The story behind that sweet “Two and a Half Men ”reunion on “Bookie”

Plus, Chuck Lorre reveals a special connection the scene shares with the classic sitcom's pilot that fans might have missed.

Warning: This article contains spoilers for Bookie.

Anyone betting on Chuck Lorre ever working again with Angus T. Jones following the actor's disparaging remarks (which he quickly apologized for) about Two and a Half Men after he left the show in November 2012 would've lost that bet.

It's fitting, given that the two reunite — along with Charlie Sheen — for Lorre's new Max comedy, Bookie, about veteran sports bookie Danny (Sebastian Maniscalco) and his partner/best friend, Ray (Omar J. Dorsey). Danny and Ray have some clients who need to pay up, and one of them is Sheen, playing a version of himself, who they find in a Malibu addiction treatment center.

"A bookie in Los Angeles, he's got to have some high-flying clients," Lorre tells EW. "And to get someone to play themselves requires finding an actor who has a good sense of humor about themselves, to play themselves in a less than a wonderful way. The timing was really great because I had gotten to a place where I had put the whole thing with Charlie and I behind me — it was ancient history."

But it turns out Charlie isn't the only Two and a Half Men alum who's at the rehab center and working on himself. When Danny and Ray visit Charlie late in the episode, he's sitting around a table playing poker with several guys, one of whom is Jones, who had moved on from acting after his famous sitcom ended. But while taking a little trip down memory lane, Lorre and Sheen thought of a way to pay tribute to Two and a Half Men, something so full of nostalgia that even Jones couldn't refuse.

"In the pilot of Two and a Half Men, there was a poker game...Charlie had a bunch of friends over. Angus was eight years old, in his pajamas, and he was annoying the players, hanging around. It was one of the few times in the series where we played him as smart — we mostly played the character as just incredibly thick," Lorre explains. "But he was so little. Angus, at eight years old, was giving these guys a hard time while they were trying to have a poker game. And I think this came about a conversation I was having with Charlie, where we both kind of at the same time said, 'Wouldn't it be cool if we recreated that poker scene?' So the guys in the poker game are the same guys who were in the pilot 20 years ago."

Except now, they have a new player, one who Sheen remarks "grew some."

"Frankly, I wasn't even sure people were going to recognize him — [he was] as an adorable munchkin in Two and a Half Men 20 years ago — which is why there's a line where Charlie says, as the betting is going around the table, and Charlie says, 'Angus, it's up to you.' I needed to name him in that scene so the audience would go, 'That's the little boy from Two and a Half Men!'"

And even though he's no longer acting, Lorre says it's like he never stopped. "Angus's chops were perfect. He nailed it."

The first two episodes of Bookie are streaming now on Max.

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Related content:

• Chuck Lorre would not have made Bookie if Sebastian Maniscalco had passed on the starring role

• Chuck Lorre discusses squashing beef with Charlie Sheen: 'I walked up, and we hugged'

• Melanie Lynskey down for Two and a Half Men reunion now that Charlie Sheen and Chuck Lorre made up
  

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.