A comedy-drama switcheroo on CBS
TV | 'CSI,' 'Two and a Half Men' writing teams trade off this week
Remember that old Reese's Peanut Butter Cups commercial? ''You got chocolate in my peanut butter!'' ''You got peanut butter on my chocolate!''
That may be how two of CBS' most popular series will come across when the writers of the comedy ''Two and a Half Men'' (8 tonight on WBBM-Channel 2) trade places with the writers of crime drama ''CSI: Crime Scene Investigation'' (8 p.m. Thursday).
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On ''Men,'' scripted by ''CSI'' writers with a story by ''CSI'' executive producers Carol Mendelsohn and Naren Shankar, a CSI team investigates a death at the home of Charlie (Charlie Sheen).
On ''CSI,'' scripted by ''Men'' writers Chuck Lorre and Lee Aronsohn, a sitcom diva (Katey Sagal) is murdered in Las Vegas, which leads the CSI team to Hollywood for further investigation behind the scenes.
''I mentioned it as something ridiculous to Carol about a year ago,'' Lorre recalled of the trading-writers idea. They discussed it again at a Canadian TV festival last summer and decided to give it a shot.
The ''CSI'' plot is not coincidental: Lorre worked with several of TV's most notoriously difficult sitcom stars: Roseanne Barr ("Roseanne''), Brett Butler ("Grace Under Fire'') and Cybill Shepherd ("Cybill''). When asked if he had a burning desire to script a ''CSI'' episode, Lorre said, ''The only burning desire inside of me was to do an autopsy on a sitcom diva.''
For the ''CSI'' writers, writing ''Men'' offered a chance for a lighter story than what they usually traffic in. ''We learned that puns are the lowest form of humor,'' Shankar said. ''We learned it again and again and again,'' Mendelsohn said, laughing.
But the shows still have to resemble themselves. ''The biggest challenge for ['Men'] was doing a comedy with a murder in it,'' Lorre said. ''Generally, our stories are a little lighter.'' Added Aronsohn, ''Our characters don't usually have to react to a corpse.''
For ''CSI,'' dark comedy isn't entirely new. ''The show's done black comedy before,'' Shankar said. ''What distinguishes this one from episodes in the past is you really do hear Chuck and Lee's voice in it. It's probably a little broader than we've done in the past, but it's absolutely a 'CSI' and has a great mystery at the heart of it and a great payoff at the end.''
