For 12 seasons, Two and a Half Men was one of the most popular shows on television, airing on September 22, 2003, and ending with the final episode on February 19, 2015. It doesn’t seem like it’s been 10 years since the show departed. Not only because we’ve experienced a time-altering worldwide pandemic since then, but the show has been in syndication on multiple channels every day for longer than the entire run of the show. And now on the tenth anniversary of the final season, Warner Brothers is releasing the Complete Series on Blu-ray.
Buy Two and a Half Men: The Complete Series Blu-rayThe initial concept was pretty simple. Charlie Harper (Charlie Sheen), a rich bachelor who relishes his lavish and womanizing lifestyle, finds his brother Alan (Jon Cryer) and his young nephew Jake (Angus T. Jones) moving in with him because of a recent divorce leaving them nowhere else to go. Throw in a rich and uncaring mother, Evelyn (Holland Taylor); a cranky smart-mouthed housekeeper, Berta (Conchata Ferrell); and a crazy stalker next-door neighbor, Rose (Melanie Lynskey); and there are a lot of possible comical situations just ready made for a sitcom.
The majority of the seasons when combined with this cast were all pretty solid. But the wheels came off the bus in Season Eight when there was a falling out between one of the stars, Sheen, and show creator Chuck Lorre, which ultimately ended with Sheen’s firing. But with the series being so popular, they brought on a replacement, Walden Schmidt (Ashton Kutcher), a billionaire whose wife dumped him so he tried to drown himself in the ocean. Alan saw him and rescued him.
While the show struggled significantly, it managed to limp along for another four seasons. It’s always difficult to replace a main character on any TV show because it’s impossible to recapture the original magic. Walden tried to have serious relationships but they wouldn’t work out. He also had his share of flings, but not like Charlie. Later on, Charlie’s unknown daughter shows up. She’s a drunken lesbian slut, as bad as Charlie was, who moves in with them for a while. Then the last season Alan and Walden get married and pretend to be gay to adopt a child.
With over 262 episodes on 25 discs, there are too many good ones to choose from, so I picked a few of my favorite episodes to point out for special consideration.
“Camel Filters and Pheromones” (Season 1, Episode 12) – Berta is left watching her 16-year-old granddaughter, Prudence (Megan Fox), and has brought her to work at Charlie’s, where a lot of verbal gymnastics are performed by the men of the house to avoid any kind of contact with the flirty underage girl, while young Jake is madly in love with her.
“An Old Flame with a New Wick” (Season 1, Episode 18) – One of Charlie’s ex-girlfriends who broke his heart has returned to tell him she is no longer Jill but is now Bill (Chris O’Donnell). And Evelyn is now romantically interested in him and unaware of his past.
“Squab, Squab, Squab, Squab, Squab” (Season 2, Episode 23) – After hearing that Jake went camping with his grandparents, Evelyn demands that she gets to spend some unsupervised time with him. But not too much time, just a dinner and a single-night sleepover. Knowing how terrible she was as a mother, Charlie and Alan are worried about giving her unsupervised time and how this could negatively affect Jake. But instead of Evelyn traumatizing her grandson, it’s Jake who turns the tables on her.
“Walnuts and Demerol” (Season 4, Episode 11) – All that Charlie wants is for everyone to be out of his home for the night because he has a date with a beautiful woman. But as hard as he tries, not only can he not get rid of his brother and nephew, but more and more people keep arriving who start up their own party. The night gets crazier and crazier until Evelyn arrives and forbids him to date Gloria (Jessica Collins) for some unknown reason. This is a fun Christmas episode that should be watched every year during the holiday season.
“Is There a Mrs. Waffles” (Season 5, Episode 8) – A continuation of the storyline where Charlie entertained a former girlfriend’s son with silly made-up songs. But now he has an entire album of kid’s songs and is known as Charlie Waffles. He must put on a live performance in front of hundreds of kids where he confesses his fear of performing in front of an audience. So, true to character, he will choose to overcome his fears with the help of alcohol to perform his inappropriate but hilarious children’s songs while drunk.
“Fish in a Drawer” (Season 5, Episode 17) When Evelyn’s fiancé Teddy (Robert Wagner) is found dead in Charlie’s bed the CSI crew is called in to solve the crime. A very different episode as it was written by the writers of the television show CSI.
“Of Course He’s Dead Part-I & Part-II” (Season 12, Episodes 15 & 16) – The final episodes in the last season and the only ones from the Kutcher era to make it into my top list. And it’s not because it’s really that good, but because not only is it the end of the series, but everything about it is just messed up, leaving you more confused and thinking that they probably should have left it without a conclusion. It feels like Chuck Lorre’s chance to get back at Sheen by having his character brought back to life just so he can take some final personal shots at the actor. Evidently, Charlie never died and his stalker, Rose, has been keeping him in a pit in her basement for the last four years. But now he’s escaped and planning to take vengeance on Alan and Walden, which puts both of them in a total panic. And it also gives Lorre the excuse to have a cameo of every important character that has ever been on the show and to have a few more celebrities like Arnold Schwarzenegger, John Stamos, and Christian Slater make an appearance. And with all these extraneous cameos, for some reason, Louis (Edan Alexander), a child they spent the entire season trying to adopt, is nowhere to be found.
The Blu-rays are presented in 1080p High Definition with a DTS-HD MA 5.1 audio track. The video quality is very good. While it is a show that doesn’t have special effects or anything that would make it stand out visually, the quality of this presentation was consistent throughout all 12 seasons and is much crisper and vibrant looking than the repeats I watch on a semi-regular basis on broadcast television. The audio is good quality, but it’s nothing out of the ordinary than what you would normally expect.
There are a number of Special Features scattered throughout the set with most of them being from the first eight seasons before Sheen left the cast. A few are a behind-the-scenes look at the show, Season Four has a couple of cast and creator commentaries, and the rest are Gag Reels. Out of all the extras, the Gag Reels were the most entertaining as they showed a different side of the cast, where they seem to be enjoying what they are doing. And that’s different from the show because there is always so much tension between the characters that you wonder if they actually like each other and can get along. The discs also include Chuck Lorre’s infamous Vanity Cards at the end of each episode where he writes on various topics that he has been thinking about during the week.
Two and a Half Men has been around for so long that almost everyone knows whether they like it or not, so the real question is whether this Blu-ray compilation is worth getting. I’m a big proponent of buying hard copies of anything you really like when it comes to CDs, Blu-rays, etc. because things come and go on streaming services and you never know what might disappear and you won’t be able to find again. Having every episode of the series in high quality video is something any serious fan would enjoy in their collection.
