Two and a Half Men - A Family Affair.

I'm hopelessly torn and more than a little confused. I'm not sure if I'm enjoying the new season of Two and a Half Men because I like it and think it is funny, or I'm willing myself to.

Skating over things, that are niggling the back of my brain. Do I like the Walden character, or do I just put up with him? He is certainly very uneven. And do I like Ashton Kutcher? I have to admit, this is the first thing I've seen him in, so my frame of reference is a tad limited. He seems alright with what he has been given, it's the dynamic, of the show, which seems to have gone.

Call me an idiot, and you probably will, But up until now I never realised that Two and a Half Men was about family. OK, not the typical loving TV family, but more like real life where you put up with them because, well, they're family and we're losing all this now. So far Jake has hardly shown his face, making it hard to shoe horn in Judith and I think Evelyn's appearances have totalled up to no more than five minutes. It seems that, like me, the creators didn't know this was a show about family.

So how does all this impact on Alan, whose shoulders the bulk of the action seems to rest? Not too bad, but his character now seems to have taken on an unsavoury edge. Before he was staying with his brother, not always welcome, but tolerated because he was family. Now he is mooching off a billionaire, his entire life hanging on the capricious whims of a, let's face it, depressive flake. But he seems to carry on regardless. Perhaps the doubts will come later.

Now we get onto the late Charlie Harper. Let's leave the Charlie Sheen thing alone. In the character's absence, we can see that Charlie Harper was the head of this odd family, their 'go to guy' on just about everything. The brothers never got sentimental, the opposite most times, but the bond and shared history was there. I suppose, what I'm getting at, in my shambling way, is they should have kept the family element. By dropping Walden into all this they've made Two and a Half Men something different, still funny, still highly watchable, but different.

In the words of Joni Mitchell, 'You don't know what you've got 'til its gone.'

Over