[UPDATE: This column describes a mystery image tacked on at the end of Monday's Two and a Half Men -- an image explained, brilliantly, in subsequent comments by TVWW readers. I asked, you answered. I love you people! -- DB]
Ashton Kutcher inherited the co-starring mantle from Charlie Sheen on CBS's Two and a Half Men Monday night -- the same night, and only a hour before, Sheen himself was shown sitting through a Roast of Charlie Sheen on Comedy Central.
And yet, after all that high-intensity media hype smoke cleared, I was left thinking about other things: Dharma, Greg, and the meaning of that vanity card photo...
The hugh-hush, game-changing season premiere of Two and a Half Men, written by series creator Chuck Lorre and three other writers, wasted no time whatsoever in ushering out the old times. It opened with the funeral of Sheen's Charlie Harper -- a closed-casket funeral, necessitated by, we soon learned, psychotic Rose's vengeful push, which deposited her new husband in the path of an oncoming Parisian commuter train.
Sorry, Charlie.
Soon enough, an unsuccessfully suicidal Walden Schmidt (Kutcher), a despondent, love-stricken billionaire, showed up at the beachfront sliding glass door of the home now occupied by Charlie's brother Alan (Jon Cryer) -- just as Alan was about to spread his brother's ashes. Startled by Walden's unexpected presence, Alan did, indeed, spread his brother's ashes -- all over the living-room rug.
Kutcher spent much of the rest of the episode half-naked, if that: There was as much computer pixilation on this CBS sitcom as there usually is on COPS. And at the end, we saw a "To be continued" sign, stopping the plot in midpoint -- which, predictably, will end with Walden buying the house, Alan and son Jake (Angus T. Jones) staying on as tenants, and the show trying hard to take advantage of the high-visibility turnover.
Later, on Sheen's Comedy Central roast, there was little talent on hand, fewer memorable jokes and less of a sense of comic danger than unfunny boredom. Though I did like the edginess of one joke, which pointed out that Sheen -- who replaced the original star of ABC's Spin City in midstream, just as Sheen himself has been replaced by Kutcher -- owed his entire TV career to the fact that "God hates Michael J. Fox."
But when Sheen entered flashing a peace sign, as guitar legend Slash played above him, it made him seem more like tamed self-parody than a winking, knowing outlaw -- the same effect he got from his appearance at the Emmys. And even though the televised roast, in order, was all Slash and burn, its temperature was, at best, tepid.
In fact, after the TV night was over, I kept thinking about two things, and they were neither Sheen nor Kutcher.
One: The Two and a Half Men premiere made room for a few cameos. One was by John Stamos, but the one that stuck with me belonged to Jenna Elfman and Thomas Gibson, reprising their title characters from Dharma & Greg, the ABC 1997-2002 sitcom co-created by Lorre.
In Men, Dharma and Greg were looking to buy the Harper beach house, which, after Charlie's death, was on the market because Alan couldn't afford the taxes or refinanced mortgage. But Dharma and Greg, instead of being the sweetly loving opposites they were during their sitcom -- Dharma all new-age gooey, Greg all button-down rigidness -- spent the scene totally at each other's throats.
Bickering loudly. Commenting snidley. Threatening divorce. And, as a farewell gesture, Greg put his finger to his head, like a gun, and pretended to shoot himself as he exits.
What kind of karma is that for Dharma?
I can understand Lorre being so bitter about his Two and a Half Men experience, but why take it out on the memory of Dharma & Greg?
Then, finally, there's Chuck Lorre's vanity card.
Famously, Lorre usually ends each episode with a specifically written mini-rant. But as the capper for this infamous changing-of-the-guard episode of Two and a Half Men, Lorre chose his words so wisely that he offered no words whatsoever.
Just this picture -- of three barrels, or unmarked tin cans, one of which is overturned:
So how do YOU interpret this? Two and a half barrels? Someone's turn in the barrel? A barrel of fun? A can of... what?
It's wide open to interpretation... and we're wide open for submissions.