The launch of the reworked Two-and-a-Half Men had some very good aspects and some very bad aspects.
The bad aspects were bad. True, there’s no comfortable way to kill off a character, but the funeral scene was too over the top in its dark humor, and just felt uncomfortable. There’s levels of meanness, and even with the negative characters involved, this still managed to cross a line.
And then there was the cameo by the title characters from Dharma & Greg (if unnamed here.) The very different couple whom you loved seeing conquer their differences for five seasons? Well the joke is, haha, they really don’t end up getting along! If somehow this pissing on the fans of Chuck Lorre’s earlier show had added to the plotline of this episode, that might be forgivable… but no. There’s all sorts of funny things they could’ve done with the couple, as long as they were bringing them on… but they’d rather just show off how mean they could be.
The good news? None of these had to do with the direction the show is going in. The stuff with the new guy, Ashton Kutcher? It worked. He brings a different rhythm to a show that could use some freshening (it was dropped rom my watch list last year.) So it hints to good things in the future. We shall see.
