CHUCK
Season 1 Episode 13
“Chuck Versus the Marlin”
Written by Matthew Lau
Directed by Allan Kroeker

So the final episode before the freshman season was forced to shut down due to the writer’s strike involves Fulcrum bugging the Buy More with scores of GLG-20’s to smoke out the real identity of the Intersect.
The threat of Chuck’s being found out (and the resultant possibility of his being pulled away from his family and friends into isolated, protective custody), then coincides with Awesome’s plan to propose to Ellie.
And we all just know the second Awesome asks Chuck to keep his great granny’s ring for safekeeping that it will be anything but…


I suppose what I found vaguely annoying about this episode is that much of the cause and effect of the plot derives from the drunken antics of Lester and Jeff (who unknowingly spirit off the receiver containing the recordings of what the bugs have picked up), and the over-reacting of Morgan (who finds the ring and assumes it’s because Chuck is about to propose to Sarah).
Now, while the Buy More subplot this time out is, pardon me, pretty much married to the main secret agent plot, I usually find the Lester-Jeff tandem to be an irritating one. Morgan’s also a distinct pain when he bungles things up the way he does here.


But, as much as the plot itself annoyed me, the moments where the characters’ emotions take center stage—as when it looks like Chuck will have to be taken into protective custody without even getting to say goodbye to his loved ones, and he has to ask Sarah to make sure that they all know he loves them—once again keep Chuck a satisfying watch.
(I do hope though that Ellie and Awesome’s impending marriage will not mean that Sarah Lancaster and Ryan McPartlin will be absent from Season 2. Lancaster, in particular, is a great foil to Chuck, bringing out a lot of the character’s humanity, while McPartlin manages to balance the comedic role Awesome plays in the show’s goings-on, while still keeping the character human, due to his very clear love for Ellie; the sitcom-y feel of Awesome which bothered me when Chuck first kicked off has thankfully subsided somewhat.)


So, with that, we forcibly draw Season 1 to a close.
Now, due to the delay between the time I saw the episode and wrote this review, and this very moment, when it’s being posted, shooting for Season 2’s already begun.
Aside from the news of Nicole Richie’s guest spot, there’s also been word that the mythical Jill will finally be seen in Season 2, and The Faculty’s Jordana Brewster plays her. (Now that latter bit is casting to look forward to.)

(Images courtesy of nbc.com and aintitcool.com.)

CHUCK
Season 1 Episode 4
“Chuck Versus the Wookie”
Written by: Allison Adler
Directed by: Allan Kroeker
(WARNING: SPOILERS)

Trouble breezes into town in the form of DEA agent “Carina” (Mini Anden, seen in the “Malibooty” episode of Entourage), who needs Sarah’s help to steal a diamond from Peyman Alahi (E.R.’s Iqbal Theba), a hairy little man who’s got some seedy connections to opium cartels.
Chuck’s needed on this one to scope out Alahi’s security set-up while the proper agents suss out the diamond’s exact location. The actual procurement of the diamond is meant to take place at a later date.

But as Sarah and Casey know only too well, Carina’s a wild card given to improvisation. She also shows an interest in Chuck, while Morgan shows an interest in Carina. When Morgan asks Chuck to get him a date with Carina, Sarah thinks it’s a good idea, if only to keep the DEA agent busy. The two couples double date with pizza and The March of the Penguins on DVD.
Later that evening, Carina gets Chuck to her hotel room under false pretenses, and tells Chuck that Sarah and Bryce were an item. (Earlier on, when Chuck asks Sarah about her relationship with Bryce, Sarah tells him they were just partners.)

Before the mission, Sarah tells Chuck not to trust Carina. Relieved, Chuck tells Sarah what Carina said, and when Sarah seems taken aback, Chuck asks her if Carina was telling the truth. Sarah says her relationship with Bryce was “complicated.”
When everyone gets to Alahi’s party, Chuck is pissed at Sarah. (He also dubs Alahi “Senor Wookie,” due to the man’s excessive and unsightly body hair.)
Carina then improvises by grabbing the diamond. Then, thanks to Chuck, Carina makes off with the diamond, leaving Chuck and Sarah to Alahi’s goons. But Casey arrives just in time and gets them out. And when Carina calls Sarah on her cell, Casey traces her to her hotel room. As Sarah needs to get back to Wienerlicious or possibly get canned (oh, the woes of having a McJob), Casey says he’ll get the diamond.

Just as Carina is about to get out of the hotel though, Morgan shows up with flowers. So does Casey, with a gun. Carina kisses Morgan (secretly slipping the diamond into his bag), then tells him she can’t be with him, pushing him back into the elevator.
Casey takes Carina back to her hotel room at gunpoint, but when Carina starts getting undressed, Casey winds up handcuffed to the bed in his four-leaf clover boxers, once again falling for Carina’s charms.
When an hour passes and Sarah still hasn’t heard from Casey, Sarah goes to Carina’s hotel, and tells Chuck he’s been benched, till they can talk about the whole Carina/diamond debacle.

