The American sitcom Two and a Half Men, created by Chuck Lorre and Lee Aronsohn, premiered on CBS September 22, 2003.
He is a womanizing bachelor who tends to abuse his younger brother Alan (whom he loves dearly, although he would never admit it) and usually takes pleasure in any misfortune or trouble he runs into.
As a result of retroactive continuity, the series finale reveals that Charlie never dies but is held captive by Rose in a basement pit under her house in Sherman Oaks.
Toward the end of season seven, Alan starts dating Lyndsey McElroy, the mother of Jake's friend Eldridge, and Judith's neighbor.
This friendship eventually earns Alan a position as a board member of Walden's company and his name on the deed of the beach house.
After a brief updating, including breaking the fourth wall to address the studio audience, Jake bids Alan, Walden, and Berta goodbye as he leaves the beach house to return to his Japanese family.
Some episodes of the eleventh season emphasize this to the point of comedically portraying Jenny as a stereotypical lesbian who is uninterested in serious relationships and is content to have sex with any woman she meets, to the extent that she is able to seduce (or "recruit") straight women (at one point, Walden claims that he did not know that one of Jenny's one-night-stands, who is his friend, was a lesbian.
In the twelfth season, Jenny uses her experience in the LGBT community to help Walden and Alan pose as a gay couple so that they can adopt Louis.
She makes a brief appearance in the final episode, where she receives a large cheque and an apology letter from Charlie, who survived his accident in Paris.
However, the facts that Jake's bedroom could be confused with a dump (including at various times dead fish in the closet, food left-overs in his toy box, and nasal mucus under the bed), his toilet seat is frequently sprayed with urine, and his underwear is filthy often leads to anger on her part.
Berta has two ex-husbands: her first marriage lasted 15 years, and her second was a drunken Las Vegas escapade she refers to as "one hell of a weekend", which ended when she divorced him in Reno.
This living arrangement is short-lived when she finds out that Alan will be moving back in, only this becomes more likely when Walden sees Berta invite a piggish houseguest over.
She later marries Dr. Herbert "Herb" Melnick (Ryan Stiles), Jake's pediatrician, a union that brings joy to Alan because it means he no longer has to pay alimony.
After she gives birth in the sixth-season finale, the child's parentage remains uncertain, because Judith was with both Herb and Alan around the time Millie was conceived.
She plays a major role in the season 11 episode "Cab Fare and a Bottle of Penicillin," when Alan shows up at her house just to talk about old times and they end up engaged after a night of drinking.
Formerly a one-night stand, Chelsea seems to be one of the few women out of Charlie's countless relationships who has induced him to try to make positive changes in his degenerate lifestyle.
However, as the season progresses, Chelsea unintentionally begins to bring out Charlie's evil side, as he starts treating Alan and Jake cruelly if they accidentally inconvenience her.
While being credited among the main cast as Jennifer Taylor during the seventh season, CBS press releases billed her as a recurring character.
In season 9, after years of not speaking to each other, Walden and Billy start their business back up again and work together on a project they call the "electronic suitcase."
[10] This is later proven to be a one-off gag for that particular episode as Bridget later starts dating Walden's business partner Billy at the end of season 9.
Dr. Linda Freeman (Jane Lynch; seasons 1, 3–9, 11), initially as Jake's—then as Charlie's, and occasionally Alan's (and Walden's)—adept, incisive but money-hungry psychiatrist.
He reveals how he had become a millionaire on the stock market, got married and subsequently divorced, and then lost all his money to his ex-wife, forcing him to return to pizza delivery.
Charlie invariably orders pizza from Gordon's pizzeria for him to deliver irrespective of the distance, including when subletting his own live-in girlfriend Chelsea's old apartment in the San Fernando Valley,[12] and when camped out with Alan et al. in Lyndsey's burned-out house[13] twenty miles from the beach.
Dr. Herbert "Herb" Melnick (Ryan Stiles; season 2, 4–10, 12) portrays Judith's goofy, train-hobbyist, pediatrician second husband and Jake's stepfather.
He appears to envy their lifestyles at times—such as Charlie's partying and the fact that Alan had been married to Kandi and later dates the neighborhood MILF (and former soft-core porn actress) Lyndsey McElroy.
[17] He states that he likes spending time with the Harpers and calls Charlie "a little loosie-goosie with the liquor and the ladies, but all-in-all a good fella" (which does not impress Judith).
A widower prior to marrying Judith, Herb's hobbies center on gardening,[18] his large model train layout,[19] and "accidentally" bumping into Lyndsey every morning.
But he is somewhat downcast when she explains that she had to work too hard to look sexy and cover up her bodily functions to keep the young guy and that she can forget about all that with Alan because he's not going to find anyone else.
In the final episode, Alan telephones Lyndsey to inform her that should anything happen to him, she is the love of his life (since he currently fears the wrath of a very-alive Charlie).
Robin teams up with Bridget to get Walden kicked off the board of directors because she feels he is using money irresponsibly (she gives Alan a "happy ending" in the men's room of a bar to accomplish this).