Quintessentially Chuck vs. the Poor Memory

Here’s the situation, as mentioned in previous posts this blogger does not have extensive (read: basically zero) exposure to re-watching Chuck episodes. This means I have not scene the vast majority of episodes in all seasons since their original air date. We’re talking five years here people. This makes recalling Chuck over the years a vastly different experience for me than for my co-blogger, but also presents an different viewpoint which hopefully will interest our readership. It also raises an interesting question on the very nature of TV watching, that is, watching a show pilot to finish via broadcast scheduling and all it’s inherent gaps, or starting a show after much of it has been aired and being able to view it in a much more rapid fashion, without weekly wait times and even without commercials. What are the differences in viewing styles and perspectives that can develop because of that?

Some Thoughts on the End……

I started watching “Chuck” as a result of friends who were really into the show. The first episode I saw was, I think, “Chuck versus the Ex” and it was pretty tough to follow, but fun overall. Having nothing to do one day a month or so later, I watched about 10 episodes of the season online and got hooked. I think it was “Chuck versus the Suburbs” that really hooked me. The blending of the completely ridiculous suburban stereotype with spy action and the Intersect was such an invigorating combination. That episode made me realize that “Chuck” is a wholly unique show. It’s unlike anything else on television. That uniqueness alone makes it significant in my mind. Beyond its distinctiveness, though, “Chuck” is simply great television. In 40 minutes, “Chuck” can weave stories about spies, nerds, losers, babes, and the government into something that is so undeniably entertaining that it defies description. Today’s “Quintessentially Chuck” moment, Jeffster’s rendition of “Mr. Roboto”, is the scene I use to describe the advantages of a visual medium over the printed word. After all the time I’ve put into “Chuck” over the years, I wanted to take time to write some thoughts down on the end of the show. This isn’t a formal essay on the merits of “Chuck”, it’s not a synopsis of the show, it’s just my thoughts on the end of something that’s been a big part of my life for the past 4 years.    

Quintessentially Chuck: Day 5

Today marks the end of “Quintessentially Chuck”, which is going out with a bang. Today’s moment comes from the show-defining second season in which “Chuck” could do no wrong. After watching the season again over the course of the past few months, there isn’t a single episode that I’d consider of even average quality in the overall canon of “Chuck”; it’s all that good. A season of any show with 22 episodes as of the quality of “Chuck’s” second season would be good enough on its own (great, really), but the pacing of the season was remarkably well done too, with some nice standalones at the start, then the fantastic Jill arc, a few more standalones, and then a full tilt sprint to the finish with the best arc in the history of the show, namely the Orion/quest to remove the Intersect/Intersect 2.0 arc that capped it all off perfectly. From this paragraph of gushing acclaim, you can probably infer that it was tough for me to pick just one moment from season 2. In fact, part of the reason I opted to cover all the seasons of “Chuck” for this series was to ensure that it wasn’t top-heavy with season 2 moments. With that being said, there’s one moment from Season 2 that stands out in my mind as the defining moment. It’s the one point in the show’s history where every plot line, every story, and every character detail that had been built and established over the course of the season converged perfectly in a single moment to produce a cataclysmic eruption of awesome.

Quintessentially Chuck: Day 4

Welcome to the penultimate edition of “Quintessentially Chuck”. Season 5 is the subject of today’s moment. If you’ve read the reviews on this site, you know that I haven’t been overwhelmed by what we’ve had so far this season. The drifting of the show away from its central premise has continued this season to the point where it’s a full-fledged spy show now, instead of a show about a normal guy in a spy’s world. Moreover, the writers appear to have abandoned several arcs, including Morgan as Intersect and the government conspiracy angle, ahead of schedule, which has left me with a very mixed impression. The challenge, then, was to find a moment that captured what the essence of the show is (or perhaps was), as the show itself changed and moved away from that essence. There’s some negativity implicit in that statement, and the quality of the show has gone down this year, but I do think the writers of “Chuck” deserve a lot of credit for developing and growing the characters over the years. That development feels very out of step with the current crop of television shows on the air and the sequel-heavy year of movies we had in 2011. In fact, it feels so out of step that I’m going to go ahead and call it quintessentially “Chuck”.

