TIME Entertainment Television

Two and a Half Men Is Finally Ending

Two And A Half Men
CBS's Two And A Half Men CBS/Getty Images

'Two and a Half Men' still has decent ratings

The longest-running live-action sitcom currently on television is finally coming to a close. CBS has announced a series finale date for Two and a Half Men.

After 12 seasons, Men will conclude with a one-hour closer on Thursday, Feb. 19 at 9 p.m. Upon its completion, 262 episodes of Men will have aired. The series earned 47 Emmy Award nominations, with co-star Jon Cryer winning twice. For five years straight, the Chuck Lorre-produced comedy was the most-watched sitcom on TV (2005-2009). The enormously raunchy show survived multiple time slots and endless critical derision.

Moreover, the show soldiered on after even losing its top star, Charlie Sheen, in one of the most spectacular firings in the history of the medium when he left the series in 2011. Then Men lost saw the exit of longtime co-star Angus T. Jones last year after the actor trashed the show.

All the while, Men has occupied a unique spot in the landscape — a guilty pleasure seen by so many, yet a title that so few publicly admit to watching (if you judged TV series popularity by reading EW’s comment boards, you would think Men was a massive flop that keeps inexplicably getting renewed). You don’t find many long-running shows on a major broadcast network with episode titles like “I Scream When I Pee” and “Hookers, Hookers, Hookers.”

Men still has decent ratings — the season is currently averaging 10.1 million viewers and a 2.5 among adults 18-49. Yet series talent deals tend to get more expensive with each passing year, and Men has managed to stay alive since 2003.

Its finale date will mark the debut of a new comedy, CBS’ Odd Couple reboot starring Matthew Perry. The show potentially could be a successor of sorts to Men— it’s another male roommate sitcom. But it’s probably fair to say whether you openly hatedTwo and a Half Men, or secretly loved it, there probably won’t be another comedy quite like this one for a long time.

This article originally appeared on Entertainment Weekly

TIME History Television

The Voice of Hermey the Elf Reflects on Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’s 50th Anniversary

The classic stop-motion Christmas film first aired December 6, 1964

When you think famous elves, an image of Will Ferrell dancing around in yellow tights and pouring maple syrup on spaghetti usually springs to mind. But before Buddy, there was Hermey — a misfit elf who dreams of being a dentist in the stop-motion Christmas classic Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

The Rankin-Bass production is the longest running holiday special of all time, and it celebrates its 50th anniversary on December 6.

Paul Soles

But Paul Soles, the actor who voiced Hermey (and later Spiderman in the 1967 animated series), tells TIME that he doesn’t have any special plans to watch the movie on its anniversary.

“Because you can’t avoid it!” Soles, 84, says. “It plays three or four times — it’s hard to escape… I don’t believe I own a copy, but I do watch it, it’s nice to be reminded of a good time.”

When Soles was cast as Hermey in 1964, he never dreamed that character would sing on TV sets around the world for decades to come.

“I had a day job as the host of a national current affairs show in Canada,” Soles says. “[Working on Rudolph] was fun. It was a playground. An after school play in the park. It was not unlike ice cream on pie after a good meal.”

And that ice cream-covered pie has withstood the test of time, although over the years Soles says he has had to confront rumors about Hermey’s sexuality.

“I don’t know if it’s because of the Adam Sandler rule or Seth Rogen rule of comedy, but people have questioned if Hermey is gay,” he says. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t think elves are thought of anything other than neutered.”

Regardless, Soles believes the movie has persevered because of its charming embrace of misfits — from a red nosed reindeer to an elf who eschews toy making for dentistry. But Soles himself isn’t a big fan of the profession.

“I’ve had one of the most horrible careers with dentists over my lifetime. I just hated it,” he says. “Up until about ’07 I had to go to the dentist once a year to have a tooth out. And I got so upset, I went to a dentist in Toronto and said, ‘Take them all out! All the ten or 12 that are left!'” (He now wears dentures.)

But as Soles sums it up: “I guess what Hermey was appealing for was that he was there to help people, not hurt people.”

