The coming TV season beginning in September will be the final one for CBS’s long-time hit “Two and a Half Men,” and the show will certainly go out with a bang. CBS Entertainment chairman Nina Tassler told reporters that in season twelve Walden (Ashton Kutcher) and Alan (Jon Cryer) will be getting married so they can adopt a baby as a gay couple. And if that isn’t a big enough twist, the characters, who have been depicted as straight, will remain so.
Both the Hollywood Reporter and Access Hollywood have the skinny:
Speaking on Thursday at the Television Critics Association’s summer press tour, CBS Entertainment chairman Nina Tassler told reporters following her executive session that the season 12 story will kick off with Walden experiencing a health scare that will lead him to what she called an “existential crisis.”
He wants to find a way to add more meaning to his life so he decides he wants to adopt a child and in doing so, he starts the process and realizes that it’s very difficult to adopt a child as a single, straight man,” Tassler said. “So once and for all he decides, ‘I’m going to propose to Alan and we’re going to get married and adopt a child as a gay couple.”
She called the story a “great ride,” and said that she views the storyline a “very positive statement” about the wave of gay rights that are becoming more commonplace across the country and that she’s not worried about any sort of blowback from the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.
I think it’s a very positive statement that, you know what, I am going to adopt a child as a gay couple and the reality is, he can do that. And in a universe where at one point you couldn’t do that and now you can do that, I think that’s a much more positive statement that he’s making.
I believe the technical term for what they are doing with ‘Two and a Half Men’ is jumping the shark.
Cross-posted at The Lid