Angus’s Beef: The Trouble With ‘Two and a Half Men’

When the child star of 'Two and a Half Men' lashed out against his own show, did he have a point?

“You cannot be a true God-fearing person and be on a television show like that,” he said. “I know I can’t. I’m not OK with what I’m learning, what the Bible says, and being on that television show. I’m on ‘Two and a Half Men’ and I don’t want to be on it. Please stop watching it. Please stop filling your head with filth.”

For many, those words from Angus Jones regarding his hit CBS sitcom are easy enough to follow, even if they didn’t watch the show themselves. For the last decade the show has managed to keep a sizable audience, but events in recent years, such as former star Charlie Sheen’s epic midlife crisis, have cut into the program’s viewership. Still, it can’t help but be a cash cow for the stars involved; Sheen and Jones, along with Jon Cryer and Ashton Kutcher, who slipped into the Sheen role once Charlie cut out. Even though the former child star has already attempted to walk back his comments, the controversy that arose, along with the subtext, merits further discussion and analysis.

The case against the show: it is vulgar, broad, and goes for cheap and easy humor. The jokes are lame and tawdry; the characters are so stock they should be behind the Wal-Mart layaway counter. No one of any intellectual heft admits to watching the show–not even to be “ironic”. In that context, it is surprising that Angus Jones’ evangelism-infused attack on this show was a source of such controversy–unless one sees it as an attack on faith itself.

Writing at ESPN’s offshoot site Grantland, Amos Barshad makes the secularist hipster counter-argument to Jones’ angst: “From one point of view, we have just another child star warped by early success. Instead of pills and booze, though, young Angus has gone deep into religion. Meanwhile, we rational people know that, yes, of course ‘Two and a Half Men’ is [execrable], but it’s not evil. Basically, Angus T. Jones lost it; for neatness’s sake, he did so in a manner that’s the polar opposite of the indulgences of his ex-co-star Charlie Sheen.”

Comparing a religious awakening to Sheen’s extended version of the Lost Weekend is about what would be expected from the folks at ESPN. The same holds for Gawker, where a writer snarked, “it wasn’t until a recent bout of soul-searching that the child star had a full-blown Kirk Cameron-esque awakening complete with the renouncement of his Godless past as a Hollywood heathen.” Even the former child star’s own mother says that he was “brainwashed” by his Church. To accept her words at face value, of course, it would require one to believe that “Two and a Half Men” is wholesome entertainment, or at least wholesome enough for her to continue profiting from her son’s work.

There is a case to be made in that direction. “Two and a Half Men” plays footsie with taboos, similarly to how “Three’s Company” did in the 1970s, and Bob Cummings’s “Love That Bob” did in the 1950s. Womanizing, rakish rogues never go out of style. Women love the bad boys, and men want to be them. This holds especially true for the target audience for shows like this one–“average Americans,” living lives of quiet desperation. If one is trapped in a cubicle for nine hours a day, it is easy enough to see how escapist entertainment like this would serve as a diversion. Those who watch “Two and a Half Men” know–from the promos, the opening scene, and whatever else–that the sordidness of the show is part of the package, and it is a sordidness that is part of the culture now.

Even if one subscribes to that viewpoint, does it mean that Jones’s views have no weight? Even if, as some critics have said, he’s just an ugly former child star trying to be the next Kirk Cameron, it doesn’t mean that what he says isn’t true. The American entertainment industry has a long history of having children grow up on camera. The results have been mixed.

We can consider a show like “Honey Boo Boo”, in which an overweight cracker child and her buffoonish kinfolk are made sport of on a weekly basis, a kind of exploitation. Undoubtedly, her parents appreciate the money that is coming in. But it is not hard to imagine the young starlet herself having an epiphany about the process to which she was subjected, once it is finally concluded.

It is very easy to find other examples about the corrosive effects of childhood fame. Golden Age child stars, like Jay “Dennis the Menace” North, have made a second career out of spotlighting what they perceive to be the exploitation in the industry. Gary Coleman, Todd Bridges, and Dana Plato of “Diff’rent Strokes” offer more cautionary tales. Lapsed Disney nymphets Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan’s tabloid exploits likewise suggest that the price of childhood and adolescent fame ultimately is paid on the installment plan. It is hard to develop an independent identity in the entertainment industry, especially when parents like those of Angus Jones, who had run-ins with the law before their son went big time, become aware that their child is their cash cow.

