Sure, CBS' revamped series drew nearly 28 million viewers -- almost double its audience of last year's season opener, but not all the credit could be handed to Ashton Kutcher's Twitter followers. Savvy analysts will wait until next season to draw any comparison's to Kutcher's numbers over Sheen's.

In the meantime, CBS can rake in the extra millions that it'll need to settle with Sheen over his firing. And if rumors from the last 24 hours are true, the network will paying out somewhere between $25 million and $125 million. Surely Charlie Harper is laughing in his grave.

In the revamped show, Kutcher plays the daffy, likable Walden Schmidt who trips on good fortune every way he walks. He replaces the selfish, womanizing Charlie Harper, who meets his suspicious end underneath a train. "His body exploded like a balloon full of meat,” recalls "Rose," Charlie's stalker and the murder's main suspect.

With reviews of Ashton's debut dribbling in, so far it seems that Chuck Lorre has succeeded in making the lead actor irrelevant.

"Nothing's changed," writes MTV's Eric Ditzian. "Ashton Kutcher may have joined the cast, but the same collection of writers is still churning out jokes about threesomes, venereal diseases and flatulence. ...Charlie Sheen's absence... is almost beside the point."

"Is there as much humor to be mined from a goofy, well-endowed billionaire as there was from a not-as-wealthy jingle writer who seemed to satisfy women just as easily?,'' asks TVLine's Matt Webb Mitovich. "Early indicators suggest no."

HitFix's Alan Sepinwall opines that Kutcher "not going to transform 'Men' into a show I want to watch, but he fit in very well."

And Slate's Jessica Grose finds Kutcher to be a dullard. "Kutcher is a big, handsome block of wood in the middle of performers with much more verve...Say what you will about Charlie Sheen, but he is not lacking in charisma, and his absence was definitely felt."

Ditto to that, says The Hollywood Reporter's Tim Goodman, who now knows "exactly why Ashton Kutcher is not more famous for his acting. Say what you will about Sheen, but the man had comic timing and knew his craft."

Ultimately, Ashton Kutcher may be the prettier more compliant TV star who will let producer Lorre rake in more millions.

But at this point in the bumpy ride, I can't help wonder if Charlie's meltdown was his subconscious's way of freeing him from Lorre's hackneyed drivel. Nine years is a long time to deliver crap when you're as verbally evocative as Charlie, the man with tiger blood and Adonis DNA.