COMMENTARY | “Two and a Half Men,” Season 9, Episode 1, “Nice to Meet You, Walden Schmidt” started, as has been previously reported, with the funeral of Charlie Harper. The added bonus consisted of comments by a wide section of Charlie bed partners.
The effort to appear to be in mourning by most of those in attendance, even Charlie’s mom, was pretty obvious. Alan seemed to be genuinely brokenhearted, however, not the least of which because he and Jake would now have to find some other place to live. While he technically owns the Malibu beach house, he will have to sell it as he can neither afford to pay the three mortgages that Charlie left on it or the property taxes.
The second cutest scene in the episode is when Jenna Elfman and Thomas Gibson as Darhma and Greg show up, bickering, to see the house. Gibson plays an emotionally stunted FBI agent in the hit series “Criminal Minds” currently.
Ashton Kutcher’s character, Walden Schmidt, appears at the house after Alan, having made a moving monologue to Charlie’s ashes, promptly spills them across the carpet as Walden appears dripping wet.
Walden is a tall, bearded, strapping fellow who is worth $1.5 billion due to one of Microsoft’s more boneheaded business decisions. He is also emotionally immature. His wife is leaving him, which has caused him to throw himself into the ocean with the intent of drowning himself. Then he threw himself out of the ocean because it was cold.
Walden is apparently a man-child whom women find appealing because they want to comfort and mother him. The fact that he is handsome and rich causes two to drag him upstairs and mother him six ways from Sunday while Alan ruefully reflects about how things have not changed just because Charlie is trying to fast talk his way in the afterlife.
Will the new character dynamics work? The comedy of the first eight seasons involved Alan and others dealing with the self-confident sexual predator Charlie, whom nothing seemed to touch, at least until he made the mistake of getting caught in flagrante delicto by Rose. Now it seems Alan has acquired a second child. We’ll see if it will work past the current season.
Source: Two and a Half Men, Nice to Meet You, Walden Schmidt, TV.Rage
Charlie Sheen’s Death on ‘Two and a Half Men’ Fraught with Poetic Justice, Mark R. Whittington, Associated Content, Aug. 8, 2011