Dnigg

Why a Horrible Show Such as Two and a Half Men Makes Mediocre Men Feel Better About Themselves

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

As most of us know and probably wish we didn’t, John Cryer plays the hopeless loser (Alan Harper) with a relatively strong moral compass in CBS’ Two and a Half Men.  And he is arguably the best character on the show (with or without Charlie Sheen).

 

 

Here’s why:

 

 

Lets face the brutal truth… most of us are losers.  Most of us didn’t get “the Girl.”  Most of us rarely get what we want, or at least when we want it.  Most of us work average jobs, that once seemed promising.  And to top it all off, most of us are not ‘prototypically handsome.’

 

Most of us though, take ourselves way too seriously.  We act as if our acts are usually of high importance, and when we discover that what we had just done was frivolous, rarely do we sit back and just laugh about it all.  Unless we see it happen to someone else in a fictional setting.

 

On the subconscious “I’m not as bad as Alan Harper” level, we actually embrace Alan Harper knowing that for once, the butt of the joke is on him and his existence, and when life punches us in the face, it apparently has also hit Alan Harper in the comfort of a sitcom.  Repeatedly.

 

 

 

One of the few TV sitcoms that allows you to pick up the plot at any point

 

 

 

Comedy is defined as the simple expression “Tragedy plus Time,” and if you make the gap between tragedy and time nearly infinitesimal, this is where Alan from 2.5 men comes in.  When you sift through the miles of fluff behind every simply crafted crude joke, you see that this show might serve for more than just an arching collection of toilet humor.  Albeit accidentally, Two and a Half Men makes living less than a premium lifestyle feel much more comforting.

 

Sorry to offend their “target audience,” but this really seems to ring true.  

 

Alan’s life is pitiful, and it’s explicitly implied throughout the banter ongoing between him, the housemaid, and Ashton Kutcher’s character, Walden Schmidt (even if every woman Alan is involved with is beautiful… remember this is TV… and ever since Seinfeld, a main character never dates an unattractive woman).

 

Perhaps the negativities are grossly exaggerated and maybe Alan isn’t stereotypically mediocre, after all, he does live rent-free in a giant Malibu beach house, regardless of who is the head of household.  He’s also a father, and he tends to be the voice of reason.  Many perceptively “far-from-mediocre” men have yet to accomplish this.

 

However, away from the fantastical elements that make this a sneakily entertaining TV show, and back to the parallels to reality…

 

Alan is openly depressed, he’s low on stature, high on envy, and regardless of the self-image each one of us harbors, he’s just like most of us.  The only glaring dissimilarity is the fact that he never talks about fantasy football.  And maybe the habit he has of always tucking horizontally-striped polos nearly knee deep into his khaki shorts.

 

 

 

Horizontal stripes are still not in

 

 

 

We are, allegedly, quote-unquote, “men.”  We are at times dejected, rejected, and objected to.  We have all felt Alan Harper’s portrayed pain.  On TV, this misery is instantly funny… at least purportedly.

 

Over and over again, Alan fails.  And now that the show is in its 9th season, these failures have gone from repeat short-term failures and have become cumulative into the long term.

 

How many times can we implicitly refer to Alan Harper as a loser?  The answer:  at least 3 more times per proceeding paragraph.

 

 

 

The gap between 2.5 men and 3 men is rapidly shrinking

 

 

 

Mediocrity is all around us, and every day we refuse to embrace it.  Why does a dog remember certain commands?  Because he/she knows that some sort of praise, encouragement, or reward is involved.  Mediocrity is not praised as nearly as much as it is frowned upon and criticized.  It’s in the majority of all action, but since it is rarely recognized, it carries minor importance.  A lot like the “hot chick.”  Subjectively, about 5% of all women are “hot,” but it really feels like about 70% are, right?  That’s because we don’t mentally file mediocre data points.

 

Is mediocrity subjective?  Probably not.  It’s a range that lies within 68% of a bell curve, and when that much subjective data is put together over a long time interval (8 seasons of 2.5 Men, if you will) it seems to be quite objective.  Or at least subjectively objective.

 

The silver lining to all of this mediocrity though, is that we are in a large amount of great company… okay, mediocre company.  But as the old adage goes, misery loves company.

 

So let’s not laugh at Alan… let’s cry with him.

 

 

And then endure