I've now seen the promos for a new fall show from CBS called Two and a Half Men about eight thousand times. Apparently, the two men are Charlie Sheen and Jon Cryer (the geeky guy from Pretty In Pink who lusted after Molly Ringwald). I suppose that Charlie Sheen is tolerable in small doses (in fact, I think it would be a good idea if he were chopped up into little bite-sized gobbets of flesh so that we could be assured of only ever being exposed to small doses of Charlie Sheen) but a sitcom actually starring him, especially one in which he's paired up with a precocious, wise-cracking, ten-year-old nephew (that's the half in two and a half men), sounds like about as much fun as being poked repeatedly in the eyeballs with a red-hot poker covered with angry scorpions. Precocious, wise-cracking, angry scorpions.

If pairing a carefree bachelor with a sassy boy-child weren't enough of an original idea that's never, ever, ever been tried before (really - try to think of more than about four hundred shows or movies with this premise - I'll bet you can't!), TaaHM has another twist. Cryer moves in with Sheen because his wife announced that she's a lesbian and she wants a divorce.

Now, I'm sure the good writers of this show will handle all the issues involved with coming out later in life, the heterosexist assumptions that force many people to deny their sexual orientation, and the difficulties inherent in raising children under such tumultuous situations with all the tact and grace we've come to expect from Charlie Sheen vehicles. However, one of the "jokes" in the promo ("Your wife is out picking up chicks, you should be too.") doesn't fill me with hope. Slight nausea, yes. Soul-crippling ennui, most definitely. Hope, no.