The Two and a Half Men series finale was chock full of visits from past guest stars, a bunch of new guest star appearances and a truckload of in-jokes.
Weirder than weird
I’ve never taken drugs in my life. Well, not unless you count that time I broke my arm and they gave me something in the emergency room before wheeling me into surgery. That stuff made the world go soft and warm, but it had nothing on what this episode did to my head. Seriously, who needs drugs when you can watch this kind of TV?
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Confession time: I’ve never liked Two and a Half Men all that much. I didn’t hate it, but other than a few episodes on a transatlantic flight, I’d never seen it. When the controversy happened, I rolled my eyes with the rest of the world and waited for it to be canceled. Heck, when the news came that it had been canceled, I even wrote up a few reasons I was glad.
Enjoying the ride
But knowing that I would be covering the finale, mostly out of morbid curiosity, I decided to watch the final season. Then something very strange happened: I started liking the damn show. I remembered all the reasons I had a crush on Jon Cryer back in his Pretty In Pink days and discovered just how adorable Ashton Kutcher was. I was surprised when I found the adoption storyline sweet, rather than bizarre and awkward as I originally feared. So as I sat down to watch the finale, I had high hopes. If it was anything like the season I had just witnessed, I knew I was going to love it.
Then things went in a new, strange direction and while it took me a few minutes to get on board, I soon found myself enjoying the ride. What came next was an hour of wackiness I never expected. First, it was discovered that Charlie was in fact still alive and had been trapped in Rose’s basement dungeon. Once he escaped, evidence of Charlie was everywhere, but we never actually saw him. Old guest starts popped up as Alan and Walden tried to track down the man who was no longer dead, and new guest stars joined in on the fun as well.
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The perfect ending
As the ending drew closer, all I wanted to know was if Charlie Sheen was actually going to make an appearance in the final minutes. I knew it wasn’t likely, given his history with the show, but I also knew that anything is possible in Hollywood. So while a part of me was sad that Sheen wasn’t in the episode, I was sort of happy he didn’t show up. I feel like he wouldn’t have really deserved the attention he would have gotten from that. For a show with the outlandish background this one had, it really was the perfect ending.
My favorite bits:
Ashton Kutcher looking to the camera and declaring he couldn’t wait for it to be over.
Alan’s mother speculating that perhaps the best way to honor Charlie was to snort cocaine off a hooker’s ass.
Walden looking for evidence of Charlie’s death online and discovering a rant about a former employer. Ha!
Berta: “Alan, if you move out and Charlie moves in with Walden, I think we can keep this going for another five years.”
Walden: “So what exactly happened to Charlie?”
Alan: “Yeah, start from the beginning.”
Rose: “You mean from the pilot?”
The ridiculous, but awesome animation sequence.
Rose finally deciding that jumping off the balcony was stupid.
The tiger’s blood reference. Ha!
Arnold Schwarzenegger. That is all.
Schwarzenegger recapping basically the entire series. It made my brain hurt, but in kind of a good way.
Schwarzenegger: “This whole thing has been going on way too long.”
Alan: “Yeah a lot of people have been saying that.”
Walden: “Haters gonna hate.”
Jake’s entrance.
Walden: “It’s amazing that you’ve made so much money with such stupid jokes.” — Everyone looking at the camera at that moment was classic.
Walden: “Berta, what are you still doing here?”
Berta: “No idea.”
Walden telling John Stamos that he was “just a handsome guy who got lucky on a sitcom.”
Schwarzenegger picking up Christian Slater instead of Charlie.
The double-piano smash.
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