When Did Chuck Lorre Trust Himself on Two and a Half Men?

Joe Rogan asked whether running both shows at once ever felt like too much. Chuck Lorre said it did, always, the entire time. Around the third season of Two and a Half Men, in a moment he has written about, he sat with great comedy writers arguing over a scene. A sharp realization landed. He trusted himself.

The room was yelling for a different scene. Chuck Lorre felt calm. He decided he knew how to do the scene and told them they were going to do it, without an angry defense. If the scene was wrong, they would fix it. Nobody was going to die, and they were not going to get drummed out of show business. It was a joke in a scene. He realized he would survive being wrong. Joe Rogan called the calm a benefit of being very successful.

The moment was a turning point. Chuck Lorre still loved a room full of writers, but he was no longer bound by consensus. He trusted intuition, a feeling rather than a thought. In comedy the feeling is hard to put into words, and it grows with the episodes already made. The same sense tells him when he is bullshitting himself. A bit can be lazy. The room can do better. The version on the table will work, and it is only okay. Okay is where he stops the room. He asks why they are doing the piece if it is only okay, and he tells them to try for great. If they fail, they tried for great. If they fail while aiming only at okay, he tells them to go home. He summed the standard up as shoot for the moon, and settle for a low orbit.