Chuck Lorre Productions Vanity Cards: #198 & #198 Censored
March 25, 2008 by Kath Skerry
Blink and you’ll miss it, but if you have the pause button ready to go then you’ll get an extra treat at the end of every show produced by Chuck Lorre Productions.
We’re all familiar with vanity cards (even if we didn’t know it). They’re the credits at the end of the show that tell you who produced the show. Some are memorable such as Gary David Golberg’s “Sit, Ubu, Sit! Good dog”, J.J. Abrams’ “Bad Robot” or Joss Whedon’s “Grr! Argh!”. But then there is Lorre’s. Chuck Lorre personalizes his vanity cards for each show he works on, and they are very often funny and many times poignant.
I look forward to Lorre’s vanity cards at the end of every episode of ‘The Big Bang Theory’, but last night’s really caught my attention because the card spoke of how the first card he submitted was rejected by CBS. Well this had me intrigued, so I went hunting for the original and was happy to find that all former vanity cards had been posted.
Here’s the vanity card that aired at the end of last night’s “The Big Bang Theory:
CHUCK LORRE PRODUCTIONS, #198
Censored!
Well, wouldn’t ya’ know it. Just two episodes back from the strike and I’ve already managed to write a vanity card that is completely unacceptable to the good folks at CBS. I wasn’t trying to offend. Honest. I just saw an opportunity to poke some proverbial fun, to knosh on the hand that feeds, if you will. They were not amused. If you would like to read my latest exercise in poor judgement, I’m sure you can find it somewhere on that thing we writers were striking to claim dominion over. Just to be on the safe side, I apologize in advance. Please know that my aim was only to provoke a bit of gaiety through the judicious use of a little thing I like to call “the truth.” Unfortunately, in the television business, the truth rarely sets anyone free. More often than not, it just pisses them off.
After the jump is the original #198 that was censored by CBS…
CHUCK LORRE PRODUCTIONS, #198 (CENSORED)
In tonight’s episode we explored the subject of lying to avoid hurting someone’s feelings. During the climactic final scene, the character of “Cousin Leo” blamed his fabricated drug addiction on having been molested in the Philippines by an equally fabricated Naval officer named Chaplain Horrigan. In the original shooting script the make-believe molester was called Father Horrigan. CBS strongly objected to this. Their concern was that Catholic viewers would be offended by any suggestion that a Catholic priest would molest a child. I argued that several billion dollars in punitive damage payments established a reasonable link between priests and diddled kids. My argument fell on deaf ears (no offense to our hearing-impaired viewers). Outraged, I decided I was an eight-hundred pound gorilla and threatened to shoot the scene as written. Their lawyers, eight-pound spider monkeys at best, threatened to cut it. I immediately blinked and changed the word “father” to “chaplain.” CBS’s problem went away. Apparently, a non-denominational, drunken pedophile is inoffensive. But more importantly, our Catholic viewers did not get their feelings hurt.
Now you have something more to look forward to after watching ‘The Big Bang Theory’ (besides ‘How I Met Your Mother’ of course).
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We know you never read these anyhow. No sense of humor
Mr Chuck Truck good one, some have no sense of humor at all, o yeah once I felt like an 800 pound gorilla, til this 800 pound biker at a bar did as well.
After reading your card I got a repeat email over service from Microsoft (long story) I will show you some clips as to how I dealt with, geez those damn spiders bite…
I answered the original within minutes
Dear Microsoft Customer:
Recently, our survey vendor, TeleSight, e-mailed to you an invitation to participate in the Microsoft Customer Experience Feedback survey. We know your time is valuable but according to our records, we have not yet received your response. please complete the survey (which I did 2 weeks ago)
so I replied
God really!
If you thought my time was important you would have read the scathing negative ridden lambasting horrible things I said in the survey about being treated like dirt for over five hours then told for an answer to format my hard drive and start over from scratch. How about this maybe for just something to think jokingly that would not seem to be a waste of my valuable time.
At 3AM this morning just maybe.. I hack into your server and format it for you load windows MS-Dos version 1.1 (of course in a foreign language version) and tell you it was just helping you, because just you are way too stupid to learn English, an operating system, or give directions in a foreign language!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Even when you beta test the software they install without asking permission to break my computer with it.
God talk about idiots do you people ride elephants to work and live in the jungle?
