When USA decided to pull the plug on the long-running series Psych following its eighth season, the network incited a lot of anger from the show’s dependable viewers. Fans of Maggie Lawson should be pleased to find out that the actress is already coming back to television, as she’s snagged a recurring role on CBS’ Two and a Half Men, which is heading into its twelfth and final season. How sizeable is the audience shared by these two series?
At this point in Two and a Half Men’s long and sordid run, Alan (Jon Cryer) and Walden (Ashton Kutcher) are in the process of planning their upcoming marriage…to each other…because it will help Walden in his quest to adopt a child. I’m pretty sure CBS (or some other network) has had at least one pilot over the past 14 years that was exactly this situation, and whoever saw it responded by saying, “The idea is Season 12 of Two and a Half Men good,” and passed on it, letting nature take its course.
Here, Lawson will be playing a social worker helping Alan and Walden, according to Deadline. It’s presumed that she’ll be assisting them only with the adoption process, but if I know shows like this, she’ll become such a good friend that she’ll be invited to whatever disastrous wedding ceremony eventually occurs. Will she be one of the people the guys need to pretend to be gay in front of? In any case, here’s hoping Lawson provides the spark that this series needs to end with trace amounts of dignity intact.
TV appears destined to have Lawson on at least one series from now until the end of time. Just before Season 8 of Psych premiered, the actress was in the shortlived baseball-driven family comedy Back in the Game. She also attempted to jump-start another project on CBS earlier this year with the pilot for Save the Date, which featured a premise centered on a woman who drunkenly booked a wedding venue and then decides to find a husband in time for the reserved date. (That would have been Season 15 of Two and a Half Men, by the by.) But we’ll always have Jules and Shawn, won’t we?
Let’s see if you agree with me here. I think it would have been more amusing had Lawson been cast to reprise the Jake Harper role that Angus T. Jones vacated once he realized that the series’ moral code was far beneath his own. Lawson in boy makeup and acting all dumb? No? I guess we’ll just stick to the two guys faking their sexualities in order to adopt a child then.
Revisit Two and a Half Men when its final season debuts on CBS on Thursday, October 30.