Angus emerged from all of that, though hyper-religious in a way that most find unseemly. Perhaps it is spiritual awakening, or an attempt to cash in, or simply a need to fulfill an innate craving for structure and ultimate authority, perhaps because he spent as much time with a coked-up Charlie Sheen as he did with his parents. Whatever the case, when he says the show is filth, one can either call him a liar, or suspect that he might know more about the subject than anyone on the outside. The production meetings, the internal memos, the backstage antics–these are things to which outsiders are not and cannot be privy.

The show trundles on, of course, unkillable, as hardy as a cockroach. It survived its biggest star’s departure because the formula is the draw, and the players are more interchangeable than they might have seemed at the start when Charlie Sheen was the straw that stirred the drink. The show likely will survive the exit of Angus Jones also, though he hasn’t left yet. Even if the show does disappear from air, don’t worry. Hulu is your hookup. And besides, a reasonable facsimile of it will soon take its place. It always does.

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13 Responses to Angus’s Beef: The Trouble With ‘Two and a Half Men’

“when he says the show is filth, one can either call him a liar, or suspect that he might know more about the subject than anyone on the outside.”

Somewhat silly binary thinking, what? He is not a liar, but “filth” is a particularly, perhaps uniquely, subjective evaluation. It is possible to not like ‘Two Men’ as art or even entertainment, and yet to question whether it is “filth”. More to the point, what happens inside is kinda irrelevant to the actual output: just because the jokes are tawdry, does not mean the writers were crack-heads.

Finally, it is possible to be “brainwashed” into “faith”. I don’t know Mr. Jones or his church, but surely as general statement, it is asinine to suggest that anyone criticising him or his “faith” is lauching a war on faith itself, or God or religion. I find Kirk Cameron an insufferable fool, but that does not mean that I attack my sister for her equally deeply held, though fundamentally less deranged, religious beliefs.

Not every attack on someone’s professions of faith is an attack on faith or war on religion; more to the point, there is a reason we don’t appoint priests as art critics.

Did this post have a point, other than to criticize young Mr. Jones’ religious conversion?

The show pretty much is filth, in that it glamourizes and showcases what most religions teach (and have taught from time immemorial) to be sin.

It’s true, I suppose, that a television show that glamourizes sexual decadence isn’t particularly notable – you could make similar arguments about Friends, or ER, or indeed most shows on television over the past 15 years – with one exception: this show exposed Mr. Jones, the actor, to copious amounts of said filth while he was an impressionable child. A non-trivial amount of the objectionable humor occurs while he is on screen, often at his expense. I am aware of no show that has done that (although I admittedly haven’t watched much TV over the past 10 years).

Angus T. Jones’ problem is that he was funny as a cute little stupid kid, but is NOT funny as a stupid pot-head teenager.
Of course he is being written out of the show.
They wrote Charlie Sheen out of the show and an actor who some found funny as a teenager took over. He is not funny as an adult.
Jon Cryer’s schtick is getting old.
The show was getting old before the cast changes, which haven’t helped.

The show does unite politically correct feminists and Religious Right moralists in condemnation of it. Strange bedfellows indeed! (I couldn’t resist that one.)

with one exception: this show exposed Mr. Jones, the actor, to copious amounts of said filth while he was an impressionable child. A non-trivial amount of the objectionable humor occurs while he is on screen, often at his expense.

This.
I have never watched the show, partly because it’s not my kind of humor, but also because when I would see the commercials several years ago (when Jones was younger), I was made very uncomfortable by the fact that a child was being subjected to this, well, filth. I remember wondering what kind of parents would let their child be on a show like that.

My only fear is that if the relatively mild sexual content of “Two and a Half Men” is so objectionable to Angus T. Jones, then how can he possibly read Chaucer or Boccaccio? Any faith that would deny the beauty of either of those authors is no faith that I can accept as a legitimate path to Truth. Even Savonarola did not burn Botticelli’s works.

Congratulations on being the first person in recorded history to compare Two and A Half Men to Chaucer and Boccaccio. That’s an impressive amount of chutzpah, all for the important purpose of building a straw man argument.

While I am not a religious person, I did find the show to be funny at times but, whats the right word, disturbing? I think mostly because of the exposure of a young child to adult themes. After Sheen left it seemed things got more heavy and mean. I quit watching.

But what is equally disturbing is the amount of gruesome explicit blood and violence we also expose ourselves to, such as CSI, and particularly Criminal Minds.

“Two and a Half Men” is not the exception…it seems to be the rule. It’s crude humor may be more obvious than other shows, but frankly, most of Televsion has devolved since it was called a “vast wasteland” over fifty years ago.

There are occasional bright spots, to be sure…but “filth” is a pretty mild term for most of it.