TWO AND A HALF MEN: Exec producer Chuck Lorre praises the power of deadline pressure

[Brian Damage]

Three months away was harsh. The strike was legitimate. I think it all could have been avoided, but it had to go down that way. Now that it's over, it's all about gratitude. [Fellow executive producers] Lee Aronsohn, Bill Prady, and I returned to work Feb. 11 to figure out how we're going to write and produce 18 episodes of Two and a Half Men and The Big Bang Theory in 12 weeks. Those episodes were mutually agreed upon with CBS so both shows can run from March 17 through the end of May. We were concerned that there would be a rush factor, but it was remarkable how we started to do what we needed to in a relatively short order of time. Feb. 13 was a great day on Men — we developed a story bringing back Rose [played by Melanie Lynskey]. It's just perfectly bent. During the regular season, we sometimes work five or six weeks ahead of schedule. Now we're, what, two weeks? We can't fool around. We'll be doing editing and postproduction over the weekends to get these episodes done, so we'll be pulling six-, maybe seven-day workweeks on both shows. But so what? We're just so happy to be back. And I really don't have a life anyway.