Quintessentially Chuck: Day 3

Welcome to the third installment of “Quintessentially Chuck”, a daily look back at individual moments from each season that could only have taken place in the “Chuck” universe. Today’s moment comes from Season 4. Choosing a moment from this season was tough because the show started drifting away from its central premise of a nerd in a spy’s world over the course of Season 4. As Chuck’s learned to control the Intersect 2.0, he became a much more confident, aggressive character. Similarly, the missions frequently took place outside of Burbank, CA and thus the opportunities for spy and Buy More plotline convergence were considerably lessened. Finally, Linda Hamilton as Chuck’s mother failed to leave the same indelible impression on the show that Scott Bakula made as Stephen J. Bartowski. That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy Season 4, however. There were a lot of really, really great moments, like Chuck’s proposal to Sarah, all the various Gretas, and basically any scene involving Timothy Dalton as Alexei Volkoff. When I started to think of possible moments from Season 4, one moment stood out as my top choice, and after reviewing the season’s episodes, that moment is still my choice.

Quintessentially Chuck: Day 2

The second installment of “Quintessentially Chuck” will cover Season 1. This was a tough season to choose from because there were a lot of really great “Chuck” moments throughout. Chuck and Sarah’s relationship begins to develop, we learn why the Intersect was sent to Chuck, Casey’s Crown Vic was blown up, we got some vintage Buy More shenanigans with Big Mike’s marlin, among others. The moment I chose, however, comes from the very first episode of the series.

Quintessentially Chuck: Day 1

With this week marking the end of “Chuck”, we thought it would be fun to look back on some of our favorite moments from the last 5 seasons. Each day this week, we’ll post a moment from the show that captured, for us, what the essence of the show is. While it’s tempting to pick several moments from Season 2, I’m going to try and take one moment from each season. This list is not meant to be a chronicle of the top 5 moments in the show’s history and the order they’re presented in has no bearing on how much we liked each one. It’s simply a list of five quintessentially “Chuck” moments that remind us why this is the show we write about each week.

Review: “Chuck versus the Bullet Train”, Are You Uniquely Wasteful?

The penultimate episode of “Chuck” (counting next week’s 2 hour finale as one episode) has come and gone. Going in, I felt this was a make or break episode for Season 5 , as the Nicholas Quinn story arc now feels like the most significant of the season, after the government conspiracy and Intersect Morgan angles were wrapped up in short order. I don’t think the show delivered entirely on the promise of the angle, however, this episode was just good enough to be keep me invested and get me excited for what should be an epic conclusion next week. And really, isn’t that the point of a television show in the first place? Let’s get to the breakdown.

Review: “Chuck versus Bo”, Are You Filled with Rainbows?

On the heels of what I consider to be the worst episode of the series, I came in with low expectations for “Chuck versus Bo”. I was pleasantly surprised to get one of the better episodes of the season, along with what looks to be the final arc in the show’s history. We got some nice comedy, a new big bad, and some additions to the Intersect mythology. Let’s get to the breakdown.

Review: “Chuck versus the Kept Man”, Are You About to go Nuclear on Your Biceps?

Another installment of Chuck’s final season has come and gone. Any hopes I had for a memorable addition to the Chuck canon were completely shot by this entirely forgettable, silly episode. While there were some decent comedic moments, anything taking place outside of Burbank fell completely flat with me. Let’s get to the breakdown.

Review: “Chuck vs. the Baby”, How About a Game of Sorry?

The funny thing about this episode is that broken down into the categories my instinct is not to rank any one category very high; yet when I think about the episode as a whole, ignoring the fact it really is a standalone episode that does not develop or continue any episode arcs I wish were in place going into the series finale, I think rather highly of it. So I’m going to attempt to highlight the good pieces with the average in each post this week, instead of focusing on the poorly executed that would tend to bring my ranking down. 

Review: “Chuck vs. the Santa Suit”, do you want to go for a run?

So, this episode felt like it was trying to hard to play heavy, emotional chords that just didn’t vibrate with this viewer, and the rankings reflect my overall feeling towards the episode at its conclusion.

Review: “Chuck vs. the Curse”, How Sturdy is Your Combat Roll?

I’m not gonna lie, Ellie and Awesome carried this episode. Loved seeing them playing the spy game again, but the rest of the episode just didn’t hold up as well, reflected in my rankings. 

Review: “Chuck vs. the Hack-off”, Can You Drop off the Grid Crazy-Guy Style?

This review of “Chuck versus the Hackoff” is admittedly coming in a bit late, but better late than never, right? I’ve re-viewed the episode and I’m not sure how having multiple looks at it will influence my opinion. I enjoyed the episode generally speaking but had a lot of issues with the story and writing. At any rate, let’s get to the breakdown.