Back at Casa Bartowski, Morgan is mooning over getting dumped, and when Chuck goes into Morgan’s bag for a computer game, he finds the diamond, and the Intersect tells him it’s going to be used to fund some Afghani terrorists (so it’s an even bigger deal than drugs).
When he calls Sarah though, it turns out that Alahi’s got her at gunpoint, and wants the diamond back, so Sarah tells Chuck to find Carina and have her bring the diamond to the hotel.
When Carina tries to steal the diamond back, Chuck convinces her to help Sarah (since Sarah saved her life in Pakistan once). So Carina and Chuck go to the hotel, and as Carina weapons up, she tells Chuck that agents always keep their lives secret, that no truth is ever really revealed to those around them.

Shortly thereafter, with the help of Sarah and Casey (who finally breaks the bed’s headboard and uses it as a handy bludgeon), Chuck and Carina catch the baddies and secure the diamond, which Chuck inadvertently Fed-Exes to Director Graham (Tony Todd).
Before Carina leaves, she invites Chuck up to her hotel room. He declines, of course, and when he asks her why, she says it’s because she’s always liked taking the things that Sarah wants. When Chuck doesn’t quite believe her, Carina says Sarah definitely wants him, she maybe just doesn’t know it yet.

The episode closes with a great scene as Chuck goes to Sarah’s hotel room, with an olive-less vegetarian pizza, the only true thing about Sarah that he knows (and that, from observation), that she doesn’t like olives.
He apologizes for not trusting her and asks to know only one true thing about her. Where she grew up, her real name, her real middle name, anything. But Sarah remains heartbreakingly silent. So Chuck drops it, but when he’s out of hearing distance, Sarah says, “Lisa. My middle name is Lisa,” which only we can hear…

So Chuck continues being this great mix of comedy, action, and human relationships, the complex relationship between Chuck and Sarah developing nicely.
There are also nice touches in this show, like Morgan’s really close friendship with Chuck and his jealousy over Sarah’s encroachment on that, and that during the recon to Senor Wookie’s lair, it isn’t the Intersect Chuck relies on to scope out the security system, but rather his retail knowledge from all the tech equipment they have in stock at Buy More.
So, good stuff, people. Keep it coming.

(Image courtesy of nerdherdhelp.com.)

CHUCK
Season 1 Episode 3
“Chuck Versus the Tango”
Written by: Matt Miller
Directed by: Jason Ensler
(WARNING: SPOILERS)

We open on two men checking out a “water lily painting” (Chuck’s words, not mine) in Tehran, and for some reason, one man shoots the other. We then follow the painting as it hops around the globe, where the one man-shooting-the-other motif repeats.

Meanwhile, over at the Buy More, Big Mike (Mark Christopher Lawrence) is looking at either Harry Tang or Chuck for the Assistant Manager position, which will bump up Chuck’s salary to a whopping $13 an hour! (But sorry, no personal parking space.)
So Big Mike has Chuck and his team fix a whole bunch of computers to prove that Chuck deserves the promotion.
But when Sarah shows Chuck pictures of all the people killed in front of the water lily painting (and after he spots the newspaper announcing an art auction), the code name “La Ciudad” is spewed out by the Intersect.
Turns out La Ciudad is an elusive international arms dealer, whom no one alive has actually seen. Expecting La Ciudad to pop up at the art auction, Sarah and Casey are dispatched to bring the criminal in. And since no one knows what La Ciudad looks like, Chuck is drafted for his first field mission. (Though even Chuck has no idea what La Ciudad looks like as there is no photo on file, it’s everyone’s hope that something will trigger the Intersect while Chuck mingles at the auction.)

While working with Sarah on his cover ID, the exact circumstances of Chuck’s ejection from Stanford are revealed: apparently, Bryce found a bunch of stolen exams beneath Chuck’s bed, a crime for which he tells Sarah he is innocent.
Also, due to a little spy humour on Casey’s part, Chuck ends up learning the tango from Capt. Awesome, who happens to have spent a semester in Buenos Aires. (The tango lesson montage is one of the funniest sequences of the episode, where we also discover that Casey has a pet bonsai.)

At the auction, Chuck mistakes an MI6 agent for La Ciudad, and while both Sarah and Casey are off doing the spy thing, Chuck sees the water lily painting, does the tango, then is abducted by the real La Ciudad. Chuck’s brought to La Ciudad’s hotel room, and is about to be tossed over the balcony, when he tells La Ciudad that the painting’s frame has been switched (and it’s the frame the arms dealer wants, because of the plutonium that’s hidden in it).
Having no more use for Chuck, La Ciudad is about to execute him, when Sarah and Casey find the hotel room, thanks to the GPS tracking device on Chuck’s watch. In the ensuing gunfight, La Ciudad escapes, taking Chuck’s Buy More ID.
Intel indicates La Ciudad is headed out of the US, but actually backtracks to kill Chuck.
Casey faces off against La Ciudad’s goons, while Sarah goes toe-to-toe with the arms dealer. Baddies are subdued, and all’s well that ends well.

