Charlie Vs. Barney: A "Womanizing Jerk"-Off

[Cross-posted at Newsgrape.]

So, Charlie Sheen is in the news again, but this time a few people who wouldn’t normally comment are taking notice. The refrain seems to be concern for Sheen’s health, even his life, because his show, Two And A Half Men, is such a money-making machine that nobody will ever tell him regular human things like ‘no’ or ‘beating your wife is not okay’ or ‘seriously, man, just get your ass to rehab and stay there’.

The people expressing this concern are not fans of Two And A Half Men. Personally, I don’t know anyone who is a fan of Two And A Half Men, though an awful lot of people must be, given the average 15 million US viewers it’s been drawing for seven seasons. Full disclosure: I have never actually seen an entire episode, only clips. Coming perilously close to doing some research, I considered watching one before writing this article, but come on, that’s 22 minutes of precious Word Bubble time.

What I do know, from my extensive readings on this here internet, is that Charlie Sheen’s character, imaginatively named ‘Charlie’, is that breed of person known in ye olden times as a manly man, and in modern scientific circles as a humongous douchenozzle. He hooks up with a bazillion different women and is a jerk to them, in episodes with charming titles like ‘Round One to the Hot Crazy Chick’ and ‘The Crazy Bitch Gazette’. If I’m to believe articles like these, this is more or less the entire premise of the show.

Coincidentally, this description of Charlie applies pretty much identically to a character on another CBS sitcom: a show with lower, but still respectable, ratings, and a much greater critical cachet; a breakout character arguably responsible for much of the show’s popularity, and beloved enough to have ‘written’ two books.

Both are womanizing, misogynistic assholes. Why do we interneterati hate Two And A Half Men’s Charlie Harper but love How I Met Your Mother’s Barney Stinson?

I can think of at least three reasons.

First, the context of the show. People who talk about television on the internet tend to consider How I Met Your Mother a good show. At its best, it does something novel with the three-camera sitcom format, utilizing its flashback structure to tell stories in unusual ways and to build a world of consistent detail – guaranteed to appeal to an internet culture that delights in scrutiny of a show’s mythology. Even Two And A Half Men’s most ardent apologists can’t argue that it tries to do anything new, either in its comedy or in its situation.

Second, the context of the character. Barney is a supporting character on How I Met Your Mother. Protagonist Ted is sometimes derided as boring, but he grounds the show in a fundamentally decent and relatable character, which allows Barney to be totally outrageous: as with Zaphod Beeblebrox, you want to have a drink with him – you don’t want to be him. Charlie, however, is the protagonist on Two And A Half Men, and so the viewer can only enter the show’s world on his terms. If you find his terms unappealing, you’ll likely not enjoy the show. (It doesn’t help the misogyny charge that the primary ensemble on Two And A Half Men comprises, well, two and a half men, whereas the How I Met Your Mother ensemble includes two women.)

Third, and most significantly, the relationship between the character and his actor. Neil Patrick Harris’s turn as a womanizing jerk was initially funny because it essentially reprised his performance as a fictionalized version of himself in the Harold & Kumar movies (where, in turn, it was funny because it was a spoof of the Former Child Star stereotype); since November 2006, it’s been funny because we know that he is a monogamous gay man, and now a father of two. The way Barney objectifies and uses women is funny because it bears no relation to reality – the joke is “Barney Stinson, played by Neil Patrick Harris”. Charlie Sheen, on the other hand, really is a womanizing, wife-beating, alcoholic drug addict. That’s hard to laugh at.