Two and a Half Men

                 Two and a Half Men is a comedy sitcom that began on CBS on September 22, 2003. It stars (or used to star) Charlie Sheen playing as a jingle writer named Charlie Harper. His brother, named Alan, is played by Jon Cryer and Alan’s son is played by Angus T. Jones. This show has been going on for eleven seasons with the twelfth and final season starting in October of 2014.

                Charlie Harper lives a very hedonistic lifestyle. He lives in a beach house in Malibu with housekeeper named Berta. When Alan gets divorced by his wife Judith, he moves in with Charlie with his son coming over to stay on the weekends. This causes an issue because Alan is kind of uptight and Charlie is really laid back and doesn’t really care about anything. Charlie is also being stalked by his next-door neighbor named Rose.

                In the sixth season Charlie gets engaged with a girl named Chelsea. However the relationship fails and Chelsea breaks off the engagement. Before this Charlie never really had a girlfriend but brought home many different women. Alan has little success in his relationships. He gets married to a girl named Kandi but soon they break up and he has to pay alimony to both of his ex-wives. Alan ends up dating the mom, named Lyndsey, of one of Jake’s friends. They break up when Alan cheats on her and burns down her house but eventually get back together.

                In the beginning of the ninth season it is revealed that Charlie died when he fell in front of a train in Paris after he left to travel there with Rose. The beach house is sold to Walden Schmidt who is a billionaire that is going through a divorce with a woman named Bridget. Alan goes to live with his mom but Walden invites Alan and Jake to move back in with him after he gets lonely. The show continues with Alan and Walden living together with Jake enrolling in the army.

                Charlie Sheen was kicked off the show after he criticized the executive producer Chuck Lorre. Sheen had begun drug rehabilitation shortly before this had happened. He was replaced by a new character played by Ashton Kutcher. Charlie Sheen got hired to star in a new show called Anger Management. However Charlie Sheen has said that he wants to return to the show and that Chuck Lorre is considering putting him back in.

(Word Count: 410)

Marvel Cinematic Universe

               Starting in 2008 with a very popular movie called Iron Man, Marvel Studios created a film franchise called the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This franchise is a series of movies based on characters from Marvel Comic books. This franchise also includes television shows such as Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D and others that haven’t come out yet. There have also been comics put out that tie into this franchise.

                The Marvel Cinematic Universe is a shared fictional universe that contains all the characters in the films that Marvel Studios make. The characters can make cameo appearances in each other’s movies. They are also all brought together for a giant production. Marvel said that they wanted to mimic the rhythm of comic books by giving characters their individual films and then

                The Marvel Cinematic Universe is set up in three phases. The first phase started with Iron Man and ended with the first Avengers movie. This phase also included Thor, Iron Man 2, The Incredible Hulk, and the first Captain America movie. All of these movies did really well except for The Incredible Hulk which didn’t do as well. This phase introduced many of the characters and started each of their own individual stories. All these characters were eventually brought together in the Avengers.

                The second phase of The Marvel Cinematic Universe contained many sequels of the first phase. It had Iron Man 3, Thor: The Dark World, and Captain America: The Winter Soldier. It will also include the second Avengers movie called Avengers: Age of Ultron which is set to come out in Amy of 2015. The only movie that brought in new characters in the second phase was Guardians of the Galaxy.

                The third phase is set to start in July of 2015 with the release of the movie Ant-Man. It will also include Captain America 3, Doctor Strange (which I’ve never heard of before), and the second Guardians of the Galaxy.

                The Marvel Cinematic Universe is very large and contains many characters. However as more and more characters are added, the Universe gets more and more confusing. Each of the characters has their own story, which makes it hard to keep everything straight. Something as massive as the Marvel Universe has never been done before and it is amazing. Seeing all these characters coming together is just incredible.

(Word Count: 390)

The Big Bang Theory

                Tonight, a new season of The Big bang Theory started. This is the eighth season of the hit television show. This new season is on CBS at 8/7c on Monday nights. This season is supposed to be full of changes.

                The Big Bang Theory is a very popular television show about four scientists. Two of them, Leonard and Sheldon, live together while the other two, Raj and Howard, visit them very often. Leonard and Sheldon live across the hall from a girl named Penny who has been dating Leonard on and off throughout the whole show. Leonard and Sheldon eventually get engaged in the last episode of the seventh season. Howard meets a girl named Bernadette who he ends up marrying. Howard went up to the International Space Station at the end of season 5. Raj is very shy around women and only able to speak around them while drunk. Raj and Howard sign Sheldon up for a dating site during the third season and he gets matched with a girl named Amy Farrah Fowler. Their relationship slowly grew until they were finally considered dating in season 6.

                The three main stars of the show are Leonard, Sheldon, and Penny who are played by Johnny Galecki, Jim Parsons, and Kaley Cuoco. Before this new, eighth season started these three actors signed a contract which gave them each around $1 million per episode. It also signed them in for three more years with a possibility for a fourth. This is an insane amount of money spent just on three actors. With the eighth season set to have 24 episodes about $72 million dollars will be spent which isn’t even counting the other actors or other production costs. The other main actors get around $100,000 per episode.

The Big Bang Theory is a very popular show. The last season had 19.96 viewers on average for every episode. The show has always been popular with the first season having 8.31 viewers on average for every episode. The show has also gotten very high ratings from critics. In its fourth season it became televisions highest rated comedy beating out the show Two and a Half Men.  The sixth season landed the show in third in total viewers just behind NCIS and Sunday Night Football.

(Word Count: 382)