TIME Entertainment Television

Here’s When You’ll Get to See Breaking Bad Creator’s New Cop Drama

Battle Creek starring Josh Duhamel and Dean Winters based in Battle Creek, Michigan.
Battle Creek starring Josh Duhamel and Dean Winters based in Battle Creek, Michigan. Cliff Lipson—CBS Broadcasting, Inc.

Vince Gilligan's Battle Creek will air in March

CBS has locked down midseason premiere dates for two key crime dramas: Battle Creek and CSI: Cyber.

Battle Creek is from Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan and House creator David Shore and stars Josh Duhamel and Dean Winters as two mismatched law enforcement officers in rural Michigan. The show will air at 10 p.m. on Sunday nights starting March 1.

CSI: Cyber stars Patricia Arquette as the head of the Cyber Crime Division of the FBI. The CSI spin-off is going into Wednesday nights at 10 p.m. starting March 4.

The shows will replace two others cop dramas: The ultra-veteran CSI on Sundays and the freshman thriller Stalker on Wednesdays. CSI will have aired 18 episodes and have wrapped its season at that point. Stalker will eventually have 17 episodes this season and will return to CBS’ schedule at some point to air its remaining hours. Both are to be considered complete seasons by the network, even though they are shy of CBS’ usual 22-episode orders for dramas. Here’s the schedule:

CBS Wednesday, Effective March 1

7:00-8:00 PM 60 MINUTES

8:00-9:00 PM MADAM SECRETARY

9:00-10:00 PM THE GOOD WIFE

10:00-11:00 PM BATTLE CREEK (P)

CBS Wednesday, Effective March 4

8:00-9:00 PM SURVIVOR

9:00-10:00 PM CRIMINAL MINDS

10:00-11:00 PM CSI: CYBER (P)

This article originally appeared on Entertainment Weekly

TIME Entertainment Television

Watch the Trailer for Lifetime’s Whitney Houston Biopic

From left: Yaya Dacosta; Whitney Houston Getty Images (2)

The biopic attempts to capture the turmoil behind the scenes

In the wake of Lifetime’s universally panned Aaliyah biopic — the critical reaction to which Gawker pretty much captured by calling it “the laughingstock of the Internet” — the network has some redemption to seek. Though expectations may be middling and Houston’s family is unhappy about the project, there is still hope that their upcoming Whitney Houston biopic Whitney might restore favor with viewers and fans alike.

The trailer focuses on Houston’s relationship with Bobby Brown, and Lifetime’s press site confirms that the tumultuous union will be the focal point of the production. First-time director Angela Bassett has some experience with biopics, as she played Tina Turner in the 1993 biopic What’s Love Got to Do With It, which centered on the singer’s abusive relationship with Ike Turner. Between the relationship drama and substance abuse, the biopic looks like an appropriately heavy affair, with only sequins and shoulder pads to lighten things up.

Yaya DaCosta, who started her career as runner-up on America’s Next Top Model but proved her acting chops in The Kids Are All Right, will play Houston, with vocals by Deborah Cox. Arlen Escarpeta, best known for Friday the 13th and a smattering of TV appearances, will play Brown. The special airs on Jan. 17, followed by a documentary that takes a closer look at Houston’s life and death.

Houston was such an incomparable talent that it’s a little disappointing the biopic seems to put her love life above her remarkable accomplishments as an entertainer. But the offstage tensions, it would appear, provide more juice for drama than the onstage triumphs.

Watch the trailer at BuzzFeed.

TIME Newsfeed Television

The Simpsons Christmas Couch Gag Is Here

Complete with an obvious Frozen reference

Twas almost the night before The Simpsons holiday show, and Springfield is covered in mountains of snow. At long last, the preview is here, filled with yetis, Smithers and some tiny reindeer.

The Simpsons are headed straight for their couch, and every creature is stirring including reindeer, a yeti and maybe a mouse.

The children aren’t nestled anywhere near their beds, stuck in detention and jazz band instead.
Marge is headed to the check-out lane, while Otto is taking a hit off a candy cane.

Homer is working in a dashing elf cap, but he wants to go home for a long winter’s nap. Patty and Selma face off in town square and, yes, an obligatory Frozen reference is there.

The stockings are hung, a Festivus pole is there, and Groundskeeper Willie flies through the air, volleyed by polar bears drawn with great care.

