an eagle eye will tell you, Two and a Half Men was all about Charlie — but the successful, modern sitcom could have done a heck of a lot worse. Creator Chuck Lorre saw something in Kutcher, a performer with the potential to internally reboot the series for a younger audience. A former TV regular, a seasoned comedian, and an actor with warped sensibilities aligning with the show's off-the-wall antics, Kutcher was a logical choice that still felt drastically different than Sheen's approach.
The experiment worked: 27.5 million people tuned into Ashton's debut and its 24-episode run warranted the rewired series a tenth season (not to mention a pay bump for Kutcher). Creatively, Season 9 was hit or miss — not a far cry from the past eight yearsof Two and a Half Men buffoonery. Charlie Sheen's boozing, cruising womanizer defined Men, but Kutcher's Walden Schmidt threw an interesting wrench into a show that was running on autopilot. The death of Charlie put Jon Cryer's Alan front and center, dealing with the ramifications of losing his life crutch while attempting to raise his dimwitted son Jake. Walden, when he wasn't slipping into full-on manchild mode, was a sensible, mellow companion for Alan. That's a feat for a show that's all about caricatures and off-color humor, and when a Season 9 Two and a Half Men episode missed the mark, the fault was rarely Kutcher's.
That said, Two and a Half Men went an entire season without figuring out how to consistently and effectively use Walden. In his