DO US A FAVOR QUIT YOUR JOB GET LEPROSY AND BECOME A BEGGAR IN CALLCUTA AT LEAST THEN I WOULD HAVE SYMPATHY.
By the way I was not happy with the service I received.
You should write a Big Bang about customer service like this, where 4 doctorates are this disgruntled. Dont use Charlie Sheen no one would belive it. Keep up the good work
Illegitimi non carborundum
While watching the episode, I just assumed it was a catholic priest. But perhaps that’s because I come from a catholic background. And I wasn’t offended.
It’s all rather silly that CBS has to be concerned that someone will get offended. Humor is subjective and it’s usually the stuff that will offend *someone* that is the real funny stuff. If you can’t laugh at yourself, your religion, your beliefs, then ya’ll are just taking life way too seriously. And you’re probably miserable.
You misspelled “JUDGMENT” on your vanity card. Not only did I read it, I proofread it.
“Judgment” is spelled either “judgement” or “judgment”…I looked it up.
Why not a Buddhist priest? Oh, yeah – they don’t have the REPUTATION….
I just watched the episode (TiVo rocks!) and paused for the vanity card, so I wanted to see the real thing. Too funny. CBS is so lame to have censored it.
Actually, I am a Catholic who WOULD have been offended, “Chaplain” or “Father”… The facts are that there are just as many pedofiles per capita in the general population as there are per capita in the Catholic priesthood. It is a crying shame that the evil was allowed to be hidden away, to be sure, but to apply the stereotype to every priest is flat out wrong.
I love the show and as a lesbian I think of myself, well….in the past I was the female lesbian version of charlie sheen. On the television show; When his date left and she said “I love you, and he said, “thank you” I just died…Oh my gawd…I had that very thing happen, and well, when I said thank you, the woman also didn’t like it…Which is why I laughed my ___ off watching the show.. I think it would be really kool to interject this somehow. Oh and by the way I AM NOT BUTCH !! I am a fem.
[…] thankful for the pause button. Without the feature I would have missed the amusing vanity cards at the end of each episode of The Big Bang Theory, which shows that some television creators still […]
Chuck – HOW ABOUT A BIG BANG EPISODE WHERE THE GANG GETS INTO A LAWSUIT WITH SOME ODDBALL BUT SERIOUS LAWYERS, REALLY STEREOTYPE LAWYERS OR LIKE THE CENSOR LAWYERS YOU KNOW SO WELL. THEY WRITE THE DIALOGUE. SHELDON CAN SPAR WITH THEM AND SHOW THE LAWYERS HOW THEIR “LOGIC” IS FLAWED. SAY A SLANDER LAWSUIT OR A COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT LAWSUIT?
HOW ABOUT A LAWSUIT TO FIX THE ELEVATOR STARTING WITH SEEKING HELP FROM GOVERNMENT WORKERS WHO ARE MOVING OR WHOSE OFFICE IS CLOSED DUE TO FISCAL PROBLEMS.
ADAM WEST FOR THE BIG BANG NERDS LAWYER? IT WOULD BE FUNNY.
A DEVOTED FAN OF YOUR HUMOR.
Some people say that i look like August T. Jones and some other people say that I speek like him too. (like the german syncronisations)
Please write back.
Hello! You do not know it that the two and a half men how the couch?
Hello! You do not know it that the two and a half men how the green couch?
cotton@freemail.hu
Dear Chuck,
I think that “Two and One Half Men” is the funniest and raunchiest program ever made. I love it as does my wife. I have a thought for you: Evelyn is pretty wild and what if she had a child out of wedlock before the boys? Think of the fun if Alan and Charley have an older sibling. Could be male or female, even black or white.
Keep up your great program
Lol, fail. I assumed some sort of denomination of a Christian priest, anyway. >D
As was known at the time he wrote his Vanity card, the abuse by priests is no higher than among any other groups or males in general.
http://www.newsweek.com/priests-commit-no-more-abuse-other-males-70625
The real offense was the cover-up, the priest shell game, as it were, which if one is being charitable was initially predicated on the notion that these priests were kept away from children and put under special programs to rehabilitate them from their abhorrent desires. As with all programs, what may start out as well intended was subject to all-too-human corruption, mismanagement and poor oversight. As Pascal said: He who tries to be as an angel becomes a beast.