Worst TV Show of the Week Brought to you by the Parents Television Council WARNING: Graphic Content!!! Do NOT push play if you don't want to see the explicit video!!!

Two and a Half Men on CBS

It would be an understatement to say Charlie Harper – the hedonistic lothario played convincingly by Charlie Sheen on CBS’ Two and a Half Men (Monday, 9:00 p.m. ET) – has always been promiscuous.  But in the August 18^th rerun entitled, “Rough Night in Hump Junction,” he outdid even himself.  For its vulgar, sexually-explicit humor, Two and a Half Men has been named Worst TV Show of the Week.

The show opens with Charlie asking Alan to keep the girl he has upstairs occupied while he goes out on a date.  Not an unusual request for Charlie, except for the fact that it is 8:30 in the morning.  Charlie wants to have sex with a married woman while her husband plays a round of golf.  He elaborates, “Her husband is out playing nine holes, so I thought, as long as he's out, I'd try and play a couple myself."  As the show progresses, Alan notices that Charlie’s sexcapades have gotten out of control, even for Charlie.  After the golf husband punches his lights out, Charlie’s nose bleeds profusely, yet he still climbs the stairs to have sex with the waifish, willing blonde waiting for him in his bedroom.  The next morning, Charlie sports two black eyes and a noticeable limp.  He explains, “I just had a little accident. I tried to pick my lady friend up and put her on the bureau and now I can't find one of my testicles."  His housekeeper, Berta, chimes in with: "That is something you do not want to find in the vacuum bag."  For the rest of the episode, Charlie sits on an inflatable ring and complains about his painful “balls.” 

Concerned that Charlie is on a path of self-destruction, Alan presses him:

ALAN:  “Don’t you think you need to slow down a bit?”

CHARLIE:  “Why would I want to do that?”

ALAN:  “Oh, come on! Is this lifestyle actually making you happy?”

CHARLIE:  “Let me answer that question with another question: Who would you rather be - you or me?”

ALAN:  “You’re kidding, right?  You have two black eyes and you’re perched on a scrotum cozy…(dejected) You.”

After Charlie is arrested for soliciting sex from an undercover cop, he decides that maybe Alan was right.  Eventually, through the help of his therapist, Charlie comes to realize that his sexual binge stems from the fact that his ex-girlfriend - whom he still loves - is getting married soon.  Charlie decides that he must win his ex-girlfriend back.  On the day of her wedding, Charlie crashes the ceremony but his ex refuses to take him back.  The show concludes with a battered and bruised Charlie contemplating the notion that perhaps it is time to settle down.  Charlie tells Allan:

Charlie: “I thought I'd find some chick with a big heart and a tiny
ass and marry her. Maybe that girl from the beach, she seemed nice.”
Alan:  “You're going to get married?”
Charlie:  “Yep, settle down. Have a couple of kids. Ship the penis off to
Cooperstown.”

What’s most telling about the episode, however, isn’t the blue humor but what it says about marital intimacy.  As the PTC’s recent study Happily Never After illustrates, network television consistently paints marital sex in a negative light.  Even when an episode recognizes that promiscuity can be empty and unfulfilling, the option of marriage is seen as a death sentence or at best a retirement party for one’s privates.  Deep down Charlie knows that a loving, stable marriage will fill the void in his life, but he can’t seem to reconcile this fact with his desire to have an exciting, adventurous sex life.  Why does television always assume you can’t have both?

For vulgar humor and yet again disparaging marital intimacy, Two and a Half Men fully deserves to be called the Worst of the Week.