Monsters of Television

At least no one dropped “Smokin’!” during the episode.

Although there was a lot of smoke to be had. A lot of conversations to be had, too. The episode focused a lot on relationships rather than on Chuck’s being able to stand against The Ring. And, in this age of a more mature, more progressed Chuck, the stakes are a little higher and the web a little more entangled. Yes, this is a storyline they’ve fallen on before (Chuck hooking up with a sassy brunette) but this time Sarah gets an chance at some action, too. And, let’s face it: it’s high time. She’s been holding out for three years while “training” Chuck, staying (more or less) true to him while simultaneously avoiding physical romantic entanglement (though that can be debated). Bryce, Chuck, Cole. By now her hormones are so charged up that they’re probably standing next to her, six feet tall wearing pink sweatpants and waiting to breakdance.

Yes, that’s from The State. Sadly, I couldn’t find a clip.

So hookups all around as the phantom of “Chuck vs The Three Words” seems to fade away. The team prepares Chuck for a big move (that I’m not quite sure where they’re going to go with) and we get that Chuck and Sarah moment we’re used to seeing by the Fountain take place in the sterile Castle environment, fitting for the conversation. There are some things on the horizon, some big things, that, really, the Olympics are just impeding. Freaking snow.

Also, how bad a friend can Chuck be to Morgan? I mean, outside of constantly lying to him, neglecting him, and implicating him into a constant barrage of danger, now this, too? As much as Chuck whines about Morgan being his best friend and his family being important to him, dude really only looks out for number 1. No love for the bearded man. But how funny is it to watch Ellie and Morgan have some scenes together? It’s great to see that relationship grow a little bit. I mean, these are people that have known each other for years. And, even though Ellie has been grossed out by him, he’s still like a little brother. It’s good to see Chuck explore some of the other relationships that have been neglected.

Lastly, when people stand in front of the shadowy Ring Council, does anyone else get reminded of Mork from Ork?

The show sells out during an episode where the company is trying to be bought.

The short answer to why I still watch The Office: habit, investment, and I hate myself.

Really, last week, with the clip show, should’ve been the last straw. There is nothing more self-indulgent and uninspired as a retrospective of what you’ve done in the past masquerading as “new” content. When a show like Lost does it, it’s because serialized drama has a learning curve (and it doesn’t get steeper than Lost’s). There’s no real learning curve for The Office, nothing that can’t be explained in a thirty second recap. “Jim and Pam are recently married. Andy likes the receptionist. Michael is inept and needy but has a heart of gold. They work at a paper supply company that’s going under.” Done and done. The major continuing storylines in a neat little package. So a clip show is nothing more than a look-back at yesteryear and, I would defend, at better times.

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Jeff: “Did you take her to Poundtown?”
Lester: “Can I get an address on that?”

Writers of Chuck, I am pleased. This is exactly where I’d hoped the season would start heading and Chuck is starting to feel less like a lead-in to a bigger show and more like something that can stand alone. It’s keeping its comic lilt while delving into deeper, more complicated terrain and we’re finally starting to see our protagonist develop. We’re starting to see the life he was thrown into take a toll and force him to grow up, for better or worse. And there’s no better way to see this progression than by juxtaposing it with the past.

Awww. He’s bashful.

The episode starts three years ago when Sarah first walks into the Buy More, Morgan alerting a half-listening to Chuck to her presence, and Chuck scratching out the tune that gets stuck in my head: “Vicki Vale — Vick-vah-Vicki Vale — Vickity-Vickity-Vicki Vale, Vick-vah-Vicki Vale” and the phone drops. Morgan, in present day, reminds Chuck of that moment in order to compare it to when Hannah walks into the picture. Oooooh. See, last week I thought Hannah was going to be there for Chuck’s drama but she’s (at least starting out) going to be around for Morgan’s. Hannah. Anna. How did I not see that? He’s enamored by her and tries to complete the analogy Chuck:Sarah :: Morgan:Hannah. Hannah walks in with the same liberal take on dress code if not the same attitude as Morgan’s former flame. But Morgan’s not ready to actually speak to her so he scurries away as Chuck lays down some warnings for a sister: everyone else but him is a wild animal looking to hump. On cue, Jeff and Lester show up. Chuck leads her away from the Jeffster Danger Zone.

Important thing to take from this funny scene comes when Hannah brings up Chuck going to Paris. Chuck tells her to keep it on the low-low but doesn’t get a lot of time to solidify the lie before Casey comes over for “yogurt time.” Despite having to make excuses to leave the store and go to the yogurt shop for two years (three if you count Sarah’s brief stint with wieners), he still doesn’t come up with a good response for Hannah to understand why going to yogurt right away makes any sense.

