Good sitcoms are like a hug. They feel like sitting down on the couch with a loved one, in the morning or afternoon program, for five episodes at a time. It’s not without reason that they often play in cozy living rooms or rustic bars. Even the dysfunctional punch-and-tacker principality in The Office was home to millions of fans. And certainly the sofa of Charlie Harper (Charlie Sheen) in Two and a Half Men.
But there was always a large number of people that Two and a Half Men didn’t hug, but instead slapped a few times with a grin. (The sitcom isn’t alone in that: King of Queens is too aged badly.) Here are three examples that would immediately cause a public outcry today.
1. Two and a Half Men tells women how ugly they are
Charlie Harper is many things, but not complicated. He likes slim, young women who could start a career with Germany’s next top model at any time. It’s okay to look like that. Finding this look beautiful is okay too. It is not okay to convey to all other women they are ugly and therefore less valuable.
CBS
Women in Two and a Half Men have to be one thing above all: attractive
That’s what the series does all the time. For example, in the Season 2 episode “A Nose Full of Alan,” Charlie meets a woman he met when he was at school systematically bullied for being overweight has. Now she’s lost weight, so he’s trying to hook up with her.
But as it turns out, she just wants to rub his new body image in his face to get revenge on him. What is Two and a Half Men trying to tell us? That all overweight women want to lose weight? That women lose weight because they seek male approval?
Alone Charlie’s housekeeper Berta (Conchata Ferrell) lets the series get away with being overweight but never stages them as potential conquests. She can act as a sidekick because Two and a Half Men doesn’t open up about her sexual status anyway. The first reason is their weight. The second is her age.
2. Old people are a joke to Two and a Half Men
Where jokes about weight don’t cut it, jokes about age follow. In the ninth episode of the third season, Alan (Jon Cryer) meets Charlie’s neighbor Norma (Cloris Leachman), a rich pensioner who falls in love with him. The series finds this incredibly entertaining, of course.
Charlie pokes fun at the age difference between the two with my cannonade of jokes, such as explaining, “her first Christmas was the first Christmas ever” or “her first car was a chariot“. Norma is not a person with feelings, she is a laughing stock.
Age discrimination has increasingly become part of the fair language debate in recent years. The Two and a Half Men episode not only targets an age gap, but portrays older people as unattractive and desperate. They only come into question as sexual partners if you benefit from their windfall.
One of the best characters in Two and a Half Men? Berta:
Best of Berta – Moviepilot Tribute (German) HD
3. Two and a Half Men loses faith in reality because of trans people
Up until a few years ago, popular sitcoms liked to use queer people as targets for derogatory jokes. Friends and How I Met Your Mother are two well-known examples. Two and a Half Men even got a nod from LGBT organization GLAAD for portraying queer lifestyles (via Entertainment Today). And could himself some lukewarm sayings then do not resist.
In the 18th episode of the first season, Charlie and Alan’s mother, Evelyn (Holland Taylor), begins a relationship with a trans man who had an affair with Charlie before he transitioned. He then explains you have probably left reality and entered the matrix. That’s a dusty old man’s joke. Non-queer people don’t need to understand every aspect of trans people’s often traumatic lives. But tying their identity to a loss of reality is simply a stupid insult.
There’s nothing wrong with enjoying Two and a Half Men as a fan. The humor can be snappy and dirty and doesn’t have to apply to everyone. But often enough, the unmistakably heterosexual male perspective of the series turns into pure arrogance and condescension. Two and a Half Men’s embrace didn’t extend to everyone.
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