I’m idly curious as to whether or not there’s a more offensive show on television than Two and a Half Men. (At least on free-too-air Australian TV – but then, we have plenty of our own crap.) It offends many groups – men, women, ex-wives, their new husbands, fathers, mothers, their offspring, oh, and alcoholics. I ended up watching an episode yesterday thanks to my brother, and it actually seems to have gotten worse from the last time I caught it.
So younger brother Alan – who, don’t forget, was so screwed over by his ex-wife Judith and her crippling alimony payments that he’s had to move in with his brother Charlie and has spent the last however many years leeching off him – is involved with the much-younger Candy. I could overlook the fact that Candy appears young enough to be Alan’s daughter – after all, Modern Family tackled that same issue with intelligence and maturity – if she had anything going for her as a person. But she appears to have chosen a life of willful ignorance and her sole purpose in life seems to be to get Alan to pay for stuff – a new car when hers breaks, extensive dental work, and finally moving in with him when her housemate moves out and she can’t afford to pay the rent on her own. Does she not have her own job? Is her sole purpose in life to get men to pay for her stuff? It didn’t bother me so much that Alan paid for all that stuff – I’ve taken a short-term loan from my own partner to pay for tuition and paid him back in installments – but that Candy seemed to expect that the man in her life, well, fund her life, and Alan, while reluctant, acquiesced.
Anyway, Alan’s bankrolled all these expenses by exhausting his savings and selling his brother’s things on e-bay. (Charlie hasn’t kicked him out by now… why?) Meanwhile, Charlie’s rolling his eyes and making wisecracks at what a loser Alan is for going even deeper into debt for a woman who has nothing to recommend for her other than a young body.
I’m not sure what the Powers That Be behind TaaHM thought they were saying. I suspect it was that haha, isn’t it funny, women are money-grubbing bitches who use sex, the law and whatever other underhanded means they can get their filthy mits on to castrate men and bleed them dry. The thing is, while I had zero respect for Candy for apparently relying on sex to get men to fund her lifestyle (and seriously, how often does that happen in real life? I’ll wait for y’all to find an example. A real example that you have personally witnessed, not a friend-of-a-friend story or something you saw on TV) I had even less for Alan, an apparently intelligent guy, for thinking with his penis to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars. This is the patriarchy that’s all-superior to women?
*And just for extra laughs, Charlie, after one too many blackouts, decides to give up drinking. Excluding beer, which apparantly beer isn’t alcoholic. Because, heehee, isn’t Charlie-the-alcoholic just so funny. At this point, though, Charlie was the only one in the show I came even close to respecting. At least the guy has some grasp of the fact he’s an alcoholic who uses women and he doesn’t leech off anyone. Yeah, that’s the kind of caliber show this is, that the lead male is a misogynistic, womanising alcoholic but at least he can fund his own lifestyle.
So here with have a man whose steretyped bitch of an ex-wife bled him dry in the divorce and continues to bleed him dry in the form of alimony payments (aren’t they supposed to stop when the spouse remarries?) to a point he has to leech of his brother for seven years. Then he hooks up with a woman young enough to be his daughter and sinks even further into debt to pay for stuff that any self-respecting person, man or woman, would rather pay for it themselves by working – honest day’s work and all that. I realise that sometimes, people aren’t in a position to pay their own way, but the impression I got from Candy was that she wasn’t willing, and that she expected the man in her life to do it. It’s the old, ugly stereotype of ‘airhead exchanges sex for stuff’, and one that I have never known to exist in real life. I’m sure such women do exist, but certainly not to the extent film and television would have us believe.
I’m flabbergasted to know that TaaHM is so popular, and that it’s lasted as long as it has. It offends so many groups on so many levels. Oh, I forgot to add Americans to my initial list. Because as much badly-written, stereotyped claptrap that Australia had churned out over the years, at least we don’t have an equivalent to Two and a Half Men.
*Bro was watching a three-ep marathon so may not have been the same episode. The offensiveness tends to roll together.
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One of the reasons I don’t really like going to my mom and stepdad’s house: this show is ALWAYS on. And I am ALWAYS offended, and know if I said anything against it I would get double servings of : don’t be so stupid PC librul this is funny.
Anne is unamused and in complete agreement with this blog post.
