Jonathan Storm: CBS: Charlie Sheen knows 'our level of concern'

Inquirer television critic Jonathan Storm is reporting this week from the television critics' press tour in Pasadena, Calif. These items are taken from his blog, "Eye of the Storm," at www.philly.com/philly/blogs/storm.

CBS Entertainment president Nina Tassler expressed "personal concern" Friday about the network's biggest star, Two and a Half Men's Charlie Sheen, and his continuing drug-addled exploits.

Last weekend, according to numerous reports, Sheen staged a porn-o-rama in his penthouse suite at the Palms in Las Vegas, the latest in a string of wild-child episodes that have been lighting up the gossip columns for weeks.

Speaking to television critics at their annual winter meeting, Tassler said she worried about Sheen as a man and a father, but emphasized how professionally TV's highest-paid star (TV Guide reports $1.25 million per episode) behaves during the workweek. "He comes to work and does a professional job," Tassler said. "We have great respect for Warner Bros.," which produces the show, "and the way they manage their business."

Sheen "does his job. He does it well. The show is a hit, and that's really all I have to say," Tassler said.

And then she said some more: "He knows how we feel, and our level of concern. The show is successful, as it has always been. People are doing their job, and things are continuing as planned."

"Modern Family" star likes sitcom changes. Julie Bowen is grateful that a page has turned on TV sitcoms. No longer do they necessarily require hot chicks and doofus guys. Bowen plays a harried mother in Modern Family, probably the most "normal" character on the show, but still a ball of neuroses.

She was one of six women from three current sitcoms produced by 20th Television who spoke to critics during a special panel assembled by the studio on the Fox lot: Bowen and Sofia Vergara from Modern Family, Lea Michele and Jane Lynch from Glee (officially classified as a comedy despite its hour length and its dramatic and musical components), Alyson Hannigan from How I Met Your Mother, and Martha Plimpton from Raising Hope.

The goofy guy/sexy gal theme went on so long during the questioning that Plimpton finally told the critics to think of something else. But it did elicit some great answers.

"I have played the girlfriend roles for years, and the finger-shaker," said Bowen, "and I find it a relief to finally get to play a mom and . . . it's like, 'Wait. So you like something about me other than you might want to [have sex with] me?'