TMZ is reporting that Charlie Sheen’s rehab stint is scheduled to last a full three months, which is of course leaving the crew of Sheen’s hit show Two and a Half Men worried about how they’re going to make ends meet. Only Rob Shulter at Popeater is suggesting that so many people depend on hooker and coke-addict Charlie to show up to work that he’s probably going to cut his rehab short to return to the set. I’m sure he’d like nothing more than to get back to his regular routing of playing himself on TV, smoking crack and building his porn star family in the neighbor’s mansion. It all depends on how good the ratings are for next episodes of Charlie’s show. It’s like everyone who enjoys that show is enabling this guy because if the show remains popular he’ll be sent back to work sooner rather than later.

Although Charlie Sheen has finally checked himself into an undisclosed rehab facility, no one knows how seriously he’s going to take it until the ratings come in for this week’s ‘Two and A Half Men.’

“If the ratings go through the roof again, as they did after Charlie’s incident in New York, CBS and Charlie will be out again in no time and back to his old ways,” warns a close friend of the actor. “However, if the public finally stops rewarding Charlie for his bad behavior, then, and only then, can you expect him to take the situation seriously.”

Why? It’s simple. Charlie makes a substantial bonus on his industry-topping salary ($1.25M per episode!) if the show does particularly well.

[On that subject … the next highest actor in sitcom land is Sheen’s co-star, Jon Cryer, at $550,000 per episode. The ‘Half’ in the show, Angus T. Jones, is TV’s highest paid teen, raking in $250,000 per.]

Mark Burg, the star’s manager and an executive producer of his hit show, told PEOPLE, “Charlie knows he has work to do, and he is looking forward to regaining his sobriety.”

He added, “Charlie hopes to be back at work in the near future, but there is no time frame. Regaining his sobriety is what is most important.”

But insiders familiar with the situation tell me CBS only has two unaired episodes of TV’s No. 1 comedy in the can. So although team Charlie claims there is no time frame (“near future”), they mean they hope the troubled actor is back on the set within a few weeks.

[From Popeater]

I hope TMZ is right and that Charlie’s in for three months regardless. Popeater is probably right, though. E!’s Ted Casablanca has a quote from an unnamed CBS executive who says “What can we do? He shows up to work, on time. He’s polite, and he makes us hundreds of millions of dollars.” Then he has a meltdown with drugs and hookers (who tweet, talk to the media, and reveal the $30k checks he writes) and ends up costing the network hundreds of millions of dollars. Funny how that works.

Here’s one of Charlie’s latest porn star family members, Kacey Jordan, on Good Morning America today. She said that Sheen was on a “suicide binge” with four other women and that he ordered up five eight balls of cocaine and was smoking it all night. He also asked the porn stars if they could live in the $250k a month mansion next door he was renting and if they could potentially babysit his kids, who weren’t there. It looks like $30,000 can’t buy a porn star’s silence.

Header photo from 2/22/10. Credit: WENN.com