Charlie is a well-to-do bachelor with a house at the beach, a Jaguar in the front and an easy way with women. His casual Malibu lifestyle is interrupted when his tightly wound brother Alan, who's facing a divorce, and his son Jake, come to live with him. Together, these two and a half men confront the challenges of growing up; finally. Complicating matters are the brothers' self-obsessed, controlling mother, Evelyn, Alan's estranged wife, Judith and Charlie's crazy neighbour Rose, who wants to be a part of his life and is willing to do anything to be around.
Charles Francis Harper (Charlie) is a successful and affluent 40 year old bachelor who has a career writing advertisement jingles. Charlie resides in a large oceanfront home in Malibu, California, and is portrayed as a chauvinistic, hedonistic womanizer; all he cares about is having sex. The plot begins when his wimpy younger brother Alan becomes divorced from his wife, moves out of their house, and has to move in with his brother. Alan has shared custody of his son Jake (10 when the series began), who stays with him part-time. The title is in reference to the fact that Jake isn't an adult yet, and only "1/2 a man".
Rose (Melanie Lynskey) is Charlie's zany neighbor and female stalker. Rose had a one night stand with Charlie shortly before the show started, which she believed to be more significant, and tends to enter his house through the patio in the most inopportune moments, expressing her ambition of obtaining Charlie, and often serving as a good, albeit crazy, friend and adviser. Although obviously troubled herself, Rose has stated a few times that she has a Master's degree in psychology, and Alan has referred to her as having two advanced degrees. In various episodes it is insinuated that Rose is very slowly orchestrating a psychological plan to win Charlie back. Early in the series after she's become "Scrabble" friends with Alan as a way to get closer to Charlie, she's heard to say (to herself) "Phase one, complete." Usually when Charlie asks Rose "did I ever tell you I'm sorry", on which Rose replies "For sleeping with me, and then never calling me again?" on which Charlie then replies "that, and ...".
Alan and Charlie's mother, Evelyn (Holland Taylor), is a hip, wealthy, early-sixties, many-times-divorced, bisexual, promiscuous, controlling mother of the brothers. Both Charlie and Alan attribute their life's problems to the dark manipulative force their mother manages to exert upon them even now, adding to the caustic humor of the show in the situations depicting their vain attempts to escape her (Her often being referred to as 'the devil'). For all of her selfishness and manipulation, Evelyn does love her kids and grandson deep down.
A great deal of the humor on the show comes from the real-life experiences of creator Chuck Lorre. In a now-famous Entertainment Weekly interview, Holland Taylor said that Lorre was using the memories of his own less-than-great relationship with his mother for the storylines involving Evelyn and Charlie/Alan. Charlie Sheen also said that it was "no accident...that Chuck finally decided to do a show about men. I'll leave it at that"
A parody of the show for MAD Magazine
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