Monsters of Television

So here we are. Chuck in a white room. Dead Bryce. New faction of ruthless killers. And suddenly, Chuck is able to smack the religion out of everyone in the room*. Even ends with the line to amp up expectations: “I know kung-fu.”

And that’s not all Season 2 left us on. Morgan cowboyed-up and took his lady with him to chase his dream (of being a Benihana chef), the Buy More is under new management, neither Chuck nor Morgan nor Casey actually work for the place anymore, Ellie and Awesome were married, Chuck and Sarah’s star-cross’d relationship seemed to be less star-cross’d. Come to think of it, the only thing that hadn’t changed at the end of Season 2 is Jeffster. What magic would we see? What wonders did Chuck have in store for us?

I just don’t get it. Belt is on the cable, seems strong enough to hold me, I could just leap off — just flash! Flash!

We start off kind of cool. Six months later, Chuck’s (seemingly) on his own mission against some dangerous-looking fellows. He has the option to shoot them but doesn’t (good commitment to the character, writers) and instead pistol whips everyone in the room. General Beckman is giving him orders directly into his earpiece. He escapes with the Anonymous Object of Importance (the “case”), heads to the roof, and can escape if only he could flash on the zip-line. But wait — he needs to flash to figure out how to use a zip-line? He already has the belt out, across the cable connecting the buildings. What more do you need to do? Apparently, stress suppresses Intersect 2.0. General Beckman comes out and shuts what turns out to be a fake scenario since Chuck wusses out of sliding down. And, subsequently, because he’s a whiner, hands him the titular Pink Slip.

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Eventually Chuck is going to run out of friends and family to put in danger.

Although kudos to the writers for putting Ellie in an episode with a little bit of weight to her role (although, emphasis on little). It’s been a long time since we’ve seen Sarah Lancaster not whine about her nuptials or Chuck. Sure, she’s whining about how the passion has left her young marriage but what is this show without a lot of whining (see Chuck in the first two episodes of this season — and all the time)?

Sarah’s confidence (see after she takes out the two guards in the second half hour) is fun to see, as is Casey dealing with his age compared to pushing-30 Chuck and Sarah (though I don’t remember this being an issue in previous seasons). Watching Devon get deeper into Chuck’s world can bring some interesting plot and exchanges but if they end up making Awesome a spy I’ll be a little disappointed.

Note to NBC: if an episode makes their ending a cliffhanger, how about you don’t spoil the thing with scenes from next week’s episode?

My first week on the job and already I have three episodes of Chuck to review. Network better fill in some holes quick.

Also of note: good job people that work on Chuck for getting a high (for NBC) share for this week’s premiere. You might just stick around yet — especially since NBC has nothing to really show.

More on this stuff later.

It feels like we just hit the reset button. At the end of last season, Morgan was going off to Hawaii with Anna, the stars seemed to be uncrossing (ever so slightly) for our favorite couple, and Chuck was one “whoa” short of being The One.

But now Chuck is back in Burbank, Morgan is back to being a loser, and Chuck and Sarah’s relationship is just as messy (if not more) than it was before. “The Ring” (which I assume is Fulcrum) made very little appearance despite being intensely important at the end of last season. The only real intrigue introduced in the episode is a faceless man named Shaul (Saul? Shawl?) that has enough clout to sit on Beckman’s desk and play with a Zippo.

Now, there were a lot of good points. The first half hour was wonderfully uncomfortable even if it was tough to see in shambles the connection that made the romantic element of Chuck such a pleasure to watch. But, like Sarah said, this was a mess they were in and it gives them something to clean up. Especially since everything else is already back to stasis. Heck, even Big Mike is back in charge at the Buy More (by the way, I totally didn’t see that coming).

And where the heck was Jeffster?

We’ll talk more about this later.

Note: This is a retrospective of a television season in preparation for an upcoming season premiere, like one of those “previously seen on” sequences before the show starts (maybe with a bit more snark), basically a reminder to those that have already watched. I warn you: there are spoilers below. If you want to catch up naturally, now is your time to leave and pick up the recorded media of your choice and catch up. Then come back later.

With Season 3 of Chuck coming our way Sunday, January 10, I thought it would be nice to post a nice Season 1 and 2 (heavy on the 2) retrospective. Now: when you read this, know that I do this out of love. I love Chuck, with all its will-they-or-won’t-they, tough-shell-exterior-grunting, whiny-non-spy-but-kind-of-sort-of-a-spy-at-heart stuff. So I don’t make fun from a place of disdain. I make fun out of love. With that in mind, here are few things you might need to know.

Season 1

Chuck is a dude that works at the Buy More (a green-colored version of Best Buy) at the Nerd Herd desk (think Geek Squad) trying to get his life in order. He’s carved out a simple life for himself with his buddy Morgan and ostensibly still lives with is “parents” Ellie and Devin “Captain Awesome” Woodcomb (his mom ran out years ago as did his father so he and his sister, Ellie, raised each other). One day, and old friend/old nemesis Bryce Larkin sends him an email with ALL THE INTELLIGENCE OF THE WORLD encoded into a video of horrific and adorable imagery (usually not horrific and adorable at the same time). They call this the Intersect (also the name of the computer that is able to crunch all this data which Bryce ‘splodes in the first ten minutes of the first episode). Chuck watches the video and is suddenly able to recall the images when seen and understand the meaning behind them (sees a terrorist at the store, suddenly “flashes” with images of the bomb the terrorist is setting up). The NSA sends their top agent (John Casey) to retrieve the Intersect. CIA does the same (Sarah Walker). They end up becoming his handlers (to protect the Intersect Person until a new Intersect Computer can be built) and Team Chuck is born. They get into all kinds of whacky situations where this “normal” guy is leaned upon to do extraordinary things (for which he occasionally has a natural aptitude). He crushes on Sarah (but it’s Yvonne Strahovski so, gay or straight, who wouldn’t?) and Sarah sends him some vibes back but they don’t do anything about it due to it being “unprofessional” (making their cover of being in a relationship that much more complicated — and horribly frustrating). All Chuck wants to do (besides whine about how his life sucks since he is no longer mediocre) is get the Intersect out of his head and run to the suburbs to have puppies with the out-of-his-league Sarah but the new Intersect needs to be completed for that to happen.

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Single sponsorship programs have been around since TV was a wee infant (why do you think they call them soap operas?) so when I read that Subway’s special deal with Chuck is difficult to recreate, it gave me pause. I’m no industry fat cat or anything, but it seems like, with dwindling audiences (some might say even “concentrating”) and better research, it might be easier to pare down the number of advertisers, distill what specific demographics look for, and match ads to the viewers accordingly.

Again, I don’t own any cigars, top hats, or monocles, but it seems like, if a single-sponsorship is too hard, maybe looking at a decreased and targeted sponsorship might be the way to go. The aforementioned Ad Age article brings up the point of “Remote-Free TV” and how Fox had to scrap it because they couldn’t charge a premium that compensated for what they got with more populated yet disparate commercial breaks. But with all the great things that happen with fewer commercials (“less ad skipping, better recall, better engagement”), to abandon the idea altogether is reckless. Somehow, with historical or even current models (Hulu — if only its legacy media owners would take advantage of the focused potential of the internet) to look to, why are single- or few-partners-sponsorships so out of the question?

What do you think, dear readers? I’m willing to learn.