What’s Your Charlie Sheen Number?

Two and a Half Men is the most popular show on television, so I don’t think there would be much point in arguing about whether it’s any good or not.  Personally, I’m not going to sit around and watch a show with a laugh track, here in 2011 – I’m just a pretentious bastard that way.  Every time I see some of it by accident, it feels like a Simpsons bit come to life.

Really – how many jokes can there be in this premise?  Charlie has many sexual partners – ahahahahhaha.  Charlie’s pal or brother or whoever that other guy is, he doesn’t have nearly so many sexual partners – ahahahahahhahhaha.  Their ex-wives are bitchy and unreasonable – ahahahahahhaha.  The housekeeper’s like their mom – ahahahhahahahah.

I mean, okay – I’m the one watching dinosaur shows and Doctor Who and Cake Boss.  I’m not here to judge you. 

What fascinates me about Charlie Sheen’s recent, hilarious, crack-addled antics is that they gave us a chance to find out series creator Chuck Lorre’s Charlie Sheen Number – it’s 250 million.

In case your name is Rebecah and you need a recap here, Charlie Sheen is apparently on crack.  What he likes to do is get loads of crack and some porn stars and a hotel room, and then he likes to light up the crack and see what happens.  Sometimes, I assume, nothing does. 

They don’t put it in the news when nothing happens, though.  They only put him in the news when he gets the cops called on him or goes to the ER or someone “steals” his car and drives it off a cliff.  Then suddenly everybody’s Judge Judy.

Here’s my favorite Charlie Sheen quote – “I don’t recommend crack cocaine to anyone unless you can manage it socially.”

Yep.  Contingent on an enormous, pulsating, eerily-glowing “unless,” that sounds about right.  Some people probably could manage it socially, like Jesus or Superman or the ghost of Steve McQueen.  So Charlie makes an excellent point.

Now, since I don’t watch the show, it of course doesn’t concern me for a second whether or not they ever film another episode again, but I’ve been nothing but fascinated by the story.  Like the other day, when Charlie Sheen went off on the series creator on a radio show, and also said that if he didn’t have to work with the current batch of “losers” he was working with, he could be “making movies with superstars.”

I don’t quite know everything that Mr. Sheen said, but it was eventually enough for Chuck Lorre to call off the whole show.  And that decision from a gross earning standpoint, will cost the network and Chuck Lorre approximately 250 million dollars – that’s Two and a Half Hundred Million Dollars, if you’re scoring at home (heh). 

A thirty-second commercial spot goes for about $200,000 right now, and they were booked all the way through the end of the season, and who knows where else the money comes from?  It’s not a figure I pulled out of my butt or anything.

So Lorre had to make a decision.  He had to say to himself, man, I don’t like taking a bunch of public crap from this literal Brat Packer on Crack.  Is 250 million dollars enough money to keep kissing his ass, or should I just say screw it, and shut the whole thing down.

He shut it down, so that means his Charlie Sheen Number is 250 million.  That’s awfully good. 

I have to tell you, for even one percent of that money, Charlie Sheen could throw turds at me on national television an hour a week for a full year, saying anything he wanted to, smoking all the crack he wanted to, and I’d just stand there smiling, shaking my head, going, “Oh, Charlie.  You are such a rascal!”

Chuck Lorre’s got a pretty high Charlie Sheen Number, if you ask me – especially for a television producer.  I mean, did you know that Pamela Anderson had a television show called Stacked, in which she played a librarian with large breasts?  The idea was, she walked around with her cleavage showing, and people would then ask a question about stacks of books or racks of magazines, and then she would mistake their questions as being directed at her boobs.  And despite the constant confusion on the matter, she would never, ever put her breasts away.

God bless you, television.  God bless your digital soul.

So anyway, you don’t think whoever produced that show had to kiss Pamela Anderson’s ass?  You figure she was probably really easy to work with, full of energy and professionalism? 

Certainly there was no show without her.  And since that show didn’t make much money, you have to think that the producer’s Charlie Sheen Number was probably what, a hundred grand?  Definitely closer to my ballpark. 

That’s all Chuck Lorre has to do, you know, is kiss Charlie Sheen’s ass.  He just needs to say, “Charlie I was wrong and I need you, please film more episodes.  I’m stupid and you’re smart.” 

I really can’t believe it matters what level of quality Charlie brings to the formulaic, laugh track-driven premise.  All you have to do, Chuck, is kiss Charlie Sheen’s ass and you get more money than the rest of us will ever see in our lives. 

We all have a Charlie Sheen number.  That’s what jobs typically are, right?  How much money would you need to roll in here and kiss somebody’s ass who doesn’t deserve it? 

I think 250 million is a pretty high Charlie Sheen number.  Mine’s about eight hundred bucks or so – bloggers are awful, shameless, horrible people and we cannot manage our crack cocaine socially, that. Is. For.  Sure.

Lie, cheat, blow stuff up, kill spies – you drop down to eight hundred bucks and I’m probably out, but anything above that, well – I’m listening.  Nothing sexual though – you’d have to find out what my wife’s Charlie Sheen Number is, for that, though I don’t think it’s much higher than mine.  Go ahead and break her off an email – I’m kind of curious myself. 

So anyway, when I see a Charlie Sheen Number way up in the nine-digit range, I’m nothing but impressed.  That’s an awfully big can of Screw You Charlie Sheen, you’ve got there, sir.  Very impressive.

What do you think, blogosphere?  What’s your Charlie Sheen number?