Tune in to The Simpsons this Sunday at eight, if you set your clock now you won’t be late.

TIME Newsfeed Television

Your Favorite Boy Meets World Characters Will Reunite on Season 2 of Girl Meets World

Boy Meets World
ABC/Getty Images

Including Shawn, Eric and, yes, FEE-HEE-HEENAY

Alright, Boy Meets World fans (we’re looking at you, ’90s kids). If you haven’t watched Girl Meets World because you think it’s kind of weird the Disney Channel actually made that a show, or perhaps because you don’t own a TV, you might finally have a compelling reason to tune in.

That compelling reason is that all your favorite characters from Boy Meets World will appear in the second season! Well, some of your favorite characters. Most notably: Cory Matthews’ bestie Shawn Hunter (Rider Strong), his older brother Eric (Will Friedle) and his beloved teacher/mentor/neighbor/person who always somehow shows up in every single aspect of his life, Mr. Feeny (William Daniels.)

Ben Savage, who plays Cory, tweeted this photo, giving us a glimpse at the glorious reunion to come:

Also appearing in the holiday reunion episode, which airs today, Dec. 5, will be Cory’s parents Amy and Alan (Betsy Randle and William Russ), E! Online reports.

The Girl Meets World writers have been sharing snippets of information on Twitter to build up the hype for this special episode. For example:

Oh boy.

TIME Entertainment Television

Review: Peter Pan Live! and the Case for Snark

NBC's latest live musical was fun in its weird way. But no fairies died if you hate-watched it.

Disclosure: I am perhaps not the best person to appreciate NBC’s production, or any other, of Peter Pan. I somehow managed to make it through my entire childhood without being exposed to the play or the musical. (I might possibly have seen the Disney movie; then again, I may just be remembering the peanut butter.) Also, I have no inner child.

In other words, I am a potential Hater. Even before Peter Pan Live!‘s producers and star Allison Williams went on a media campaign against hate-watching, Peter Pan had built into it the meta concept of policing its audience’s reaction. If you stop believing, magic will die! Clap or the fairy gets it! You’ve heard of shows being critic-proof. Peter Pan is, especially with NBC’s pre-emptive haterade shielding, an attempt at being audience-proof.

That’s not completely unreasonable. Peter Pan is asking us to participate in creating a world that’s whimsical and fantastical even before you get to the fairy dust, gender bending and magically abducting little girls to clean up for you. It’s offering a deal: we suspend Peter in the air, you suspend your modern mores and your disbelief. It’s a fair request, but–especially in a Peter Pan that runs past most seven-year-olds’ bedtime–you can’t expect the audience to do all the work. You need to give them something worth wondering over.

Technically and visually, Peter Pan Live! delivered. The smartest thing the production did was to be unashamedly stagey. It showed us the wires and built dreamlike sets–the transition from turn-of-the-century London to lurid Neverland was especially sharp. From its pirate ship to its surreal Tick Tock crocodile, the production hung a light on its artificiality, and it worked. (The most jarring element was the one thing the production literally hung a light on–the CGI Tinker Bell, who seemed out of place amid the old-school magic-making.)

And as with last year’s Sound of Music Live!, the production was smart to surround its stars with musical-theater pros to give the production a foundation. Taylor Louderman was vibrant as Wendy and Sound of Music vet Christian Borle unsurprisingly strong both as Mr. Darling and the pirate Smee, with–who knew?–biceps the size of Christmas hams. (Theater makes you strong, kids!)

The leads required a little more suspension. Though the literal suspension was no problem for Williams–we knew she could sing, and she did, but her wire work was impressively light-as-air. Her acting was a little more weighed down. She captured Peter’s arrogance and strut, but not quite his childishness. She seemed more obviously like a grown woman playing a small boy, which lent some of her flirty scenes with Wendy a tension that made her no-snark edict seem like a cruel dare. We are not made of stone!

As for Christopher Walken, I enjoyed watching him, but I’m not sure if it was for the right reasons. Where Williams threw herself into the role, he held Hook at an amused distance. He was a low-key, drawly and arch villain–depending whether that worked for you, he was either laid-back or tired. His soft-shoe is still deft, but he didn’t seem to be playing Captain Hook so much as playing Christopher Walken playing Captain Hook. (Walken sounded like himself, a smart choice compared with Williams, whose English accent kept trying to re-cross the Atlantic.) And that was fun, but in a way that seemed to fight against the no-irony zone the production was trying to construct.