In a Buy More subplot, Morgan and the rest of the Nerd Herders wind up fixing the busted computers (for which Morgan has a deathly fear of, so he’s useless except for “moral support”). But Morgan ends up locked in the storage area, and is abandoned, till Chuck (who has the key) gets him out after all the art auction action.

Granted, La Ciudad’s identity wasn’t really a surprise, but Chuck nonetheless continues to be an entertaining hour (lovin’ that graphic opening credits sequence), with some nice, honest relationships on display (particularly between Chuck and Sarah, and Chuck and Ellie). And we are also gradually learning about the stuff I’m interested in, Chuck’s Stanford years, which is nicely revealed due to the requirements of the spy game, instead of through a normal conversation.
Here’s hoping more of that history comes out in episodes to come.

(Images courtesy of nbc.com.)

TV WATCH 2007
CHUCK Pilot

“Why me? I’m nobody. I’m the supervisor of a Nerd Herd at a Buy More. Maybe one day, I’ll be Assistant Store Manager, and I don’t even know if I want that job.”
-- Chuck Bartowski

Chuck (Zachary Levi, from Less Than Perfect) is working an 11$ an hour job at the local Buy More. He’s got a sister, Ellie (Sarah Lancaster, from What About Brian and Everwood) who’s forever pushing him in the way of the nearest live, breathing girl, and a best friend in the person of fellow nerd Morgan (Joshua Gomez, from the sadly cancelled Invasion and Without A Trace).
On his birthday, he gets a surprise email from Bryce Larkin (Matthew Bomer, from Traveler and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning), his roommate back in Stanford, who apparently stole Chuck’s girl and got him kicked out of university; an email that contains all of the information the NSA and the CIA have, encoded in a program equipped with pattern recognition.
All that gets stuck in Chuck’s head in one massive infodump, and makes him the target of both intelligence agencies, kicking off the engaging and entertaining hi-jinx of Chuck.

Brought to us by Josh Schwartz and McG (who also teamed-up for The O.C.), Chuck is fun and loads of funny, as Schwartz once again places geekdom front and center and introduces us to Chuck Bartowski, a nerd whose love life is well and truly dead following the trauma of losing the mythical Jill to Bryce back at Stanford. Then, just when he thinks he’s scored after Sarah (spellcheck nemesis Yvonne Strzechowski) comes up to the Nerd Herd counter, this whole agent/spy thing comes crashing through his door.
Schwartz takes one of any average kid’s dreams (for some, it was to be a secret agent, for others—like myself—it was to be a superhero) and gives it to a geek (which, on some levels, is really just a kid who never completely grew up), mining the conceit for all its comedic and action potential: Chuck is Alias if Alias were a comedy and Sidney Bristow were a nerd.

The action set pieces are cool, the first—as with Casino Royale’s opening—proudly displaying the fact that mainstream productions have learned a little something from Yamikazi. There’s a car chase, and a Mexican stand-off atop a skyscraper.
While on the comedy front, though much of Chuck’s humour is found in the smart dialogue courtesy of Schwartz, there is one particular moment of broad, slapstick humour that I wish had been downplayed. (I’m not very big on slapstick.)
There is also some alarming sitcomesque humour (as with Ellie’s boyfriend, “Captain Awesome,” played by Living With Fran’s Ryan McPartlin) that I hope gets refined as the season unfolds.

But, above and beyond the action and the humour, what seals the deal with Chuck are the long-term plot threads that are planted in the Pilot that hopefully, the series will fully explore in future episodes. The one I’m most interested in is why did Bryce send the email to Chuck? They hadn’t spoken in five years, and they apparently parted under less than happy circumstances. Why Chuck?
I realize this isn’t Lost, but I do hope we see more of what went down at Stanford, which will perhaps give us an inkling as to what was going on in Bryce’s head when he decided to send the email to Chuck.

Minor flaws notwithstanding, Chuck opens solidly, and as the lead-in to NBC’s phenomenal Heroes, stands to attract a huge audience. And I can guarantee Chuck is a fantastic way to spend an hour as you’re waiting for your weekly Heroes fix.

Parting shot: As an aside, it’s interesting to note that three individuals once involved with Superman are on Chuck: McG, who came this close to directing the fifth Superman film; Matthew Bomer, who was Brett Ratner’s choice to play the Man of Steel; and Ryan McPartlin, who auditioned but was reportedly rejected by the studio.

Parting shot 2: Also in the cast is Dexter’s C.S. Lee as Buy More co-worker Harry Tang.

(Images courtesy of Chuck Bartowski’s photos at flickr.com.)