Line #77 Headscratchers/TwoAndAHalfMen


1	* Why the hell is Alan still so desperately poor? Yes, he's a cheapskate, but that's shown to be more out of necessity than any other reason. His business is still going strong, and that was enough to support him, Jake and Judith when they were married. And it can't be because of alimony, because Judith remarried and Kandi's got a well-paying job in Hollywood. So what's going on?
2	** Actually Judith still makes Alan pay for stuff for Jake. She said in one episode "he needs the tutor, he likes the lessons and I'm not going to ask Herb to pay for them!" Why, I'd love to know too. I dunno about Kandi.
3	*** Kandi doesn't have to pay Alan alimony due to signing the divorce papers before she was paid for her role on Stiffs.
4	*** Alan no longer has to pay child support since Jake turned 18 (then joined the Army, thus providing a source of income for himself).
5	** In some episode it's implied that he ''has'' money...but he just want to make his brother pay for him.
6	** In an episode that takes place shortly after Kandi and Alan break up, Alan says that every cent Judith has is from him. So I guess he has a really high alimony because she doesn't work.
7	** Alan doesn't have to pay Judith and Kandi alimony anymore, since Judith married Herb, who makes more money and Kandi is an actress, who also makes more money then he does.
8	** Alan probably sees it as karma for Charlie treating him so badly throughout his life. Doesn't make it any less of a dick move on Alan's part.
9	*** It's also been shown on several occasions that Alan's business isn't doing very well. Remember when he tried to rent a chair in the mall?
10	** Easy. The universe this show takes place in hates Alan. Alan is a constant glutton for punishment for no reason ever. His Chiropractor business would be doing well in all reality, but, of course, this show's universe isn't all reality, now is it? The show later tries to make his punishments mean something by making him an asshole, but his assholeness is pretty justified when life constantly makes him miserable.
11	** There's also the small fact that LA is ridiculously expensive to live in. In one episode Evelyn took him house hunting and one of the only apartments in his price range was a dumpy basement apartment under a flight path for LAX.
12	* It's a small, throwaway, harmless gag but I still need to say it, in one episode Jake says something along the lines of "I've been driving for years, Grand Theft Auto one, Grand Theft Auto two..". It's a funny gag yes, but if Jake is 15 in that episode, and Grand Theft Auto came out in 1997 Jake was maybe two or three? O.K he might have bought it later but it is Jake I'm talking about. If they got the name of the game right then why not say Vice City or San Andreas?
13	** Jake is a few IQ points away from being mentally retarded. He probably thinks that GTA I and II are Vice City and San Andreas.
14	** Also, This troper is just under a year older than Jake (well, the actor who plays him) and I was playing GTA I,II and London when they came out and I started playing around '98, when I was five-ish (oh an before anyone starts, I know: 5 year old playing GTA = parenting fail, but that's a different topic completely and I'm not screwed up in the head too much...)
15	** Chuck Lorre knows nothing about video games. Just try watching the episode where Jake rents Final Fantasy X without facepalming at Lorre's lack of research. The music from FFII plays from the screen, for the most egregious mistake. The lack of research on Grand Theft Auto is unsurprising.
16	*** [[MST3kMantra Because it's not at all important to the show overall.]]
17	** You guys are totally thinking too literally. Why does he have to had played them as soon as they came out? The simple solution is that he bought the games recently and played them all through. It's not like you can't find copies of old video games online.
18	*** Just for the record, the first 2 GTA games are [[http://www.rockstargames.com/classics/ available for free]]. Along with Wild Metal.
19
20	* The questionable morality and Jerkassery with the main cast can be pretty unfunny to me. It really bothers me that Evelyn knew that she accidentally gave Charlie one of her drugs instead of some pain reliever and din't bother to see if she could stop him from embarrassing his Judge Girlfriend and making her break up with him. Don't get me started on Judith and Kandi...