In the end, you do have to give Peter Pan Live! the live-TV bonus points for difficulty. There weren’t major, noticeable technical hitches, though like last year the lack of a studio audience sapped some energy from the production. The rewritten version of the racist Native American song was, I guess, somewhat less racist? In all, taken on its own silly, sweet, weird-British-fantasia terms, it was a good time; even without a childhood memory attaching me to the story, I liked it well enough.

But I’m still rankled by the idea of being told not to hate it, that we should avoid snarking on Peter Pan Live!—not for the good of NBC, of course, but for the good of society itself. Before the show premiered, Williams told the Daily Beast, “Peter Pan, you cannot watch cynically”; in a YouTube video, she asked, “Why have we been taught it’s not OK to genuinely like anything anymore?” Borle added that he was bothered by actors criticizing NBC’s Sound of Music on Twitter: “I just thought, ‘Don’t you ever want to work for NBC?'” And they were joined by many media commentators arguing that it was wrong, cynical, and in bad faith to hate-watch Peter Pan Live!

Spare me. Yes, going into a three hour free TV show with the intention of hating it is probably not the best use of your limited time on Earth. I’d rather get the extra sleep. Yet I’m not going to blame anyone for going in skeptical of a production when NBC has cast the (very talented!) daughter of its news anchor as its lead, or when the network has been bludgeoningly promoting the musical across its specials, morning shows and talk shows for weeks.

By all means, try to love things, take them on their own terms and be open to wonder and joy. But as Tom Scocca wrote in his essay “On Smarm” last year, when celebrities and already-powerful corporations inoculate themselves from criticism on the grounds of “Haters gonna hate”–Taylor Swift, what hast thou wrought?–snark is not just permissible but a duty. A fairy doesn’t really die every time you stop believing. But every time a money-making operation uses anti-cynicism to serve its own interests, a cynic is born.

TIME Newsfeed Television

Watch James Franco and Nicki Minaj Declare Their Best-Friendship in SNL Promo

Also, dash our dreams about flying

In case you forgot in the last ten hours that NBC’s Peter Pan Live! was the television event of the year (it was, at least, the most plugged), James Franco and Nicki Minaj are here to remind you. Franco and Minaj, who are host and musical guest, respectively, of this weekend’s Saturday Night Live, teamed up for a promo in which a little tribute to Allison Williams’ Pan goes off with a bit of a hitch.

The pair also attempts to prove, to anyone who’s ever doubted the depths of their bond, that they’re actual real-life besties. By the looks of it, she’s forgiven him for the derrière-obsessed interview he conducted with her back in August. (Although to be fair, he was in character at the time.)

Franco will host the show for a third time, promoting his upcoming comedy The Interview. Minaj will presumably perform tracks off her new album The Pinkprint, which drops Dec. 15.

TIME Entertainment celebrity

Aaron Paul’s New ‘Yo B’ App Does Exactly What You’d Expect

66th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards - Press Room
Actor Aaron Paul poses in the press room at the 66th annual Primetime Emmy Awards at Nokia Theatre L.A. Live on August 25, 2014 in Los Angeles, California. Jason LaVeris—FilmMagic/Getty Images

Now you can send "colorful greetings" to your friends in the Breaking Bad actor's voice

Sometimes, just texting your friend a bland “hey, what’s up?” won’t cut the mustard. That’s when Aaron Paul’s new app “Yo B-tch” will come in handy.

The app, named after the signature phrase of Paul’s Breaking Bad character, will allow you to send your friends audio recordings of his voice saying “colorful greetings” like the app’s name, or alternatives such as “Bueno, b-tch,” or “I love you, b-tch.”

The app, which is free in iTunes but offers in-app upgrades for purchase, was announced by Paul on Twitter on Friday, just in time to spread some good cheer for the holidays.

Read next: Aaron Paul’s Response to Toys ‘R’ Us Breaking Bad Controversy Is Perfect

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