‘Two and a Half Men’ series finale review: Did Charlie Sheen, Angus T. Jones actually appear?
Going into the “Two and a Half Men” series finale for Thursday night, we had a variety of high expectations. While this show is completely silly and at times sophomoric, we somehow thought that it could still have a rewarding ending that really tied together all of the insanity for the past decade-plus.
Did the show really pull this off? Well, it certainly gave us an hour that was quite possibly even crazier than the entire series. It was very meta, very silly, and stuffed full of celebrity cameos. Who would’ve expected to see Arnold Schwarzenegger, John Stamos … and Angus T. Jones? We give the show a ton of credit for the final one, mostly because we never thought in a billion years that it would happen. Also, credit to Angus for mocking his own past comments, and recognizing how filthy rich the show made him.
Now, we have to talk about Charlie Sheen, and the complete lack of him despite an entire story that was really all about him coming back to kill Alan and Walden. At first, we were on board, but then things started to become too meta, and the entire finale started to spiral into basically a way for Chuck Lorre to thumb his nose at him for everything that happened. Even though he had a piano fall on his own head at the very end of the show, this may go down as one of the pettiest, most self-indulgent endings to a show ever. Rather than actually try to pay off characters, what we had instead was something that left us with a very angry, frustrated taste in our mouth. It was like everyone suddenly stopped caring that this show did have a canon and a universe to it. While the jokes were silly, we did at least buy into the people being real.
We suppose we ultimately asked too much of this finale to actually be good, and something that really treated its own subject matter with respect. While it was nice to see Judith, Evelyn, Rose, and so many other beloved characters, this has to be one of the worst treatments a show has ever given to its own material we’ve ever seen. Grade: D-, and only because they got Angus to show up.
What did you think about the series finale? Share below, and head over here to get some further updates related to the show! Also, you can sign up to score some other TV updates on all we cover via our CarterMatt Newsletter. (Photo: CBS.)