21	** Well this show is an equal opportunity offender, both the male and female characters are regularly shown to be {{Jerkass}}es, I can definitely understand you being upset though, Judith does often act like a total bitch to Alan for no reason other then to make his life a living hell, the thing with Evelyn and Linda(the judge) didn't really bother me so much though, as since Linda was planning to run for state-senator, she most likely would've broken up with him eventually anyways even if he hadn't taken the pill and embarrassed her. She certainly didn't look thrilled whenever a random woman that happened to "know" Charlie would come up to him and say his name. With Charlie's sordid sexual history hanging over her, their relationship wouldn't have been too likely to last much longer even without Evelyn's "help"
22	* Mia, specifically in season 3's episode ''Humiliation is a Visual Medium''. Okay, so she insists that Charlie and she shouldn't have sex until a later point in their relationship. '''(1)''' While I understand that Mia is supposed to be a witty, confident woman who loves Charlie but, at the same time, doesn't take his crap, and wants to see whether Charlie is willing to sacrifice something for their relationship... even I - being female - can understand Charlie's point: What exactly does ''she'' sacrifice? Why is he supposed to be the only one who has to prove is sincerity? She admits herself that she doesn't need sex right now, so that doesn't count. And '''(2)''' What was her chain of argumentation anyway? "Usually Charlie is interested in sex and nothing else. I don't want to be another trophy, so he has to wait and let me see that he wants a relationship." [[FlatWhat What?]] Wouldn't them eventually having sex not make her an even bigger trophy for Charlie? If she wanted the truth, she should have slept with him. (Not on the first date, mind you, but they'd already dated for a while when that point came up.) If he'd still been interested in her even ''after'' he got into her pants - ''that'' would have been proof.
23	** Mia never made a lot of sense, wanting to see if Charlie's willing to commit to the relationship is a valid idea, but the way she went about it was just ridiculous.
24	** A bit of [[FridgeBrilliance Fridge Brilliance]]/[[WildMassGuess WMG]] here...if you recall, Charlie relentlessly chased Mia after she repeatedly told him she wasn't interested, didn't have time, wasn't ready for a relationship, etc. When he finally got her to relent to going out with him, it may have been part of the deal that he would have to make major changes to himself in order for her to get involved. [[StatusQuoIsGod Charlie being Charlie]], those plans eventually came up short, and the relationship failed. [[ProtagonistCenteredMorality We saw the story from his point of view]], but it is entirely possible that he bit off more than he could chew getting involved with a girl like Mia.
25	* There's a two part episode (or at least I think it's in two parts) where Judith is getting married. In this one, Charlie seems to have a thing Dr. Herb's sister, Myra and they initially start dating. Then Judith starts complaining about this and tries to break them up. What bugs me is why should Judith care if Charlie and Myra are dating? I understand she's eventually going to be her sister-in-law and Charlie is well... Charlie but why should she give a damn? Doesn't she hate Myra? All they seemed to do is just bicker and argue at one another. Plus the only reason they seem to fight with one another is because Myra stands up for her brother and won't allow him to be a doormat.
26	** Judith is a JerkAss whose [[WildMassGuessing sole purpose in life is clearly to ruin the lives of everyone she is/has been related to.]]
27	* Why does Charlie's friends and family push the Charlie/Rose pairing so much? She's proven to be manipulative, psychotic, and clingy. Yet when Charlie's dating a woman and Rose comes into town, all the characters lament that Rose was the only woman who ever loved Charlie and now she's gone, making Charlie break up with his current date to run off with his stalker. Do they seriously believe pairing a man with his stalker's a good idea, or are they such [[JerkAss jerkasses]] that they would suggest the idea just to screw with him?
28	** To be fair, he deserves that for being such a jerk to Alan and most of the women he's dated.
29	*** [[FlatWhat What.]] You might want to think that over.
30	* Really now people?! Ashton Kutcher will replace Charlie? Did I see a shark jump there?
31	** I thought the Shark had already been jumped long ago
32	** To be fair they've actually gone out of their way to make sure Walden Schmidt is nothing like Charlie, including treating Alan like a human being instead of acting like he'd be happy if Alan moved to a toxic waste dump as long as he was out of the house.
33	** Honestly, I was hoping for TheOtherDarrin. ''That'' would have been hilarious.
