... may not be
in any of the shows. But anyone who records the Charlie Sheen comedy
Two and a Half Men on CBS knows that the biggest laugh of the week is the one-page, black on white, "vanity" title card for Chuck Lorre Productions that flashes for all of two seconds at the end of each episode. Viewed in real time it looks like legal boilerplat with "CHUCK LORRE PRODUCTIONS, #XXX" at the top in Courier (all caps) followed by a lot of single-spaced text. Usually you can't even read more that "CHUCK LORRE" before the thing disappears, but a couple of weeks ago - just before I hit the "delete" button - my eye happened to a couple of lines into the body of the text and I saw what seemed to be an unflattering reference to the folks who hand out the Golden Globe Awards. Sure enough, it was a highly personal screed complaining about how the Hollywood Foreign Press Association kept snubbing the show and its stars. Curious to see if this was a one-off, I started checking out the cards at the ends of the shows that reran over the holidays. Sure enough, they're all different. Just off-the-wall little essays about whatever Lorre is thinking about each week, tacked onto the end of each episode probably as an in-joke for family, co-workers and friends, and as a little reward - like the prize in a box of Crackerjacks -for any fan who stumbles across them.
Here's tonight's edition:
CHUCK LORRE PRODUCTIONS, #149
People often ask me, “Chuck, where do the ideas for
Two and a Half Men come from? Well, the answer is very simple. Tonight’s show, for instance, was inspired by many o f the great films that have been out recently. Two handsome young cowboys share a hidden love that society condemns. A love that torments them and presumably requires a lot of lubrication. A brilliant homosexual author is not tormented about being homosexual, but drinks a lot and is tormented while writing a book about tormented men who have killed people. A brilliant and tormented country singer is tormented until he stops drinking and finds the love of a good woman who is not tormented. A brilliant TV news man is tormented by his moral obligation to stand up against a tormented bully. A spy is tormented by the corruption and deceit that lies beneath the politics of oil (a lubricant). A cross-section of Los Angelenos are tormented by the endless cycle of racisms that lies beneath the surface of Los Angeles. An Israeli soldier is tormented by the endless cycle of violence that lies beneath the surface of the Middle East. And finally a big monkey is tormented because he loves a really small woman who, if their love were to proceed, no amount of lubricant would help. Now, if you go back and review tonight’s episode, you’ll see that both Charlie and Alan were tormented. See how it works? The lubrication stuff we’re saving for sweeps.
