Two and a Half Men reveals gay adoption storyline with Ashton Kutcher and Jon Cryer

Walden Schmidt will propose the idea of child adoption to Alan Harper

Jess Denham
Saturday 19 July 2014 00:29 BST
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Jon Cryer and Ashton Kutcher in the eleventh season of Two and a Half Men
Jon Cryer and Ashton Kutcher in the eleventh season of Two and a Half Men

Ashton Kutcher and Jon Cryer are to star in a gay adoption storyline in the final season of Two and a Half Men.

The hit US sitcom will see Kutcher’s Walden Schmidt suffer an “existential crisis” after a health scare and ask Cryer’s Alan Harper to raise a child with him.

“He wants to find a way to add more meaning to his life so he decides he wants to adopt a child,” said CBS chairman Nina Tassler at the TCA Press Tour.

“In doing so, he starts the process and realises that it’s very difficult to adopt a child as a single, straight man.”

Walden’s solution is to propose to Alan, get married and adopt a child as a gay couple. But, of course, it is not as simple as that.

Tassler told reporters that she is not concerned about a possible backlash from LGBT fans, describing the bold plot as a “positive statement” about gay adoption, “in a universe where at one point you couldn’t do that and now you can”.

The show has explored homosexuality in the past, when Amber Tamblyn played Charlie Harper’s long-lost lesbian daughter Jenny.

GLAAD hopes the forthcoming episodes will acknowledge the progress made in terms of acceptance but also the “greater scrutiny” that gay and lesbian couples face.

“Same-sex couples are often still barred from adoption options that straight couples have,” the watchdog group told The Hollywood Reporter.

The twelfth season of Two and a Half Men is set to premiere on 30 October later this year.

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