“Poker buddy?”
“I used to.”
As I recall, when 2.5 Men debuted, there were very few other sitcoms playing on the networks, and just about every other one was either absolutely dire or had long since jumped the shark. (I am not sure, but I think Friends might have just ended.) At the time, it was the best of an extremely poor crop. That enabled it to pick up a loyal audience of fans of the sitcom genre, and it has maintained its (mediocre) quality well enough not to have lost them since.
You remember wrong. There were a lot of sitcomes available when Two and a Half Men debuted. Although it was surely helped along by a cushy timeslot between Raymond and CSI Miami. Sheen was also famously sober at the time and had just married Denise Richards. He was respected people.
But for as stupid as the show is most of the time, it is occasionally hysterical. And some of the stuff they get away with as a “family sitcom” just makes you shake your head. That’s what I think pushed the show: a good timeslot and pushing the envelope of what’s OK on broadcast TV.
Berta: This brother turns them gay and this brothetr turns them guy. What are the odds?
Last night’s syndication rerun was the one with Jake’s hysterical scene with the hat at the dinner tble and Stephen Tyler.
Alan: Didn’t you vomit into that hat.
Charlie: I had it dry cleaned. But I’ll always know.
Dirty jokes and hot babes are a popular feature. The show has a quick pace. The show has an edge, people insult each other, and go for the laugh every time. But more subtle, and a key factor in many successful sitcoms, there is no character development. Every character is the same in each episode, the viewer doesn’t need an emotional connection to the characters, there’s no message or lesson attached to the show, you don’t need to follow a storyline across episodes, it’s just about laughs.
Why are white males such a prime demographic? I thought women (esp housewives) spend most consumer income. (Hence whenever I watch TV it’s a non stop parade of paper towel ads).
or does 2 1/2 men have LOTS of hard sell Chevy pick up truck advertisements?
I have no idea why it’s successful. On the surface it’s a shallow as Married with Children, but at least MWC had value as satire.
The problem I see is that Big Bang Theory (another Chuck Lorre show) is getting a little too much like 2 1/2 Men. Those hopeless geeks are getting a lot more action than the average guy I’d wager.
As far as I know, it’s not white males that are a prime demographic, but males 18-34 because they’re more likely to be single and able and willing to spend money. The bawdy, mostly juvenile humor of TAAHM is more likely to appeal to males of that age group than women (although there are no doubt many women who like it too–my wife does, so that counts as a sample of one).
The other prime demographic is 18-49 – both men and women…prime money earning years. After 49, the thinking goes, people get more conservative with their own money. Brand loyalty also plays a part, at least it used to. The older one is, the harder it is for a sponsor to get one to change brands. Not so with younger buyers.
What’s with the past tense? Has it been cancelled [sub](God willing)[/sub]?
Well. it’s dead in this incarnation. If it rises from the ashes it will be with a new lead actor.
I like the show most of the time. Pre-Chelsea era at least.
Because it is made with 100% Tiger Blood. Duh.
I don’t think so. It may be nerd humor, but I don’t think most of it is over most people heads.
Meh. It was always that way. By the end of the first season, all of the guys (barring Sheldon) had bagged at least one impossibly hot babe.
I never got that impression, either. I don’t watch BBT that often (my tolerance for laugh tracks has been destroyed by NBC’S Thursday line-up) but it seemed rare for them to make puns or science-culture references without explaining them (i.e. it’s never just “as Lavoisier would say…”, but always “as the 18th Century French chemist Antoine Lavoisier would say…”), and the “joke” was that the “normal” character (Penny, typically) was looking at the nerds dubiously.
Well, that and basing whole episodes around some newly-displayed neurosis or compulsion of Sheldon’s.
Any physics-based thread here is likely to contain more obscure jokes than whole episodes of BBT. Heck, I’ve made jokes about Bode’s Law and Chandrasekhar’s Limit that I’d never expect in BBT, at least in dialogue. Occasionally there are background jokes, like visual puns on Sheldon’s t-shirts or written on posters or blackboards, but in dialogue? I don’t think so.