Two and a half lame excuses

Sometime during the online revolution, I got out of the habit of watching network television. The exception is my guilty pleasure: the half-hour situation comedy Two and a Half Men 1-5 dvd box set.

Reruns of the show, now in its sixth season, run weeknights at 7 p. m. This creates a rush at supper time at our home. It's now accepted by my wife and daughter that if meal prep slips, we'll eat in front of the television for the duration of the show. This flies against our prior rule that supper is family time, eaten in the dining room, where we can swap charming stories of how our respective days went.

Never mind that this seldom occurs in reality. That's the thing about guilty pleasures: Their origins are shrouded in mystery and they have a way of creeping up on you. I vaguely recall a vacation in Latin America five years ago and watching this comedy in Spanish with English subtitles. But it didn't "take" until a few years later. I'd read a few books on writing for television, which emphasized that you must pick a favourite show before you can embark on writing "spec" episodes: TV scripts that are never produced but that demonstrate you have mastered the craft.

At first, I watched the show with a supposedly technical perspective, observing the seven-part structure of every sitcom episode. "I'm not watching this for fun," I rationalized, "I'm learning the craft." During this period, a small group of us often went for an evening swim. One Wednesday night, my wife announced to a friend that Jonathan was skipping the swim because he was doing "research" on TV sitcoms. She was barely able to suppress her smirk.

Then I discovered two things about writing sitcoms. One, you have to move to Los Angeles. Two, you should be under 40, and certainly under 50. I had no intention of doing the first and could do nothing about the second. Gradually, I fell into watching the show just for the fun of it, no longer pretending that I would ever actually write a "spec" script of it.

For those who don't know it, Two and a Half Men 1-5 dvd box set is basically The Odd Couple with a child thrown in. Charlie -- played by Charlie Sheen -- is a carefree bachelor who composes commercial jingles but spends most of his time chasing women. He owns a townhouse overlooking the Pacific, and his brother Alan is a permanent house guest who receives frequent visits from his teenage son, Jake. Alan is divorced, fastidious and looking for a new long-term relationship, though he is not averse to dating his brother's castoffs.

The show is silly and sexist and I really don't approve of the underlying morality. But it's a good example of the sitcom craft and I'm happy just to appreciate each gag as it comes. The way the economy is these days, we shouldn't feel guilty about having a good laugh.


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Two and a half men 1-5 dvd box set
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