'Two and a Half Men' Christmas ep: Were you bananas for it?

If you always sort of suspected that Ashton Kutcher must have been raised by gorillas (how else would you explain his current hair, tweeting habits, or Killers?) then watching last night’s episode of Two and a Half Men would have felt immensely satisfying. But how was it for fans of the show who discovered, alongside Kutcher’s character Walden, that he was brought up with a gorilla (named… Magilla) until he was four-years-old?

In addition to its regular onslaught of sex jokes, mom jokes, moms-having-sex jokes, and Alan Harper perpetually being reminded he’s the reason the sad trombone was invented, last night’s “One False Move, Zimbabwe!” episode found Walden at a crossroads on Christmas. Not only did his girlfriend Zoey (Sophie Winkleman, who apparently went to the CBS School of Unreasonably Lovely British Girlfriends, graduating right alongside How I Met Your Mother‘s Nora) not want him to meet her parents the Tartinghams (who apparently went to the Mary Poppins School of How Americans Apparently Envision All Brits), but his own mother Robin (guest star Mimi Rogers) revealed that, in the name of science, she raised him alongside a gorilla, whom he previously thought was imaginary and left him with an ongoing fear that if he misbehaved, someone would send him to Africa.

After Walden did some soul-searching (and by soul-searching I mean he got drunk and climbed on to the roof of his girlfriend’s house), Robin decided to make things right and brought him to the zoo to meet with his full-gorilla half-brother. (If Walden thought Magilla was imaginary and he really missed him like he claimed, couldn’t he have just re-imagined him? Even more pressing, why am I even asking this question?) Walden and Magilla’s reunion at the zoo ended with slo-mo run towards one another and repeated viewings of Zookeeper. (That last part may or may not be pure speculation.)

But what did you think of the episode, PopWatchers? As far as Christmas-themed episodes of sitcoms featuring gorillas, where did it rank for you? Do you like the direction Two and a Half Men is going in with Ashton Kutcher? Share in the comments section below.

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