34	* When Charlie slept with Alan's divorce lawyer, why the hell didn't Alan sue the divorce lawyer for malpractice and then get the entire divorce agreement torn into shreds and set on fire?
35	** Because he's dirt poor and didn't want any more money problems; [[WildMassGuessing it costs money to sue people, right?]]
36	*** He wasn't dirt poor at this point, he only became that way because of his crippling alimony and child support payments, so he could have sued, since he also hired another lawyer (plus, how do you think he paid for her in the first place). He should have reported her to the Bar Association of California and taken her to the cleaners. Although, she's shown to be an AmoralAttorney earlier in the episode when she gets Alan to get Charlie to agree perjure himself by lying under oath to back up Alan's claim of buying his book collection before he met Judith (he didn't), though this does say more about him than her.\
37	That whole episode was nonsensical. The biggest one being that someone would get bored having sex with Heather Locklear.
38	** Actually Alan says something like that at the end, that he now has to hire another lawyer, make the agreement invalid, etc., and that means more money.
39	* So will Charlie's death drive an already a little schitzy Rose completely off the brink? Especially since it may be her fault, if he dies while they are on their romantic getaway. She might go all Miss Havisham, walk around the beach house in a dirty, torn wedding dress....
40	** It's implied that [[spoiler: she killed him]].
41	** Rose seems to have already moved on, given that [[spoiler: she's dated Walden.]]
42	* Rose [[spoiler: killing Charlie]]. What. Of all the hate and bile they throw at Charlie because of how much the producers hate Charlie Sheen, this was what bothered me the most.
43	** You do realize that Rose is incredibly unstable and [[spoiler: Charlie, knowing how cuckoo she is not only proposed to her, but then cheated on her afterwords, and was stupid enough to let her take him where she could throw him in front a of a train, presumably secluded, and given how he probably was thinking he was about to have sex knowing his character, it's not out of character at all.]]
44	*** But Rose was never a [[spoiler: murderess, and I highly doubt Charlie would cheat on her. The entire episode reeked of bitterness to Charlie's actor.]]
45	*** Real life stalkers and abusers often escalate to murder. Besides, it’s a sitcom; it doesn’t have to make sense.
46	*** Whaddaya expect? Imagine you're a staff writer for a hit TV series, you've got the last four scripts in the can, and you're ready to call it quits for the summer break. Then the lead actor (who had troubles to begin with) gets tanked on coke, makes a very public ass of himself, and gets fired. You're told they have to cut the season short...so you dump over 160 pages of script, waste a lot of man-hours, yards of pretty good jokes, late night skull-sessions, and heaping pots of black coffee, and now you're trying to wrap up a planned six-ep arc in six minutes by basically pulling a miracle out of your proverbial ass, all because some overpaid pretty-boy blows his cork...who could blame them? Rose is cracked, and Charlie's not too bright. They worked well with what they were given. Now I wonder if Evelyn will pursue the matter further, or is she too afraid her own cupboard of skeletons might get to rattling? Does anyone really buy the "fish in a drawer" story completely?
47	*** No matter what the writers feel about Sheen, they have the duty to write in a professional manner that not only make sense, is coherent with the characters and the continuity of the series. It’s call professionalism.
48	* I may be behind on something here, but why isn't this the first thing CBS airs on Monday nights? Given that it's their biggest Monday show, why do they air less popular shows first (like How I Met Your Mother)? I mean sure, HIMYM doesn't desperately need a lead-in like this, but still...
