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BY ALEX ISRAEL

In print | Published March 3, 2011 — Updated March 10, 2011 10:18

Amidst the maelstrom of controversy that has been Charlie Sheen’s personal life of late, a lot of critics have been discussing his portrayal of booze-fueled playboy Charlie Harper on the popular CBS sitcom “Two and a Half Men.” A recent blog post on Entertainment Weekly’s EW.com questioned whether Charlie Sheen —specifically, through his off screen behavior, which has included doing drugs with porn stars and making vaguely anti-Semitic comments — has “ruined” Charlie Harper. Mandi Bierly, the author of the post, noted that “the actor and the character have finally become separate,” with Sheen’s hate-fueled rants and dangerous behavior tainting his portrayal of the lovable Charlie Harper. For me, the most interesting point to draw from this article is that Charlie Sheen is basically portraying in “Two and a Half Men” a toned-down version of his real self. The show’s Charlie Harper is rarely seen without a drink in hand, is a compulsive gambler, and is constantly bedding a string of gorgeous women. This portrayal of alcohol got me thinking: does television treat excessive consumption of alcohol too lightly? Just how is alcohol portrayed on television, and what does that portrayal tell viewers about the pros and cons of drinking? I think that, in general, portrayals of alcohol on television fall into one of two categories: drinking as a non-stop fun-fest, drinking as a symptom of depression, of rebellion, or all three. In general, comedies tend to fall into the first category, while serious dramas and any show aimed at teenagers fall into the second. I’m certainly not denying that these aren’t two perfectly accurate aspects of drinking; as a college student, I’ve witnessed both self-destructive drinking and fun, social drinking. However, alcohol is much more complicated and cannot simply be bottled in either of these two extremes. TV shows are doing viewers (particularly the young, impressionable ones) a disservice by ignoring the complexity of the issue. Several shows with teenage audiences believe that they should address the dangers of underage drinking, which is a legitimate and even admirable impulse. However, shows such as “Gossip Girl,” “90210” and “Skins” tend to portray drinking as behavior indicative of an out-of-control character who is unstable in other ways, rather than showing underage drinking within the more realistic context of social situations and peer pressure.

One unexpected exception to this rule was the most recent episode of “Glee,” which I assumed would be a preachy, after-school-special type episode once I heard that the episode would deal with teenage drinking. However, “Blame It On the Alcohol” managed to broach the alcohol issue in a way “Glee” rarely does with other issues. The episode presented underage drinking as a complex issue that will not necessarily destroy your life; instead, it portrayed drinking as often the result of peer pressure, and as something that can be very fun but can also have serious consequences. Most impressively, the show acknowledged that teenagers are, in fact, going to drink, and that asking them to stop completely is an exercise in futility; the real trick is teaching them to drink responsibly.

Of course, it’s not only shows about teenagers that choose to showcase the dangerous side of drinking; many serious dramas use alcohol to indicate some sort of instability in their characters. When this works, it works: both Don Draper’s delicate slide into alcoholism on “Mad Men” and Walternate’s despairing drunkenness on the most recent “Fringe” were used not as a cheap gimmick, but as a means to really explore the problems that plagued these protagonists.

However, other, lesser shows tend to use alcoholism as dramatic shorthand. For example, the short-lived “FlashForward” used Mark Benford’s alcoholism to demonstrate his obsession with his vision of the future, rather than using compelling storytelling to achieve the same ends. Also, “True Blood’s” absurd second season used alcohol and sex to indicate all manner of supernaturally-induced debauchery.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, most comedies that address drinking tend to treat alcohol as a social lubricant that makes the parties better and the girls prettier. Any number of shows that are set in or often venture to a particular bar or pub, such as “Cheers” and “How I Met Your Mother,” as well as the Courtney Cox vehicle “Cougartown,” and of course “Two and a Half Men” have mentioned this. Since these shows are aimed at adult audiences who can presumably make their own judgments about alcohol, it’s not such a problem. However, some animated shows that appeal mostly to teenagers, such as “Family Guy” (which actually appeals almost exclusively to immature teenage boys) also falls into this trap of treating alcohol as a social lubricant.

An exception to this tendency is “Community.” The season two episode “Mixology Certification” was both humorous and solemn glimpse into the complexities of drinking, and it was one of the most honest half-hours of television I have ever seen. The plot is fairly simple: it’s Troy’s (Donald Glover) 21st birthday, so the gang all goes out to a bar. Normally, this is where I would say that hijinks ensue, and some hijinks certainly do. However, the real beauty of the episode is that it demonstrates how alcohol can cause us to laugh at the funniest thing we’ve ever seen one minute and then wallow because of our own loneliness in the next. The episode doesn’t use alcohol to signal overwhelming character flaws. Instead, drinking is used to show the audience different sides of our beloved characters in an organic, complex way.

This brings us full circle, and back to Charlie Sheen. The problem with Charlie Harper is that he only depicts the fun side of drinking: the jokes and the hot girls. Charlie Sheen himself, however, shows his audience the dark side of drinking, i.e. the alcoholism and drug use. I for one am hoping that Charlie Sheen manages to stop his self-destructive spiral and gets the help that he deserves. Also, I hope that his behavior acts as a wake-up call to the studio executives who didn’t care that he needed help as long as he was making money. And I can’t help but wonder if maybe, just maybe, a few episodes of “Two and a Half Men” had treated drinking with the complexity of “Community” and “Fringe,” whether perhaps Sheen wouldn’t have reached this point in his personal life.

Alex is a senior. You can reach her at aisrael1@swarthmore.edu.

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