Review: “Chuck versus the Business Trip”, Is Your Chain Considerable?

After watching Chuck last night, I have to say, what a fun episode. Chuck episodes seem to be either storyline/arc driven or humorous standalones, and last night was the best example of the latter this show has had in a long time. There was nothing spectacular plot-wise (aside from maybe the ending), but everything was linked together in a way that made the whole show, beginning to end, a fantastic way to spend an hour. And really, isn’t that the purpose of television in the first place?

Review: “Chuck vs. the Frosted Tips”, Is Your Core Really Tight?

Overall, I liked this episode. It felt very solid but didn’t leave me buzzing with that particular Chuck thrill I mentioned last week. 

Review: “Chuck vs. the Bearded Bandit”, Do You Have Creamy Skin and Unusually High Cheekbones?

Before I hit the highlights I have to say that for me this episode, more than the season opener, held me captivated by that special level of fun that only a firing-on-all-cylinders episode of Chuck possesses, leaving that tingling sensation of enjoyment behind after the preview for next week’s episode has ended. There is a sheer thrill that accompanies Chuck awesomeness (see previous post), and this episode had it. 

Review: “Chuck versus the Zoom”, Is Your Ball Warm?

I sit here typing with anticipation high for this the final season of Chuck. Last season’s finale sowed the seeds for some epic governmental conspiracy-style arcs that have always been a favorite part of Chuck for me. I think it gets at the lesser self-evident truth of American government, namely that the government does a lot of crazy, behind the scenes stuff that we’ll never be privy to. At the same time, the Morgan-Intersect project could either be a fun, unique twist for Chuck’s final season or a regrettable change in direction akin to Scrappy Doo or the Scrubs reboot.

To me, the results of Intersect 2.0 in general, Morgan or no Morgan, have been mixed. There have been some phenomenal moments, such as the spic Shaw/Chuck showdown of season 3 and some of the most cringe-inducing moments of the series, such as the wine glass juggling scene in season 4.

With that said, let’s get to the element by element review. For those who didn’t read the earlier posts, we rank the different elements of the show from 2 (low) to ace (high) as follows: clubs for comedy, spades for action/suspense/story, diamonds for special effects/scenery, and hearts for romance.

Special Sneak Peek of Chuck Review

Tacked onto the end of the extended preview of Grimm(found here), which premiers following Chuck this Friday, was a sneak peak of Season 5 that I would like to share my thoughts about, and which may be skewed simply because I was so excited to see new Chuck material finally!

  This clip was primarily a comedic one, and I felt that the efforts were on par with Chuck standards if not spectacular. Morgan as the intersect will apparently be used for comedic effect for at least a little while, which is good considering Morgan is the primary source of laughs left in the show (excluding Casey’s grunts, of course) with Chuck having moved into the sleek, suave spy realm finally (and I’ve got so say that Zach Levi is looking very smooth in his tux for this scene). Pretty much what I would expect, with the tip-toe run across the driveway being a highlight, along with dropping the vase at the end of successfully kicking bad-guy tail.

  The clip also featured a solid action scene with the comedy aspect, and I have to say that I was impressed. As a whole I felt again that the scene was on par with what Chuck can deliver, but I was particularly impressed with our first glimpse of Morgan as the intersect. My guess is that if I looked back at previous seasons of Chuck fight scenes some of the same moves might appear, but my initial impression of Morgan’s fighting style was that it differed from the style that “intersect Chuck” employed when flashing (perhaps they are using a different style of martial arts in the choreography of the show to emphasize the change? That would be cool) . The final leaping kick to disarm the villain with the gun and the summersault kick to finish him off were totally awesome. With Morgan being a much smaller person than Chuck they should be able to do some visually interesting things with him that will create some separation from “intersect Chuck” and establish Morgan as an intersect in his own right, but I’m certainly hoping the journey to get there is a little bumpy.

 Special effects looked good enough viewing out over the ocean that I wasn’t pulled out of the scene, and that’s all I really ask for from this show.

 Not a lot to say romantically here, however, if they stick with the Chuck and Sarah as an old, married couple routine I would be okay with that, it’s definitely time to put the drama that has been a story line staple previously behind us in the final season.

Chuck Rises From the Grave in 1 Week!

With Halloween so close, will the season premiere of Chuck be a themed episode?

Chuck Returns in 3 Weeks!

And these bloggers are very excited for that premier!