Overview
The series revolved initially around the life of the Harper brothers: Charlie (Charlie Sheen) and Alan (Jon Cryer) and Alan's son, Jake (Angus T. Jones). Charlie is a bachelor who writes commercial jingles for a living while leading a hedonistic lifestyle. When Alan's wife Judith (Marin Hinkle) decides to divorce him, he moves into Charlie's Malibu beach house, with Jake periodically coming to stay. Charlie's housekeeper is Berta (Conchata Ferrell), a sharp-tongued woman who initially resists the change to the household but comes to grudgingly accept it.
The first five seasons find Charlie in casual sexual relationships with numerous women until the sixth season, when he becomes engaged to Chelsea (Jennifer Bini Taylor). However, the relationship does not last when Charlie flies to Paris in the eighth season finale in pursuit of Rose (Melanie Lynskey), who was introduced as his stalker in the pilot episode. In the ninth season premiere, it is revealed that Charlie died when he fell in front of a subway train in Paris; it is strongly hinted that Rose allegedly pushes Charlie in front of the train after learning that Charlie had cheated on her.
Alan's experiences are somewhat different from Charlie's. Throughout the series, Alan continues to deal with the results of his divorce from Judith, Jake growing up, and his generally little success with women. Even his marriage to Kandi (April Bowlby) at the end of the third season was short-lived. In the fourth season, Alan is back at the beach house paying alimony to two women out of his meager earnings as a chiropractor. In the seventh season, he begins a relationship with Lyndsey McElroy (Courtney Thorne-Smith), the mother of one of Jake's friends. Their relationship is temporarily suspended when Alan accidentally burns down her house and cheats on her, but the relationship eventually resumes.
In the ninth season premiere (after Charlie's death) the beach house is sold to Walden Schmidt (Ashton Kutcher), an Internet billionaire in the process of being divorced from his wife Bridget (Judy Greer). Alan leaves to live with his conceited mother Evelyn (Holland Taylor) when the house is sold, but Walden wholeheartedly invites both Alan and Jake back to live in the beach house, needing friends to help him deal with his marriage breakdown, therefore forming a tight-knit surrogate family. Meanwhile, Charlie's spirit now lives on in Hell in the form of a woman (Kathy Bates) as eternal punishment for his womanizing ways during his lifetime. He continues to watch over his brother and nephew, still disgruntled by the fact they won't leave his former home.
Read more about this topic: Two And A Half Men