If you’ve ever watched a soap opera, you know that characters get killed off and replaced all the time. You also know how hard it is to accept someone new in the place where a favorite character or favorite actor once stood. Ashton Kutcher, who stepped in to fill the void left by Charlie Sheen after Sheen was fired from “Two and a Half Men,” is facing that kind of resistance.
That resistance has manifested in the form of reduced ratings. Once number one, “Two and a Half Men” came in third, for the first time this season, in Nielsen’s weekly ratings; however, it’s still television’s number one comedy offering. So, Sheen fans shouldn’t expect Kutcher to start singing his swan song any time soon. It’s the height of football season, after all. Eyeballs that were once glued to “Two and a Half Men” are likely glued to NBC’s “Monday Night Football.”
Fans of “Two and a Half Men” probably love it no matter what, as long as the writing remains good and consistent with what it was before Sheen’s departure. Never a true fan of the show myself, I’ve only seen a few episodes with Sheen and one with Kutcher. While one episode of a show isn’t enough to go on, Walden Schmidt is a lot like Kelso, the character Kutcher played on “That 70s Show.” Where Kelso was intellectually challenged, Walden is socially challenged — probably because he never grew up. I like the immature Walden much more than the boorish Charlie Harper. But let’s face it, “Two and a Half Men” was clearly written to appeal to a male audience. “What does a woman know?”
Lower ratings or not, it’s still too soon to tell if Kutcher and the rest of the cast of “Two and a Half Men” have anything to worry about. If they do, chances are Charlie Harper could find himself resurrected in much the same way that soap opera characters are when the actors who portray them are rehired.
What? It could happen.
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