So many articles and blogs and tweets about Charlie Sheen and Two and a Half Men and Chuck Lorre and what to do about crazy stars, and about who’s the real bad guy in all of this…  All of these words written by people who have never worked on a sitcom...  This is a blog about sitcom stars and sitcom producers and network and studio executives written by somebody who has actually worked on a sitcom.  I’ve worked on eleven prime time sitcoms.  I’ve been a show runner.  I’ve dealt with difficult talent.  I’ve been called difficult myself.  I know a little bit about this stuff from personal experience.

I have never met Charlie Sheen.  I have never met Chuck Lorre, as far as I can remember.  So I can’t offer insight into either of these two people.  I can tell you what it’s like to be a producer on a sitcom that has a difficult star.  I’ve done that a few times.  It’s really distracting.  Show runners have a lot to do every day.  Worrying about whether the star is drinking or taking drugs or hitting his spouse is something a show runner does not have time for.

Some stars are perfectly nice people.  Many stars, however, besides being talented, are also narcissistic, eccentric, fragile, troubled, ill-advised, and emotionally unstable.  It’s hard to be a star.  It may look easy.  It may seem fun.  We can all resent stars or feel superior to them because they make a great deal of money and still aren’t happy.  But the truth is, it’s hard to be a star.  It makes most people a little nuts.  When you start out a little nuts, becoming a star can make you really nuts.  I don’t blame Charlie Sheen for being nuts.  I’m sure he can’t do much about the way his brain is wired.  I can blame him for hitting women, but once he does that it’s up to law enforcement to figure out what to do with him.  Charlie needs help, but when you are wealthy and famous there are usually a lot more people in your life who are eager to enable your eccentricities than there are people who have your best interests at heart.  (See: Michael Jackson, Lindsey Lohan, Britney Spears, Mel Gibson, Kelsey Grammar, etc.)  And even if there are people in your life who have your best interests at heart, when you have lots of money you can ignore those people and focus on your legion of ass kissers.

Some TV show runners are more even-tempered than others.  I tended to fall into the ill-tempered category, which is part of why I had no success as a show runner.  From what Chuck Lorre has said and written about himself in interviews and on his vanity cards, he also seems to fall into the ill-tempered category.  You can be ill-tempered and still be a successful show runner, just as you can be crazy and still be a star.  Show runners must be competent, if not really good, at writing, producing, casting, and editing.  You learn how to do all of those things as you work your way up.  Most show runners have natural ability at these tasks that just gets better with experience.  But most show runners have little talent and no training in psychology or psychiatry.  Many show runners have been in therapy.  But just because I’ve been treated by a shrink doesn’t mean I know how to be one.  Show runners are not qualified as therapists, rabbis, priests, parents, best friends, mentors, or disciples of stars.  Some producers and many directors are great at wrangling actors.  But writers are not the best people to put in charge of dealing with actors because writers are creative people, not managers.  Writers are, in fact, the only truly creative people present on a sound stage.  Everyone else, talented though they may be, is doing work that is derivative.  No actor can act, no director can direct, no designer can design without a script from which to work.  The writer is the only person on a movie or a TV series who starts with nothing.  Writers are therefore, in my opinion, just as entitled to be temperamental or fragile as actors, maybe even more entitled.  Making it the job of the head writer to battle the emotional demons of the star is a little like asking a race horse to calm the jockey.  The relationship between a show runner and a star is professional.  It isn’t intimate.  Show runners are qualified to turn out scripts every week and transform those scripts into finished episodes.  It is part of the show runner’s job to get along with all of the actors as far as that is possible, but some actors resist comity with producers and writers.  Some actors are mistrustful and even resentful of the people who provide them with the character they portray and the words they are paid to recite.

So who should be wrangling Charlie Sheen?  Ultimately, the only person who can wrangle Charlie is Charlie.  If Charlie doesn’t want that job, and he has made it pretty clear for the past several years that he doesn’t, then anyone who continues to make money off of Charlie’s talents and doesn’t bend over backwards to help him is a hypocrite.  Now, Chuck Lorre is pretty busy making sure there’s a script on the table every Monday morning, guest actors sitting in the chairs, and a fresh episode of Two and a Half Men for CBS to broadcast on Monday nights.  That’s kind of a full-time job even if all of the actors are saints.  Oh, and by the way, Chuck Lorre is also running two other hit series for Warner Brothers and CBS.

The people who should be wrangling Charlie Sheen are the people whose job it is to manage his career and oversee the production of Two and a Half Men.  I’m referring to the executives at Warner Brothers and at CBS, as well as Mr. Sheen’s personal management and agency representation.  If anyone other than Charlie Sheen has failed to keep him out of jail, in rehab, and off of talk radio, it is the executives who run the studio and the network, as well as the agents and managers who oversee Mr. Sheen’s career.  These folks are making huge money.  It is their job to make sure everything runs smoothly on Two and a Half Men.  It is their job to help and support Chuck Lorre in any way that they can.

After a long career in television, I still have no real idea of what executives do all day.  I know they go to meetings with each other.  I know that some of them hang around sound stages and offer useless advice.  What I have seldom encountered is an executive who actually helps the artists get their work done.  I’ve met a few conscientious and competent executives, but most of them didn’t last very long in their jobs.

If anyone is going to be blamed for wrecking the money machine that was Two and a Half Men, I’d start with the executives and agents who failed to do their jobs, which was to protect their gigantic investment.