Anne(Quote) (Reply)
Charlie hasn’t kicked him out by now… why?
Besides the fact that there wouldn’t be a show if he did? Evidently because he loves him just that much. At one point, Charlie broke off one of his more positive relationships because she thought he should kick his mooching brother to the curb so they could live together in peace. It would have been touching if the overall message didn’t seem to be “Bros before hoes…even if your brother is a bloodsucking loser and your girlfriend is the best thing that ever happened to you”. While all the characters are repugnant, only the women are portrayed as unsympathetic and even dangerous, making the lives of the male characters a living hell for no apparent reason. The Rose character who stalks Charlie is deeply disturbing. And Candy eventually marries and divorces Alan and gets him for alimony. Don’t get me started on the brothers’ reprehensible mother. The joke seems to go, men are pathetic, but women are evil. (Once more supporting that old line that men can’t help being the way they are, but women can, so we’re ultimately more responsible for our failings than they are.)
But yeah, people really seem to love sitcoms about dysfunctional characters and families; hell, I love it, too. Watching reruns from the earlier seasons, I’ve been seriously amused and even really touched a few times, so it’s not all horrible, IMO. They just keep taking the joke way, way, way too far. I’m not surprised to hear it gets worse in the later seasons; I’m not remotely tempted to see for myself.
Shows like The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air did the dysfunctional family much better, without all the creepy misogyny.
darkmanifest(Quote) (Reply)
So, if Alan is a ‘nice guy’, who doesn’t blatantly cheat in such a way to leave notarized video taped proof of his cheating, doesn’t rack up humongous gambling/prostitution debts stealing from her bank accounts/credit cards in her name only with unmistakable proof that he was the one that did so, and doesn’t blatantly abuse her with again, notarized video-taped proof and at least 4 unimpeachable male witnesses….
HOW THE HELL DO THESE WOMEN GET ALIMONY?
Seriously, how? Are there even any states left that do provide for alimony payments?
GardenGoblin(Quote) (Reply)
Yeah, my parents LOVE this show…they never watched it until it came on Fox in the evenings in syndication and now they’re obsessed. I haven’t heard my parents laugh so hard watching a TV show in a long time and knowing the toxic material in it is really sad.
Casey(Quote) (Reply)
Because in any divorce women automatically get massive alimony payments, due to how the feminists have turned men into the real oppressed sex.
At least, that’s what the “Men’s Rights Activists” keep spouting.
Patrick McGraw(Quote) (Reply)
My mother loves this show, and it is just about the most repulsive show out there. But Kandi* isn’t presented so much as unwilling to work so much as just so massively stupid that she can’t manage her own finances.
I would also disagree that Alan is supposed to be regarded as sympathetic. He is repeatedly played up as an utter schmuck who feels no guilt whatsoever about sponging off Charlie. After Judith (his first wife) re-married but before Kandi divorced him (and supposedly also got massive alimony payments) there was an episode that made it clear that he could have moved out but chose to continue to be a sponge because Charlie would put up with it.
I hate this show. Why in the world am I defending it?
* The make a big deal over the spelling of her name, as though being given an oddly-spelled name is somehow a personal failing.
Patrick McGraw(Quote) (Reply)
That trope pisses me off to no end. There certainly is alimony, but it doesn’t work like that. First, it’s not just for women anymore – sometimes husbands get it. Second, in most states, you have to have been married at least 10 (or so) years to even talk about it. It’s tough enough to get a fair amount of alimony when there really is a good reason, i.e., you quit your career to please him and now it’s been 15 years and he’s running off with his barista and you’re shit out of luck for finding a good job AND taking care of your kids. You’re more likely to get a combo of child support and some sort of “retraining” payments to help get you back up to speed so you can earn your own damn living than you are to get alimony.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
Yeah, I tend to stay in my room. Of course, then I’m labeled “anti-social” (since apparently people in my family like to use phrases that they don’t understand). I get called out for not wanting to “spend time with” them, as though sitting around watching a offensive and obnoxious (not to mention just plain bad) TV show that not everyone wants to watch is spending time together.
