There’s no stopping Walden when it comes to commitment. On last week’s episode of Two and a Half Men, he took Zoey on an extravagant dinner to Mexico on his private jet, where he told her that he pulled some strings to get her kid into the school she wanted. This week, it’s Christmas and he got her a key to his house. Zoey doesn’t accept, and she thinks it’s too early to spend Christmas with each other’s families.
As for the Harper family, Alan is trying to convince his mom that they should spend Christmas together since it’s the first one without Charlie. She has no interest–she’d rather be with the men she hooked up with. Jake is doing what only children of divorcees can do: tell his mom he’s going to his dad’s house, tell his dad he’s going to his mom’s house, and spend Christmas hanging out with a friend in the same situation.
Walden, on the other hand, couldn’t be more festive. The beach house is decorated extravagantly. Wearing a Santa hat dangling with mistletoe, Walden gives Berta a kiss on the cheek and three weeks pay for Christmas. It’s a light version of what she really wanted. Her present to him: a mistletoe belt buckle. While Walden went to the Apple store to get himself a bunch of cool presents, Alan went to the grocery store to get himself an apple. Such is life.
Just to make Alan’s Christmas even better, Walden mentions that Alan is about the same age as his mom–he thinks Alan is 60. The insult doesn’t matter when Walden’s mother Robin (Mimi Rogers) shows up and Alan decides he wants her for Christmas.
Here’s where it gets a little weird. Walden’s mom is a primatologist, and Walden mentions that he used to have an imaginary friend that was a gorilla. Turns out it wasn’t imaginary. His mom raised him with a gorilla from birth as an experiment to see if gorillas could learn as fast as human children. Walden was told that the gorilla was his brother and that they had to send him back to the jungle when he tried to kill a Jehovah’s Witness that showed up at the door. Walden had repressed all of these memories as imaginary, and after his mom shows him baby pictures of him and the gorilla he freaks out.
Of course, Christmas must be a good time to bring back jabs against Charlie. Walden says, “My brother was a gorilla.” Alan says, “My brother was a pig.” There was also a comment about Charlie drinking a gallon of eggnog and trying to throw Alan out of the house at gunpoint. Christmas cheer!
Walden takes off in his anger, while Alan tries to hit on his mom and dispose of the monkey-print bathrobe he got him for Christmas. Alan tries to comfort Walden’s mom by telling her all the horrible things his own mother did to him: told him that Disneyland burned down so she didn’t have to take him, and told him to walk it off when his appendix burst. But even Evelyn may not be the worst mom: Walden’s mom stored the embryo of Walden in a cryogenic chamber until his gorilla sibling was ready to be born, because they had to be born at the same time for the experiment to be valid–and she did this without telling her husband.
Walden shows up drunk at Zoey’s house, where she is hosting the parents he wasn’t supposed to meet. In what is a great introduction to her family, he starts going on about how his mother is a mad scientist, his brother is a gorilla, and he’s afraid of being banished to Central Africa. Zoey’s parents are sweet and don’t seem to mind his crazy talk.
At the beach house, they get a phone call from Zoey to tell them that Walden has climbed onto her roof. After failing to get Walden’s mom to go to a movie, Alan decides to go with her to help Walden. He climbs up on the roof with Walden and it becomes a scene from King Kong. Walden, mourning the loss of his gorilla sibling, has adapted the chest-pounding and squatting mannerisms of his brother. Alan tries to talk him down while helicopters fly overhead–Alan apparently also knows what it’s like to lose a brother who tried to kill a Jehovah’s Witness.
Below, Zoey, her parents, and Walden’s mom meet for the first time while watching the men on the roof. They all get along beautifully. Zoey’s parents say Walden is charming before mentioning, “Thinks he’s the brother of a monkey. What’s all that about?”
Jake and his friend walk by the scene. “I think that’s my dad up there.” Then they go get frozen yogurt.
In the end, Walden gets the best Christmas present ever: to reunite with his long-lost gorilla sibling. Turns out his mom didn’t send him to the jungle after all, but built him his own jungle-themed living space. They hug. They play. Walden’s mom stands by with a taser. The situation is weird, but harmless, much like Walden himself.
That’s it for Two and a Half Men for 2011! Alan and Walden made it down from the roof safely, and Two and a Half Men has made it through their first half season without Charlie. Despite some occasional jabs at Charlie, this season has been improving over the past few episodes. We now understand Walden’s character as a caring, commitment-obsessive, smart but clueless guy who, like Charlie, can get any woman he wants. What have you thought of season 9 so far?
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