Two and a Half Men: The Ashton Years

 Mondays at 9pm on CBS

There are a lot of comments I could make about the Two and a Half Men premiere:
-How ridiculous the opening funeral scene was – Does this show ever shoot for a tiny bit of realism? There wasn’t one sincere moment amidst the zings and one-liners. Someone just died! Even a zany comedy like 30 Rock would inject a little gravitas into the humour.
-How awkward and jarring John Stamos’ and Dharma & Greg’s cameos were.
-How tired the gags are – fart jokes? Alan spilling Charlie’s ashes? Come on.

But let’s face it, there’s only one thing anyone is interested in. So how well DID Ashton Kutcher fill Charlie Sheen’s skeezy sneakers?

Ashton is playing lovesick billionaire, Walden Schmidt, who stumbles onto Charlie’s old porch in the midst of a failed suicide attempt. When his high-school sweetheart ends their marriage, Walden throws himself into the ocean. Just one problem – the ocean is COLD! Alan takes him inside and tries to talk him down off the…err…beach?

Problem #1) Walden’s is a stupid character and his actions make no sense. He has 1.3 billion dollars, but doesn’t seem to care or have any inkling of how impressive that is. He acknowledges that he’s “tall, good-looking and smart” yet remains completely naive and unaffected by his ‘desire-ability’. For the record, I’ll concede that he’s tall and even good-looking (although he really needs to lose the homeless beard), but I’ve seen NOTHING to indicate that this guy is intelligent.

Problem #2) Ashton isn’t bringing his A game. He doesn’t seem to be taking anything seriously.  I swear there were two very obvious moments when he nearly cracked up on screen and I am almost positive it was not in character; right before he started to cry in the bar and the second time he went to hug Alan in the nude . I mean come on, what is this? A Jimmy Fallon sketch on SNL? This is a taped show – could they not have keep shooting until they had a take where he wasn’t stifling back laughter.

Alan befriends Walden and takes him to a bar, where his sad sack routine attracts two hot women. The girls come back to Charlie’s beach house and Alan quickly becomes a fourth wheel when the girls drag Walden up to bed. After his night of rejuvenating passion, Walden decides that he ‘dig’s the beach house and decides to buy it. Which is really convenient because Alan can’t afford to keep it! We still don’t know how Alan and Jake end up living there as well, but I’m sure the producers have crafted a suitably implausible story

The episode was 'to be continued'…but not for me. I’m out.

Ratings: It depresses me even to write it - 27.76 million viewers. Those are American Idol numbers. But the good news is that a HUGE chunk of those viewers were just tuning in to see how in the world they were going to deal with Charlie Sheen’s departure and replace him with Kutcher.