Somehow I had never seen CBS’ “Two and a Half Men,” the show the network constantly touts as America’s No. 1 comedy.
    
The show has aired for years (nine seasons, in fact), and I had never seen it. Even after all the Charlie Sheen hoopla, I could not be bothered to watch the buzz-worthy season nine premiere, marking the end of the Charlie Sheen Era and the beginning of the legendary Ashton Kutcher Era. I meant to see what the fuss was about, but I just never got around to it.
    
So now, as a true tabula rasa, I set out to consume the latest episode of “Two and a Half Men,” season nine, episode 14, which was eloquently titled, “A Possum on Chemo.”
    
The extent of my research consisted of looking up character names and then figuring out how Kutcher’s new character fit into the show. According to CBS’ season nine premiere synopsis, “Ashton Kutcher joins the cast as Walden Schmidt, an Internet billionaire with a broken heart.” And he just started living with them? Uh, that sounds ridiculous, but OK.
   
 The episode begins with a mundane debate about beards with Walden meticulously grooming his (admittedly awful hair and beard), while his girlfriend Zoey says she actually does not like beards. This sounds like just a one-off character moment between the two, a way to get the episode’s story going. But no, this is the story. Get ready for 22 minutes about beards and hair in general.
   
 Startlingly enough for a network known for having older viewers, this episode had a ton of juvenile humor. Within minutes, the show dishes out a joke about pubic hair, and the elderly prude in me gasped.
    
But that was just the tip of the iceberg. Alan (Jon Cryer), the other adult from the series title, is signing up for a dating site, but when asked about his upcoming night, he says he will probably “rub one out.” The studio audience laughs. Of course, since Zoey’s British, she has never heard of “rub one out,” so Walden has to explain it to her. The studio audience laughs. This leads to Zoey using the phrase “rub one out” two more times in this episode, so keep laughing at this hysterical episode, studio audience!
    
By this point, the opening credits air. Man, this show’s theme song sucks. That cannot be emphasized enough. It consists of saying, “Men, men, men, men, manly men, men, men” over and over and over again. Scenes throughout the episode begin with an a cappella “Men!” But by the time the third or fourth scene begins this way, it is absolutely grating. The show ends with “Men!” And then the ending credits repeat the awful opening theme again. How do the fans of this show stand this music, day in and day out, for years?
    
For those readers wondering where this episode’s bizarre title came from, Alan says, “I tried to grow a beard, came out patchy, looked like a possum on chemo.” Is the “Two and a Half Men” writing team populated entirely of middle schoolers?
    
The very next scene answers that question with an emphatic “yes.” Two kids, one of them being Alan’s son, eat chips at the apartment, watching “Beavis and Butthead” and slowly talk to each other. They get confused easily, and there is a bong on the table. Ah, yes, pot humor, some people still laugh at jokes about kids smoking up and getting the munchies, even after seeing the 1,000th movie or television show to use it as a trope. In case the viewer is not in on the joke yet, one of the teenagers says, “I think we need to call Dominos!” Ah, yeah, dude, this is definitely a case of the munchies.
    
Later in the episode, Alan has seemingly solved his relationship woes, making out on the couch with Lindsey. The scene turns less than romantic when Lindsey bemoans her time with her 20-something ex-boyfriend. Essentially the reason she broke up with the guy was that she felt like she could not fart in front of him. This is why she is now with low-standards Alan. “I could sit here and fart like a buffalo, and you’d still want to be with me,” she exhorts.
   
Of course then she audibly farts, much to the bemusement of the studio audience and no one else. And the episode just fell off a cliff. Alan is mortified. “Oh, man, that’s a dead buffalo,” he says. AHAHAHAHA.
    
Is this an elaborate joke or something? Is this like that time Joaquin Phoenix pretended to be done with movies? Kutcher is on here. Is this an elaborate episode of “Punk’d”? Surely this is not honestly meant to be funny. People would not accept how awful, how offensively phoned in, how utterly uncreative this is.
    
Right?


— Robby O’Daniel is a graduate student in communications. He can be reached at rodaniel@utk.edu.