I only recently started watching Two and a Half Men. It’s no All in the Family or Barney Miller, but it is better than most sitcoms. What I’ve noticed, though, is how dang funny some of the lines are. A couple, in particular, had me convulsing in laughter:
(note that this is from memory, so strict accuracy may be spotty)
Charlie is talking to Jake, who seems down. Charlie suspects it has something to do with Jake’s mom recently announcing she is re-marrying.
Charlie: Is it about the upcoming nuptials?
Jake: This has nothing to do with puberty!
And, in another episode, Alan has a new girlfriend and is concerned about her behavior, which is borderline stalking. They are lying in bed together, immediately after sex.
Alan: I think we need to talk about setting some boundaries.
Girl: Oh, for God’s sake, Alan, it was just my little finger!
I dunno, maybe I was just in a loopy mood. But these lines did me in.
mmm
I think Berta gets some of the best lines - she cracks me up. Kandi gets some good ones, too.
We’ve been watching the reruns forever, and we know when the lines are coming, and we’re still tickled every time. For a cheesy, low-brow sitcom, it generates some serious laughs.
Nothing can beat the Halloween episode one year, when Charlie takes up with a witch and Evelyn shows up dressed as the Wicked Witch of the West. The whole episode is hilarious.
Since retirement, Mr. Salinqmind has discovered this show, which is on at least 8 hours a day. He doesn’t like commercials but I tell him to suck it up, what else does he have to do? He doesn’t like the later Ashton Kutcher ones. The earlier episodes and the ones with Berta are, indeed, hilarious. At the end of the run, the writers hit rock bottom and were trying too hard.
In Toronto, I get this every weeknight from 23:00 to midnight (right after Seinfeld). I must have sat through all of the Charlie Sheen episodes at least a dozen times in the last few years. I might watch something else if anything better is on (like a documentary on science or history), but I keep coming back to it.
I love it when Alan tries to lie to someone (usually a hot babe) and Charlie will do everything he can to trip him up. Once, when Judith and Herb had separated, he tried to keep it a secret that he was banging his ex-wife again. After Judith had given him a BJ under the dining room table, Charlie asked (in front of Herb) if he had ever read the book Under the Table by Richard Gobbler.
Rose has one of my all-time favorite sitcom lines: "The Germans refer to it as schadenfreude, but here in America, we just say, ‘Ha-ha!’ "
(Pretty sure the writers were making a Simpsons reference, too.)
There’s a car sequence where they’re all driving together, and Evelyn is just hammered in the backseat. She keeps piping up to ask for “a drinky-poo” and it eventually becomes her answer to every question.
“What should we buy at the mall?”
“I know! A drinky-poo!”
It’s fun to do this IRL see how long you can keep up the single response.
To me without a doubt the funniest thing about it was Rose. She just stole every moment on screen, and the episodes when she in effect kidnapped Charlie and held him in a heroin coma, and everybody was fine with it, was among the best in the show.
The mum was good too, but struck me as a similar turn the mum in Arrested Development/Archer.
Berta, well, she had some good lines, but throwaway.
I’m sure I’m going to kick myself when I hear the explanation, but I don’t get it. I assume “upcoming nuptials” is supposed evoke something that sounds like something related to “puberty,” but my brain just isn’t working. I know explaining a joke kills it, but this one is bugging me.
Twelve-year-old Jake clearly has no clue as to what “nuptuals” are, but to him it sounds dirty, possibly because it sounds like “nipples” and the implication that it can “come up,” i.e., rise or get erect. In other words, it has to do with his sexual development as he hits puberty.
Very typical Jake humor. To him, everything is a dirty joke.
Not a fan of the show, but…
The episode with Martin Sheen as the father of Charlie’s latest hookup. Upon finding out that neither Charlie nor the girl have the faintest clue what each other’s names are, Holland Taylor (Charlie’s mother) turns to Sheen, and asks, “Are you as proud of yours as I am of mine?”
I used to watch quite a bit, until the whole Charlie Sheen meltdown in real life. I was never a big fan of Ashton Kutcher to begin with, and thought the show had pretty much run it’s course by then, so I never saw much of the later shows.
Speaking of Herb, one of my favorite scenes is when Charlie goes with Alan over to Judith’s, and Herb is out working in the garden. Charlie keeps asking him lots of double entendre sex/gardening questions, like whether he prefers a trimmed bush or let it grow naturally. Herb never catches on.