49	** 1. it has more 'mature' content so moving it to the family hour might rub people the wrong way HIMYM isn't nearly as obvious w/ their dirty jokes 2. it debuted in its current time slot IIRC, if it ain't broke don't fix it and if it is, moving it might call attention to the damage 3. as the biggest show, in your words, in the middle of the schedule it can help 2 shows -- the show behind it has all its audience in place and only has to retain so many of them if 2.5 has X million viewers, as long as the next show on keeps 80% the retention rate gives them a pass even if they technically lose their time slot...--but also with a strong anchor at the front like HIMYM the show in between it and 2.5 gets a bump too as fans finish HIMYM and its now half past, they think well everything else is half over, and I'm going to turn it back to CBS for 2.5, I'll just leave it here and watch the show in the middle... -- too some extent this also happens with the show between 2.5 and Hawaii 5-0 as well, but 5-0 being a drama: the mood whiplash from dead hooker jokes to dead hookers might send people to bed early or to another network
50	* I know this point is sort of redundant now, but something bugged the hell out of me in Season 8 - Charlie continually tells Alan to move out, even rejoicing when Alan finally does for one episode... WHY DOESN'T HE JUST TELL HIM TO LEAVE? Charlie's already the World's Biggest JerkAss, and it's been shown repeatedly that Alan is no longer unable to financially support himself, he's just sponging off Charlie.
51	** He's told him to leave before. It didn't work, and Charlie is the sort of drunk who, if he discovers after the fact that Alan ignored his order to leave, will (the vast majority of times) worry about enforcing it "later".
52	** Charlie secretly loved having Alan and Jake there, but he'd never admit it.
53	* Didn't ''Cinnamon's Buns'' star someone other than Lindsey during the Charlie series, when the focal point of an episode was a character having been discovered to have once starred in it?
54	** No. The previous time it came up was when Lindsey was living at Charlie's after Alan burned down her house.»
55	* How can Walden and his wife be high school sweethearts if Walden skipped high school?
56	** Without having any idea about it, I would assume that for Walden, MIT was high school. Walden's wife could very well be older than him, if they had met at MIT, and she didn't skip any grades.
57	** Because they first met when they would have been in High School; or they were high school sweethearts ''to her''?
58	* This has probably been addressed somewhere else, but I got to ask: How come neither Molly Ringwald or James Spader have ever guest starred on the show?
59	* How come Creator/JudyGreer, who already played Myra in season 6, was cast again as Bridget? Nobody noticed the two unrelated women look [[YouLookFamiliar extremely alike]]?
60	** The actress playing Chelsea had already appeared twice before, both times as a different woman.
61	** Creator/JennaElfman was Frankie in a two-part Season 1 episode, and Dharma in Season 9. Kandi was "Bubbles" and "Kimber". Apparently we're just not expected to notice.
62	*** "Bubbles" and "Kimber" were the same person. But, did her name ever get mentioned? Because she seemed just as dumb as Kandi (she couldn't turn off the shower because it had to many knobs, and wouldn't let Alan move her car so it wouldn't block their neighbor's driveway because she doesn't let strange men drive her car) and "Bubbles" was a joke by Alan; Charlies said "I'm blowing bubbles" and Alan, overhearing this, says "I don't care what her name is". I don't think they actually say the name Kimber in that episode. I think April Bowbly is just billed that way in the credits. So, since she dated Charlie before meeting Alan, "Kimber" could be Kandi.
63	** It's probably just cheaper and less time consuming to reuse actors and actresses then hiring new ones.
64	** It's probably ''not'', actually. An actor is not paid less just because they've appeared on a show before, especially if they appeared in a different role. If anything, they're paid more, or the same. And it ''would'' be less time-consuming for the show to just rehire former actors instead of holding auditions for new ones... except that, due to the large number of celebrity/well-known actors cast in guest roles the show rarely auditions for guest characters to start with. Contacting a celebrity and contacting a former guest star is pretty much the same amount of effort.
65	*** Yeah but... Sheen is not easy to work with, no wonder they re-used actors who already have a good working relationship with him and/or at least tolerated him.
66	* So why does Alan make such a big deal about Jake having two girls in his room who he might have slept with but denied it to Charlie, Alan and Berta?
67	** Because Alan's never had a threesome and if he can't have one, he doesn't think Jake should have one.
68	* Zoe's daughter, Ava, has an English accent in season 9. She has an American accent in season 10. Why, why, WHY.
69	** Children tend to lose their natural accent quicker than their parents, like how children also tend to pick up another language if they move to another country more easily than their parents. I know an American-British family where the parents have kept their accents but their children have an English accent with an American twinge.
