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?

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.