After months of speculation, US viewers of Two and a Half Men finally got to see how producers dealt with Charlie Sheen's untimely exit from the hit show - and they made no bones about it.
All fans got to see of Sheen's character, also Charlie, was his favourite bowling shirt hanging at his funeral - while Charlie's neighbour/stalker explained to the other house members how the pair had run away to Paris only for a series of unfortunate events to occur... here's the full blurb from programme makers Comedy Central below:
Rose explained how they’d run away to Paris, where Charlie had asked her to marry him. Despite this, she found him in the shower with another woman, which the next day led to an unfortunate ‘slip’ at the Metro into the path of an oncoming train, where Rose said his body “exploded like a balloon full of meat”.
Back at the house after the service, brother Alan discovers Charlie had been doing too much fiddling and not enough tinkling, those jingles not paying quite as much as he thought. With three mortgages on the house, and no money in the bank, he has to sell-up – and shows it to potential buyers (and 90s sitcom stars) John Stamos and Dharma and Greg.
Thankfully, the following day a tall dark – and decidedly wet - stranger turns up at his door, Ashton Kutcher’s Walden Schmidt, an internet billionaire who’s just endured a failed suicide attempt in the freezing Malibu ocean. The shock makes Alan drop Charlie’s ashes onto the floor – later to be consigned for eternity to a Dust Buster. The soaked Schmidt meanwhile gets out of his wet clothes in what could be the beginning of many nude appearances.
Alan soon discovers that despite being well-proportioned, Schmidt is the anti-Charlie, wet both physically and by nature, whose wife has left him for being ”emotionally immature.” So inept is he with the ladies, that even Alan becomes his teacher. Charlie’s hapless brother throws Schmidt a towel along with a lifeline, taking him to the pub to help drown his sorrows at the bottom of a glass of appletini. While there, Schmidt meets a couple of girls, where his emotional sob story leads to a threesome – as it’s prone to do in Two and a Half Men.
Next morning, a completely naked Schmidt comes downstairs and meets the rest of the family - son Jake and housekeeper Berta – where he makes an announcement. So pleased is he with his evening out that he’s decided he wants to buy the house. Will Alan and Jake get to stay in it?
SLIDESHOW: See photos from the first episode