70	** Very much TruthInTelevision, speaking as the American-born son of two immigrants from Jamaica. The entire previous generation of both sides of my family spent their formative years in their homeland, so their accents are all varying degrees of noticeable. They may have picked up a decent American accent, but you can hear their Jamaican accent peek through even with that. Whereas I can switch between my regular American accent and a Jamaican patois, and you'd never know I was Jamaican if you heard the American.
71	* I understand that the show has multiple writers and sometimes it can be hard to keep characterization consistent, but the whole point of season 9 and 10, basically, is Walden and Alan's friendship. So why is it that every other episode they seem to hate each other?
72	** Because Alan's a selfish Jerkass who sponges off of anyone and everyone he can sponge off of...
73	** They're VitriolicBestBuds, and because Alan's habits come off as disgusting to Walden, but they know they can still count on each other.
74	* Why does Zoey just leave Walden? There's never given any reason beyond that suddenly some random guy "let's call him Dick" appears. Is that really all it takes for her to leave him after their relationship was established in the previous season?
75	** I assumed that ultimately a combination of his bizarre friendship with Alan and the pity he shows any time things lean towards him leaving the house, she realized that eventually if she gave him an ultimatum then Walden may well have picked Alan and dumped him first.
76	* What happened to the show's humor? In the first few season, it was witty, snarky and intelligent. Then, mid-way through the series, it became "What can we say on prime time television and how far can we push it?" So, what happened?
77	** SeasonalRot and {{Flanderization}} of Charlie, Alan and Jake.
78	* How has Jake not realized that his family treat him like crap and have no respect for him? Even with his limited intelligence, he should be able to realize that by now.
79	** Assuming the show lasts long enough to cover his full enlistment contract, Jake [[GrowingTheBeard may come to that realization]] after living on his own around more well-adjusted people, and then [[CallingTheOldManOut give Alan, Judith, and Evelyn a piece of his mind]]. Let's face it--as rotten a role model as Charlie was, he was still the only adult figure in Jake's life who actually seemed to ''like'' him and give a damn about him. Charlie even said on more than one occasion he had no issue with taking Jake in--it's ''Alan'' that he wanted rid of!
80	* Why does Alan act like Charlie's promiscuity is such a horrible thing? Granted, Charlie's methods and how he tosses women aside after he's done with them isn't all that nice, but why does Alan feel the need to constantly insult how Charlie chooses to live his life in his own house?
81	** Because A) he's disgusted by the attitude his own brother (who, let's not forget, he lives with) has toward women, B) in the earlier seasons when he still had hope for his son, Charlie was a drug addiction short of being the worst possible influence, and C) plain ol' jealousy.
82	** Let's also not forget that Charlie is letting Alan live in his house rent free. And, at times, Alan is no better than Charlie when it comes to women. On top of this, even when Charlie started charging Alan rent, Alan only occasionally pays, despite having a reasonably successful chiropractic clinic.
83	* So in Season 4, when Alan has insomnia, it turns out that it's because he's angry that Charlie has never suffered for having the "audacity" to be promiscuous. And somehow this is portrayed as a good thing. Granted, Charlie isn't the nicest guy and was never the best brother, but he still lets Alan and Jake live at his house rent free (At the time) and pays for virtually everything they need to survive. How the hell does Alan justify wanting the brother who is pretty much the only reason he's still alive to suffer because he lives a lifestyle he has every right to live if he chooses to?
84	** Its simple, Alan is a "false nice guy", the kind who has spent his whole life living by an arbitrary morality, and is now mad that he hasn't reaped the rewards he thinks he deserves for it. Yes, life hasn't treated him all that well, but a lot of that is because Alan is a spineless doormat, and is incredibly resentful against his brother, who lived in hedonistic revelry that Alan secretly wanted himself, but didn't allow himself to go for, because he thought that the universe would automatically reward him for his passive aggressive nice guy act. Now he clings to it, because admitting to himself that the majority of his setbacks is from his own faults is too painful.