I always hoped it would get canceled–my step-dad watched it from the get-go, since it started right around when he got divorced, and he loved to complain about alimony. That’s what the initial appeal of the show was for him–he loved being the downtrodden man with the awful ex-wife to moan about–except she’s awesome, and I wish I saw her more than him. Of course, he was a pilot, and gone most of the time, so it’s not like his ex-wife could have really just left–he was also in the military before that, so she was on a base, and then they moved to where my sisters and I grew up, which is very rural, so she didn’t have many job options when the kids got older either.
Haha, not to make this comment into my whole life story. My s-dad laughs so hard during this show too, it grates. Hah, woe are we! D:
Anne(Quote) (Reply)
I think McGraw is right about something — on Two and a Half Men there are no characters who are sympathetic. (With the possible exception of Berta, the fat lower class maid, who is less sympathetic and more invulnerable to her obvious sub-human state.) Alan is a cheep creepy bastard, and much of the show is made at his expense. Charlie is a creepy disgusting bastard, and much of the show is made at his expense. Judith, Jake, the mother (I’m sure she has a name, I can’t remember it) … all bastards.
Two and a Half Men is part of a tradition in comedy in which there are no heroes, there are only horrible people being horrible to each other. It sometimes walks and talks like its a more standard American comedy where we sympathize with the PoV characters, but in the end it never is. Any character you like for one moment will have their subhuman crappiness revealed soon there after.
So when Aland does the stupid stuff (that Kandi never actually asks for, he just assumes) we’re supposed to laugh at him. Because he’s a stupid shmuck who thinks with his penis and its “funny” because his main character traits — cheapness and sexual desperation — are now combining to destroy him as a human being. (Not that he ever was one.)
Now, at first blush this may make it sound like I’m defending the show. After all I’m saying that it isn’t that Alan and everything else is sexist, its that everyone is a subhuman piece of crap and that the humor of the show is equal opportunity mockery and glee at the pratfalls and misery of other human beings. But that isn’t quite true. Because while the show does do that, it still retains its worst examples of stereotyping, blank denial of humanity, and assumed inferiority and hatred for women.
I’m reminded of a comedy show by Tim Allan I saw back in the early/mid 90′s in which he said something like “Men suck, don’t they ladies?” (Ladies cheer, because as Laura Kipnis points out in a gendered society part of the gender act is cutting down the other gender in mock-humorous ways). “Well too bad we OWN EVERYTHING!” he retorts.
In Two and a Half Men everyone sucks. Everyone is a subhuman piece of crap whom we are supposed to laugh at and not with. Its mean, but there it is. However, it still manages to be misogynist because in this parade of emotional brutality it is still the men who are center stage, it is still the men who get to have character and the women who are reduced to the most damaging stereotypes. It is in short, a show whose punchline is “all of humanity sucks, men suck, kids suck, women suck, white people suck, rich people suck, fat people suck, but men suck because of WHO they are and women suck because of WHAT they are.”
Brand Robins(Quote) (Reply)
I actually have known a couple women who, from the outside, would look like they were “money-grubbing.” I’ll explain the two situations.
1.) The first girl was dating a guy who was basically a huge dick. He refused to commit to her, wouldn’t let her call him “boyfriend,” but still wanted all the “benefits,” as it were. She loved him; the rest of us tried gently to let her know she could do better, but you can’t help someone who doesn’t want to be helped.
Whenever I hung out with them, they were always fighting, and she was always trying to convince him to buy her clothes. He usually did it, maybe to “shut her up.” I think the clothes were a stand-in for the fact that he was offering her no emotional support or affection, despite that she desperately wanted it. Material objects were something she could manage to finagle out of him — maybe the only thing. “Well, at least he buys me stuff, that means he loves me.” Eventually she left him and finally admitted that he’d been treating her like absolute crap all along. (Not sure if it was also a physical abuse scenario, but definitely emotional abuse, and mostly behind the scenes.)
2. The other girl I know who does this grew up poor, had abusive parents, and is now very emotionally (and financially) unstable. She’s also gorgeous. She never feels truly “secure” in a relationship, and she uses material possessions to fill an emotional void. In her case, it’s been a long-term scenario — this happens with every boyfriend and I’ve seen her do it time and time again. She basically hitches onto people and relies on them entirely, and generally makes their lives miserable without realizing it.
Basically I’m saying, when women do this, there’s generally a reason beyond just “SHE’S A WHOOOOOOORRRRRRRE.”
