'Two and a Half Men,' 2 grooms
It may sound like a joke, but "Two and a Half Men" creator Chuck Lorre couldn't be more serious: Housemates Alan Harper (Jon Cryer) and Walden Schmidt (Ashton Kutcher) will be getting married in the show's 12th and final season. What's more, they'll be adopting a child together.
It may sound like a joke, but "Two and a Half Men" creator Chuck Lorre couldn't be more serious: Housemates Alan Harper (Jon Cryer) and Walden Schmidt (Ashton Kutcher) will be getting married in the show's 12th and final season.
What's more, they'll be adopting a child together.
Lorre and his fellow producers had been looking to make a splash with the show's final season, which begins Oct. 30 on CBS, and, believe it or not, a marriage between two straight men wasn't the first idea raised.
"There was a zombie apocalypse discussed," joked Lorre Thursday night when I asked about some of the discarded ideas during a CBS party in West Hollywood.
"I mean, you know, we had the freedom, knowing it was our last season to do anything we wanted, and obviously, the show's never had any dignity, so we didn't have to worry about losing any, so we had incredible freedom to do whatever we wanted, knowing that this was it and we were actually going to get to write the end. So that opened the door to... all kinds of possibilities, including murder mysteries and all sorts of things. But [showrunners] Jim Patterson and Don Reo came to me a couple of weeks ago and said, 'We got this idea about Walden wanting to do something meaningful and adopt a child, but he can't do it as a single man, and he and Alan can do it in California and they get married and they proceed to go into the adoption world and find a child who's fallen through the cracks and give him a home,"' he said.
"When a child's involved, the comedy shifts dramatically," said Lorre, but it also "brings us back to two and a half men, which I loved. Because 'Two and a Half Men, despite what might have been said about it, was always about two guys trying to raise a boy...The boy [Angus T. Jones] just got old and the show grew up and in a way it's kind of a way for us to have a little bit of -- oh, it sounds pretentious to say closure for a show like this, but yeah, we do get to go back to that idea, which was where we started."
Cryer said he only found out about the idea about a week and a half ago, when, he said, "I stopped by the writers' room, just to say, 'Hey.'"
He seems to have embraced the idea.
"It's not actually required for people to be gay to get married...it's not a part of the law," Cryer said. "So this is actually a new kind of relationship -- two hetero guys, getting married because they want to raise a kid together, you know? Why not? You know it's gonna come...It wouldn't be the first marriage of convenience ever."
Over the years, "Two and a Half Men" has occasionally played with the idea that Alan might not be totally straight, "and Alan has experimented with it," Cryer reminded me. "He tried it and it turned out it wasn't for him...I think it's fun way to go out. We've always played with the gender roles with Alan...and it's fun to just acknowledge and go forward with just a ridiculous idea."
It will be Walden's idea to get married, Lorre said.
"Alan doesn't want to sign a prenup. He's no fool. The guy's a billionaire. So there are issues of money, and a joint checking account, and hopefully we can play this for comedy as well...The basic intention I think is wonderful. They want to have a child, and sexuality is irrelevant. If you're taking crae of a child, who cares what you do in the privacy of your bedroom, right?"
Lorre agreed that the show had occasionally played with the idea that Alan might be gay: "Oh, absolutely, absolutely. We have dominated the cheap laughs in that arena," he said, adding, "I know what the show is. The show is what the show is. But it's been hilariously good fun to do it."
It's too soon to say how same-sex couples who aren't faking it will react to the plot twist -- and it's not as if "Two and a Half Men" has ever been a show that aimed to please all of the people all of the time -- but GLAAD told the Hollywood Reporter "We hope the show will acknowledge not only the progress made in acceptance of gay and lesbian couples, but also the fact that -- in many areas of the country -- same-sex couples are often under greater scrutiny or still barred from adoption options that straight couples have."