stamos who played a guy who came to look at the house while Evelyn was holding an open house to try and sell the beach house even though Charlie had left it to Alan in his will. However, it turns out that Charlie had three mortgages on the house so there’s not way Alan could afford to continue to live there given the fact that he’s perpetually broke.
My favorite cameo in this episode was definitely Thomas Gibson and Jenna Elfman reprising there roles as Dharma and Greg from the show Dharma and Greg, which I didn’t know until after this episode aired had been co-created by Chuck Lorre with Dottie Dartland. That was one of my favorite shows as a kid, and watching it is one of my favorite memories that I have of my childhood. However, based on this episode it looks like they aren’t madly in love like they were on Dharma and Greg. Dharma really wanted to buy the place, but Greg was dead-set against buying Charlie’s beach house, saying that they couldn’t afford it and it wasn’t practical. Dharma being the free-spirit that she always was said that universe will provide for them, to which Greg responded by saying that the universe doesn’t provide, he does by working seventy hours a week.
Dharma suggested that he needed to meditate, but he suggested that he should file for divorce instead. However, they never actually said their names were Dharma and Greg, probably because Dharma and Greg aired on ABC, and Two and a Half Men airs on CBS, which would probably cause legal and copyright conflicts. Regardless, in my mind they were Dharma and Greg. I’m glad that Thomas Gibson responded to the comments from the viewers being upset at the idea of Dharma and Greg being so unhappy together after all these years suggesting that either they were simply playing two characters that act like Dharma and Greg acted on their show or if they were being Dharma and Greg that they were simply having an off day and were fighting a lot that day, but things weren’t really as bad between them as they looked.
I read on a post on a message board discussing their appearance on the show where the author of the post suggested that since we only saw them leaving the house that perhaps Dharma had actually gotten a bad vibe about from the place due to all of Charlie’s shallow sexual conquests with women when they alone upstairs and they were both worried that Evelyn would try to pressure them into buying the place, so their whole fight was all an act to make Evelyn not try and pressure them into buying Charlie’s beach house. I always loved them together and in my heart I want to believe that they will be together for the rest of their lives, and I’m just going to go with believing Thomas Gibson’s theory about them just having a really bad day or the theory that it was all an act to get out of buying the place. Even though Jenna Elfman and Thomas Gibson were only in the episode for forty-five seconds, it was still really great to see them together on TV again after all these years. Anyway, enough about Dharma and Greg, let’s get back together to discussing Two and a Half Men and this episode specifically.
I was surprised by how they introduced Walden by having him basically appear out of nowhere, scaring Alan in the process. Before the episode aired, the producers mentioned that they would have a lot of surprise guest stars who would be coming to look at Charlie’s beach house to see if they wanted to buy it, so I figured that he would be one of the people that would come to look at the house. When I was watching the episode for the first time, I kept wondering when Ashton was going to show up.
I thought that Alan’s moment where he was talking to Charlie’s ashes as if he were actually talking to Charlie was very touching, but it also had a lot of humor to it as well. I thought it was pure genius to have Walden just standing outside on the deck staring at Alan through the glass door causing Alan to scream like a girl and throw Charlie’s ashes everywhere. It was even funnier to have Walden to immediately ask him if he can use his phone.
When the producers said that Walden was going to be a brokenhearted billionaire, I wasn’t expecting him to be suicidal as well. While I usually don’t think suicide is funny, I do think that what he was saying about why he didn’t wear a wetsuit when he was trying to drown himself in the ocean and talking about updating his Facebook status to “Not dead yet.” was pretty funny.
Based on what they showed of Walden in this episode, I have to say that I really like the character so far. I know that people have been complaining about the fact that Ashton Kutcher should be playing the long-lost son of Charlie or at least that his character should have been related to Alan and Charlie in some other way, but I think that Walden seems like the kind of character that will be able to fit into the original DNA of the show. After all, like Charlie, Walden has a lot of money while Alan is perpetually broke, although, Walden is definitely a lot richer than Charlie because he’s a billionaire. It also looks like Walden has a lot of luck with women like Charlie did, even if Alan had to coach him on how to talk to the two girls at the bar. Although, Walden did say that his wife, Bridget, who had recently left him thinks that he’s emotionally immature, and while they haven’t shown Bridget yet, I would definitely agree with that assessment given the fact that he was threatening to commit suicide if he can’t be with Bridget and thinks it romantic for him to want to do that.
I thought it was hilarious how Walden hugged Alan while he was naked several times, and Alan’s reactions to him doing that was equally hilarious, especially when he walked away muttering about how he worth a billion dollars and is apparently “hung like an elephant” as he put it. It was even funnier when they showed Walden walking around the house naked with his private parts pixilated. Given the fact that Judith immediately took a liking to him after he briefly introduced himself to her while he was walking around naked, I’m guessing that Judith and Walden will end up having an affair later in the season. If that does eventually happen, it would definitely make things interesting between Alan and Walden.
Jon Cryer and Ashton Kutcher already seem to have a great dynamic between them, and I’m anxious to see them work together some more. I’m also really excited to see how they will handle explaining why Alan is going to continue to live at the beach house now that Walden has decided to buy it like he said at the end of the episode. After all, it’s not like Walden can’t afford the place on his own and needs a roommate.
One of my favorite scenes between Alan and Walden in this episode is the one where they are at the bar and two girls that Walden was talking to immediately started fawning over him as soon as he broke down in tears talking about how much he misses Bridget and Alan immediately started pretending to cry about missing Judith, hoping to get sympathy from them as well. That may have been pretty shallow of Alan to do that, but that kind of behavior is very typical for Alan. If he really wanted pick up a girl at the bar by trying to make them feel sorry him, I don’t get why he didn’t pretend to burst into tears over Charlie’s death. Either way, I thought the whole scene was hilarious.
I also thought it was funny to see Walden go from telling Alan that he doesn’t drink alcoholic beverages because he doesn’t like the taste of alcohol to getting really drunk from drinking appletinis with Alan. I thought Ashton Kutcher played drunk really well in this episode.
All things considered, I absolutely loved this episode for the most part. Walden seems like a very funny character, Everything that Berta said in this episode was hilarious, but my favorite thing that Berta said in this episode was a slightly different variation of her catchphrase, “I’m not cleaning that up!” and said, “I’m not cleaning him up!” when she saw that Charlie’s ashes had been dumped all over the living room. Also, like I said earlier, it was heavenly getting to see Jenna Elfman and Thomas Gibson together again, even if it was just for forty-five seconds.
One of the few complaints that I have about this episode is that I think they should have aired both this episode and part two of this episode back to back last Monday instead of making people wait a week for the next episode, especially since the last new episode that they had before production was shut down for the rest of the season last year aired in February. I personally think fans of the show deserved to have had both parts air last week.
The only other thing that I didn’t like about this episode was Jake. He just seemed rather pointless in this episode. All he really did was talk about how he was hungry during Charlie’s funeral and then just sat around farting repeatedly and eating a sandwich while everyone was reminiscing about Charlie after the funeral. What he said at the funeral was funny though, but the scene where he’s farting repeatedly didn’t do anything for me in terms of making me laugh.
All that being said, I give this episode a rating of an A-.
It's been quite the year for 
