Editorial Review:Description:Charlie Harper is a bachelor in paradise, complete with Malibu beach house, overpaid job and a very active dating life. Then his uptight brother Alan, in the throes of a divorce, moves in - and brings his 10-year-old son Jake with him. Sorry, Charlie. It looks like paradise lost. This 4-disc set includes all 24 Season-One Episodes of the breezy comedy - the People's Choice Award winner as Favorite New Series - starring Charlie Sheen as Charlie and Jon Cryer as Alan. As the brothers reestablish a sense of family, Charlie also bonds with Jake (Angus T. Jones). Holland Taylor is the guys' domineering mother, Marin Hinkle is Alan's icy ex and Melanie Lynskey is Rose, who thinks one date with Charlie means life-long commitment. Meet the Harper men - two adults, one kid and no grown-ups.
DVD Features:FeaturetteGag Reel
Amazon.com:Hedonistic bachelor Charlie (Charlie Sheen) is a jingles writer who, he blithely states, makes a lot of money for doing very little work, sleeps with beautiful women who don't ask about his feelings, drives a Jag and lives at the beach, and sometimes, in the middle of the day, for no reason at all, likes to make himself a big pitcher of margaritas and take a nap out on the sundeck. His brother, Alan (Jon Cryer), evicted from his house by his soon-to-be-ex-wife, is 'rigid, inflexible, uptight, obsessive and anal-retentive.' Charlie and Alan are 'twisted Jungian archetypes,' according to series co-creator Chuck Lorre in one of this set's bonus features. If by 'twisted Jungian archetypes,' he means Oscar and Felix from
The Odd Couple, then yes, Charlie and Alan are 'twisted Jungian archetypes,' and this inaugural season finds rich comic tension in their period of adjustment. Charlie is a Man Behaving Badly, whose idyllic life is upended when 'fuddy-duddy' Alan moves in, accompanied by his impressionable 10-year-old son, Jake (Angus T. Jones), with whom he shares custody with his iceberg-cold, sexually confused (a comic conceit thankfully abandoned by season's end) estranged wife, Judith (Marin Hinkle). Alan is a single father who is appalled by his amoral brother's lifestyle and by the influence Charlie might have on Jake ('Uncle Charlie, I understand the point spread, but I'm still confused about the vig'). And then there's Berta (effortless scene-stealer Conchata Ferrell), Charlie's formidable, tart-tongued housekeeper who is initially driven out the door by Alan's fussiness ('The peanut butter stains on Jake's shirts really require an enzyme presoak').
Two and a Half Men is a guy show that sets feminism back a good three decades. Women are portrayed as either bimbonic objects of lust (
Transformers' Megan Fox guest stars as Berta's teenage granddaughter), vengeful and retaliative (Heather Locklear as Alan's divorce lawyer), crazy hot (Jenna Elfman as an unstable single mother on the run), or emasculating (Holland Taylor as Charlie and Alan's mother, or, as Charlie refers to her, 'Mom, the Impaler'). The charming Melanie Lynskey's is a particularly thankless role, that of Rose, Charlie's 'insightful and disturbing' stalker, who becomes Jake's babysitter. While Charlie's 'bad-boy act' could quickly get old in lesser hands, Sheen, in the past not the most natural of comic actors, is in his element. Charlie's genuine affection for Jake goes a long way toward redeeming his character (and lack of it).
Two and a Half Men, a People's Choice Award-winner its first season, really adds up with a crudely funny sense of humor that is all kinds of wrong, but also smart and, at times, even sweet. --
Donald Liebenson
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Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
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Two and A Half Men
Got to be the funniest show I have ever seen. A must have on DVD.
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Great tv show!
This show cracks me up! I can't get enough of it! Buy this if you love to laugh!
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Awesome!
We've recently started watching "Two and a Half Men" in reruns and find it hysterical! I bought the first season for my husband's birthday last month and we have watched the first three or four episodes. They always bring on "laugh out loud" moments!
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LOVE THIS SHOW!
Great show; you'd think Charlie Sheen & Jon Cryer were really brothers. Love the outtakes!
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GREAT SERIES
I watch this on TV whenever it's broadcast. This is one series that just hooks you in and you can't resist it.
I wanted to especially see the extras on this set. Since others have told you pretty much which episodes are included, I'll go into a couple of the extras found on disc 4.
One is a "tour" of the set with Angus (Jake). While less than 10 minutes long, it's still interesting as you get to see what exactly is around each corner on the set. What exactly IS at the top of the stairs? Is the house actually on the beach? What's around that corner in the kitchen were Berta usually goes or comes out of?
Another extra is about 6 minutes of outtakes with some of the bloopers made during the recording of the series. Even though it's relatively short, it's a lot of fun to watch as each star makes his or her fair share of blunders.
There's one other extra where there is a very good history of the series and how it developed. Is Charlie and Alan's "Mom" REALLY that grumpy in real life? How about Berta? How did they settle on hiring the stars to fit the parts? Was Rose originally to be a recurring role?
Needless to say, the episodes are great in this set, and the extras definitely add to the fun.