Samus(Quote) (Reply)
Well Alan marries Candy on a whim when he gets a windfall at Vegas. She stays with him til the money runs out then leaves him and sues him for alimony. All this, I believe, takes places over less than a season. (Assuming that TAAHM doesn’t have trippy JJ Abrams seasns and one seasons roughly equals one year).
Even assuming Alan and Judith had been married for over ten years – Jake would have been five or six at the begining of the show, I’d guess – a basic flaw I found in the premise was that a judge awarded Judith such crippling payments that he was forcedto live with his brother. For, what, seven years now? AFTER she’s remarried (and I assume gets no more alimony – but then, they gave Candy alimony, so why not Judith despite remarrying?)
Scarlett(Quote) (Reply)
Yeah, I can see how something that was moderately funny to begin with (straight-laced single parent forced to live with promiscous alcoholic brother) got very tired very fast. And I agree with you about Bel Air – I only ever caught a few eps, but that’s what I like about Modern Family. They’re more an adult blended family then a dysfunctional one, but I like that there’s a huge generational and cultural gap between the three families and what Jay expected/what he got out of life, and it’s often very funny BECAUSE they try to recognise their differences as adults and deal with it in a mature, sensitive fashion. TAAHM is more like ‘hey, who haven’t we offended yet?’
Scarlett(Quote) (Reply)
Really? I thought it was a combination of the two. Like yes, she was stupid, but she’d also come to expect that there would always be a man to fund her lifestyle.
Scarlett(Quote) (Reply)
Aren’t you just making excuses of nihilism/misanthropy for something that’s just a shit show?
Casey(Quote) (Reply)
Exactly.
Scarlett(Quote) (Reply)
There sure are.
Many women are taught those behaviors, for sure. Another interesting thing is: whatever their behavior does to the men in their lives is partly the fault of the men. No one forced them to date these women; they can walk away anytime they get sick of it. But they don’t, most often because the women are gorgeous and that’s more important to the men than any other facet of the relationship. Well, you know, if someone who has all the power in society relative to the person he’s dealing with chooses to let her treat him in ways he doesn’t like for whatever reason, that’s on him.
But the way shows like this portray it, the men have no responsibility whatsoever. It’s as if this woman forced her way into the guy’s life and took over and he never had a choice in any of it. Part of why this trope irritates me is that it belittles the problems of people who really DON’T have a choice, because they’re with an abuser who controls their finances or has them terrified of violence or whatever. That’s mostly something we think of as a women’s problem, but I have a feeling a lot of men are abused by wives/girlfriends and keep it very quiet.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
Jen, I think you’re onto something. Most of the portrayals in film and TV amount to little more than ‘she’s simply too lazy to work for a living, that manipulative slut’. And the thing is, even if that IS the situation, why are we giving anything sympathy to men like Alan who have all the power (except in the twisted legal/cultural world of TaaHM) and CHOOSE to fund someone’s lifestyle in return for sex and a hot body?
Scarlett(Quote) (Reply)
I can totally believe that some people are so bad at managing finances that even a reasonable alimony payment would “force” them to mooch off, excuse me, move in with a relative. I think that’s a very likely scenario, and then they’d probably swear it was their wife’s fault.
But getting alimony after being married for a few months in Vegas? That’s unheard of. Maybe if you had the best divorce attorney in all the land or something. But passing this off as something that just happens sometimes… bullshit.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
Actually, no, I didn’t read the comment that way, or I’d have modded it:
Because while the show does do that, it still retains its worst examples of stereotyping, blank denial of humanity, and assumed inferiority and hatred for women.
We have to mod some comments on older posts about this show in which angry commenters call us hateful names, then explain you’re supposed to hate the men on the show as well as the women, therefore its portrayal of women is okay. Brand is explaining why that’s not the case: yes, you’re supposed to think little of the men, but:
It is in short, a show whose punchline is “all of humanity sucks, men suck, kids suck, women suck, white people suck, rich people suck, fat people suck, but men suck because of WHO they are and women suck because of WHAT they are.”
I find Brand’s comment rather helpful because it breaks that down nicely. The show is implying that these individual men suck, but it’s implying that all women suck. World of difference, lost on those angry commenters who think misogyny is okay as long as there’s some meanness to men thrown in for good measure.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
Agreed. I found myself agreeing with many of Brand’s points, and found them to be part of why I hate the show.