85	* Why would Herb want to get back with Judith? She treats him like crap and has no respect for him and treated him like a dog covered in filth that just rolled all over freshly cleaned carpet.
86	** StockholmSyndrome
87	* In the season eight episode "A Bottle of Wine and a Jackhammer" in which Lyndsey asks Alan to move in with her, Alan initially refuses to do so, claiming that he is comfortable living with Charlie and that Charlie's house is home to him. It's only when he learns that Judith lives across the street from Lyndsey that Alan agrees to move in, knowing it will piss Judith off. How can Alan possibly say that he's "comfortable" living at Charlie's house when Charlie and Berta--and to a lesser extent Jake--constantly treat him like dirt? Not to mention the fact that Alan is perpetually disgusted at Charlie's lifestyle (no doubt due to jealousy)? You would think that Alan would jump at the chance to be living with someone who actually treats him with respect.
88	** Because Alan would rather be a second class citizen in paradise, aka Charlie's house. He only agrees to live with Lyndsey because it'll piss off Judith, otherwise he wouldn't have bothered.
89	* In the episode with Heather Locklear as Alan's lawyer, why does she ask him if Alan bought his books before or after he and Judith got married? If Alan bought all those books himself--which I'm assuming he did--then they are all ''his'' and Judith cannot legally take them away.
90	** This is kind of HollywoodLaw, but as most people understand California property law, all earnings ''after'' the marriage are communal, along with everything bought with those earnings. Therefore, Judith would be able to take them, or at least half the value of them, when they split. In real life the laws are more complicated, but it's a fair explanation for the sake of Alan and Judith's [[RuleOfFunny bitter divorce]].
91	* Speaking of sharks...Why didn't Walden just pay a surrogate, like Music/RickyMartin?
92	* In the final episode, assuming that Charlie is indeed the one who left the cardboard cutouts of Alan and Walden in the beach house and spray-painted "KILL WALDEN" and "KILL ALAN" in the curtains, why didn't he then just hide somewhere in the house and wait for them to come home so that he can jump them right there? (Besides the obvious reason of Charlie Sheen not being involved with the episode.)
93	* Season 4's "Release the Dogs" has one of the cops escorting Alan home say "At least this joker didn't ask if I was Jewish". What's the significance of the line?
94	** A reference to Creator/MelGibson.
95	* Did it ever occur to Alan that a decent haircut and some well-fitting clothes may have made him more attractive? The character is written as a repulsive loser, but it seems like that has more to do with his fashion choices than him being ugly or physically unfit. Given that Alan is on a perpetual quest to be more desirable to women, why does he seemingly have no interest in making a couple easy self-improvements?
96	** He actually ''does'' try to change his style in Season 1 episode, ''Alan Harper, Frontier Chiropractor''. That's even the whole focus of the episode, and Alan is, at first, completely unwilling to change (due to it not being "who he really is", and "Not wanting to take off his 'married guy' uniform" so to speak), and he and Charlie have a heart-to-heart about it, and Alan even gets the bar girl interested him when he does change his look, and compliments from Rose and Jake. The episode basically leaves off on two things, that Alan would continue to try to change...and that he still can't make himself look more naturally attractive, or as Charlie puts it "You bought a sports jacket not a magic lamp". To sum it up as best I can see it, Alan tried to change early on (and even without that, had some decent relationships in other episodes), but the writers left it at that, as just [[StatusQuoIsGod a one-off attempt]]. Later on, when Alan becomes more of Jerkass, he tries some...problematic attempts to fix his thinning hair in ''Captain Terry's Spray On Hair'', though doesn't actually try anything like you suggested, so my best guess in-universe is Alan basically refuses to change because he's selfish. Put another way, I imagine something like "If the world/everbody else doesn't like me the way I am, then the world/everybody else needs to change, not me!"
97	* How did Jennifer from season 9’s “Not In My Mouth!” not figure out that Jake was lying about his age? He looks and behaves like a typical teenager, yet she fell for the ruse and had sex with him. It’s a fictional sitcom, but it sort of glorifies statutory rape.

Context Headscratchers / TwoAndAHalfMen