Two and a Half Men: The Complete First Season

Hedonistic bachelor Charlie (Charlie Sheen) is a jingles writer who (as 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 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." Yes, the pair make a modern Odd Couple. 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 bimbo-like objects of lust (The Transformers' Megan Fox guest stars as Berta's teenage granddaughter), vengeful and retaliating (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 makes the most of the particularly thankless role 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 is in his element here and Charlie's genuine affection for Jake goes a long way toward redeeming his character (and lack of it). A People's Choice Award-winner in its first season, Two and a Half Men sports a crudely funny sense of humor that is all kinds of wrong, but the show is often smart and, at times, even sweet. Compiling all 24 episodes from the 2003-04 first season, DVD extras include a behind-the-scenes featurette, backstage tour with Jones, and a gag reel. Recommended. (D. Liebenson)