And that reason is because I can recognize that the men are not sympathetic, and I find them impossible to identify with (including the obnoxious child boy character [the actual kid, not Sheen]). BUT, the people I’ve been forced to watch the show with DO identify with them, support them, love them, and agree with everything they say, especially when it comes to women. That’s the damaging part of the show, I think. Perhaps there are no “heroes” intended, but I’ve witnessed people acting as though they are.
Anne(Quote) (Reply)
I’m not sure if anyone here is planning on seeing it, but Galifianakis’ character in Due Date’s whole reason for wanting to get into acting is 2.5 Men. It became a very obnoxious seemingly endless advert for the show the entire movie.
And I feel VERY ambiguously about the movie itself, as well. I hope someone reviews it here. I liked it more than The Hangover, which I thought was awful. Due Date, for me, was very humorless, but I adore road trip-ish buddy movies. The humor, like 2.5 Men and The Hangover, relies a LOT on just being offensive and over the top. And that was…obnoxious.
Anne(Quote) (Reply)
TVTropes calls that “misaimed fandom.” The most famous example would be Archie Bunker.
Patrick McGraw(Quote) (Reply)
Patrick, every time I go to TV Tropes I wnd up spending most of my day there. Haha, that’s what I’ll be doing starting now…thanks!
Time well spent.
Anne(Quote) (Reply)
“men can’t help being the way they are, but women can”
I hear several variations of this from my dad soooo much, and it’s always in the context of him saying/doing/approving of something skeevy that he/the man in question “can’t help” because “all men” xyz. I don’t think he gets how much it creeps me out– or even how similar it is to my religious grandfather’s saying “God loves boys/men more than girls/women because (warped interpretation of scientific fact here),” which even my father recognizes as totally moronic.
But then, he’s the one who watches the show so frequently, and tends to call one of my sisters a “gay man” for being very open with her sexuality/leering at men. BECAUSE THOSE TENDENCIES ARE SO MANNISH! Yet he called me a wise-ass for saying he tends to make sweeping generalizations and Freudian projections of his own issues onto other people– just last night, in fact.
Gena(Quote) (Reply)
Adding: MUCH LOVE TO FRESH PRINCE. I also am really loving Raising Hope for my dysfunctional family fix, btw. Everybody has issues, which are acknowledged, and everybody tries to deal with each other as best they can. And it’s funny. <3
Gena(Quote) (Reply)
Yeahhh, I mean, I know there was just a Cameron Diaz movie within the last few years featuring this, but some states, like New York, require residents (either party in the marriage) to live together as a couple for a year before they can even file for divorce, no matter where they got married (in the movie in question, Vegas).
No way in hell anyone would just say, oh, five minutes? Shoot, lemme just void that sucker and we’ll set up an automatic bill-pay direct to your new ex-wife’s bank account! Plus, I mean, COMMUNITY PROPERTY LAWS. WTH.
Gena(Quote) (Reply)
No, from what I’ve seen, she’s supposed to be SO stupid that she is UNAWARE that people (men) are buying her things and spending time with her for sexual reasons, and kind of coasts; unlike “smart” (read: evil) women, who would manipulate said situation to their advantage.
I’ll be the one headdesking in the corner.
Gena(Quote) (Reply)
What amazes me is that if 99% of women started acting like that sister of yours, guys like your dad would think there were a LOT of exceptions to the rule, but the rule still holds. There just is no logic to it.
Whenever people say to me, “Men can’t help it”, I frown and say, “Oh. Okay, then we should shoot them.”
Actually, I know some right-wing guys who say roughly the same thing. In public. To other men. Because they are (rightly) insulted at basically being called apes.
If men really can’t help but act on impulse like animals, we should put them all in zoos. Problem solved!
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
Exactly! If men didn’t enable “golddigging” to work, it wouldn’t happen. If men would like to stop making it happen, they should FEEL FREE TO DO THAT ANYTIME, LIKE, THIS AFTERNOON WOULD BE JUST FINE. It’s not like they have no say in this.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
Well, Robert Downey, Jr.’s presence alone bumps it higher than The Hangover.
But being pretty frequently on a college campus, I can tell you on Market Days where posters/t-shirts are sold, The Hangover stuff usually makes a pretty good trade.
Gena(Quote) (Reply)
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