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Wow, these titles really are going to rhyme, aren’t they.

I don’t know if I’m just suffering from a Chuck hangover, but this episode did, in fact, step up a little more than the other ones have. Maybe because they focused on one problem throughout the episode rather than stretch the empathy over a hundred mini-moments with zero stakes. Tonight it felt more cohesive, more true to its theme. It seems like it has direction. Sort of.

I think my big problem that is that it wraps up in a pretty bow at the end of this episode. There is certainly going to be a lingering dysfunctional hangover as everyone (grandparents, parents, Lux, her friends) all try to create one big happy but it seems like everyone’s natural walls of mistrust, anguish, disappointment, self-preservation, etc, etc, all melt away with a couple bats of Lux’s baby blues. It all seems too easy. They struggle a little through the episode but they tackle years of family drama in 45 minutes. Seems a little speedy.

But maybe that’s the aim of the show. The writer creates his or her ideal world and, in this world, problems of intolerance are easily solved, everyone wants to be open-minded but needs to be shown the way, and even gang violence can be a minor footnote in a saccharine world where birth parents get a second chance to raise the mature, tempered product of the foster care system. She’s like a blonde Annie, minus the dog but supplemented by tattooed boyfriend named Bug. Not that Annie’s dog and Bug are the same. Though, right now, their roles carry about equal weight in their individual productions.

Maybe that’s the nature of the show, that the world can be a better place and the hardships we try to surmount can be conquered organically with a little bit of compassion and a lot of understanding. This isn’t SVU or Southland; it doesn’t strive for nor does it have to pass a test of absolute realism. But it’s walking a fine line.

First of all, someone seems to have a glut of Casey one-liners burning a hole in his pocket because the first half-hour of this show had so many looped lines I thought Casey was going to break into full-on voiceover.

Chuck does it again this week, making up for its weak start and opening the story to a great many possibilities. Everything from Chuck’s secret leaking to the family he’s been whining to protect to Chuck actually getting good as his job to Chuck possibly losing his non-spy luster to Sarah. There might even be an unexpected triangle coming about between Chuck, Morgan, and Hannah (Hannah, Anna — how did I not see that before?).

Although there were some things that were magically divined throughout the episode (lucky Japanese pen laser!), they were discovered well enough that I wasn’t thrown out of the story. This season is opening up the way I wanted this show to be: still comedic but a little more grounded, a little more complicated, a lot more at stake. I’m almost excited for that things yet to be determined: how long will it take for the asset Chuck burns to come back for him; is Hannah actually a civilian; what will be the point that Chuck’s humanity bottoms out (where Carmichael takes over Bartowski) before Sarah reins him back in; what will the family do now that they’ve wised up (aka, become sentient humans); who will Hannah choose; and for the love all things that are good, how long do we have to wait until the return of Jeffster? This season is looking to be impressive.

The sheer volume of crying montages on American Idol has desensitized me to sadness.

Noel talks about formulas within shows and I don’t think there are many that are more formulaic than Idol, despite the reality guise. Hopefuls go in, audition, get judged. Some hopefuls have a sad backstory (usually about children or disease or both); some just want to be celebrities. The segues are usually rough, involve some history or setting establishment for the city they’re in, and, at some point, one of them will be a montage of people crying because they didn’t get in. These poor wretches, caught on camera for all their friends to see, bawling their little eyes out because Simon called them terrible or because they weren’t bestowed with a yellow piece of paper (by the way, “Golden Tickets” are supposed to be rare, not given out thirty at a time). Hopes and dreams crushed under a music industry juggernaut, the excess that squishes from underfoot beamed to an audience of 10.4 rating.

This show is exhausting. Each featured contestant is an emotional vignette, hastily constructed. The featured contestants are milked for their story that is condensed to a minute or two, just enough time to hit their low-point (which might be in the present) and how the Golden Ticket will give them the vindication/satisfaction/external validation they need. The intent of the producers is to draw you into these people and root for them. But with a featured contestant during every segment (and with American Idol broken up into as many segments as possible to allow tons of time for advertisers), the ups and downs throughout the program are terribly exhausting. And then this show is on twice a week for weeks on end. They grow from exhausting to tiresome. If a contestant had cancer as a child, an autistic kid, or a sick grandmother, we know that judges aren’t going to dash her dreams (paint Simon as “evil” but never sinister) and, almost as a self-preservation emotionally, the draw is limited by recognizing the formula. In fact, the only draw left is in watching the crazy, over/underdressed personalities take the stage. Those can go either way. “Skiibowski, of course.”

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Casey: “You know, you give me five minutes running this popsicle stand and we’d be ready.”
Morgan: “Ready for what?”
Chuck: “The Russians.”

This episode is refreshing, invigorating even. I’m not terribly fond of how this season started (maybe except for completely destroying Chuck and Sarah’s relationship so they can rebuild it) but “Chuck vs First Class” starts the build to what we (and by we, I really mean me — but I think you’ll agree) want to see from this show’s progression. It’s all starting to come together.

“Kneel before Zod!”

For Morgan, however, it’s all starting to come apart. Everyone in Buymoria is unhappy with his rise to power, fallout from disbanding the fight club ring from last week. Lester has resorted to the silent treatment while everyone else attempts to pull pranks on him. Nothing works, however, because Morgan is the one that taught them all how to prank and goof off. The only one able to pull one over on his The Silent One and Morgan knows it’s all downhill from there.

Meanwhile, Casey fills Chuck in on the ramifications of Shaw being in charge of Chuck Squad: he is obligated to do a review of the operation. Chuck, already reeling from Casey telling him Shaw is more special than him, immediately wonders who they could be talking about when discussing the operation based around him. Chuck: somehow whiny and selfless when it comes to family members but completely vane involving anything else.

Shaw is indeed starting his review talking about Chuck with his most ardent supporter, Sarah. She insists that Chuck is a real spy though Shaw, upon reading the reports, feels that Bartowski’s performance is sometimes Bond, sometimes Jerry Lewis (basically the premise of the show). Is Chuck a liability?

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Although I can always appreciate rhyming series and episode titles, there’s just something about this show that doesn’t sit right with me and I can’t put my finger on it.

Maybe it’s them shoving the story down our throats? We’re two episodes in and already there have been more poignant moments than Dawson and Joey had in their entire verbose first season. With so many moments, the build-up just doesn’t seem to be there for the me to care about the stakes. But that could just be because they’re trying to establish the story so they can move on to other things.

So maybe it’s that they’re missing so many opportunities for drama? They’re running through major season developments like single-ply tissues, quickly resolving them within minutes. The whole “let’s win over the social worker” could have been dragged out for a bit. Ryan not being able to handle Cate’s quick “take in a child” turnaround probably should be threaded through a few episodes but, besides that one scene where he explicitly said he was having trouble trying to deal with it, he really hasn’t shown he has much of a problem with his plans being put on hold and his life, more or less, turned upside down. Baze’s friends, giant opportunities for reflector-ing (reflection seems like the wrong word) and/or comedic reprieve, are such background characters they might as well be extras. But we’ll call that studio influence. The first few episodes are meticulously constructed for dramatic moments. Maybe poorly and ruinous of early potential but the intention is there to hook people on this show, not necessarily to slow-burn a plot.

Oh, I got it! I totally know what it is! Kerr Smith hasn’t really had an opportunity for smart-assery. He has the initial scene with Cate on the radio and then, after that, nothing but kind of a sap. Come on, guys. A bird has to sing. Let the man deliver some lines that aren’t necessarily heart-felt or sweet-boyfriend-like.

There. Totally put a finger on it. I knew I’d figure it out.

See, that was a good episode. Chuck was, more or less, confident if a little clumsy and not terribly whiny (notice that the Intersect worked a lot better). The story capitalized on an opportunity: Sarah and Casey have coddled Chuck for too long. They’ve told him so many times to stay in the car that now they can’t get away from it, despite the fact he’s had rigorous training and a growing desire to get in the game. Shaw evoked a little less Superman this time (except when he was evoking Clark Kent) and some layers were added to the story. Even the B-Story with Morgan and Casey (though I’d hoped for some one-on-one training) was not bad (if a little weird). Good script, Fedak.

Adding Lana Lang (or Chun-Li if you prefer) to the story will also bring some complications although I’m hoping it’s more than what Lou brought. Maybe the third agent Serena referred to? Also, do you notice that every woman brought in to compete for Chuck’s affection has been brunette? Is that Chuck’s type or do the casting people just want to make it very clear that this new person is not Sarah?

Josh Schwartz said that last week’s ep (“Chuck vs Operation Awesome”) was the best so far. I think he missed it by a week. This episode is probably the most solid of the season thus far.