My Take On: Chuck (and why you should be watching)

I want to work for the Nerd Herd

Oh Josh Schwartz, how I adore you. In 2007, the man behind “The O.C.” and “Gos­sip Girl” (yeah, yeah, I know) brought us a new show both men and women alike can obsess over. In case you have not yet become a res­i­dent of Buy-Moreia, let me give you a rea­son to change your TV zip code and catch you up.

Title char­ac­ter Chuck Bar­towski (played by Zachary Levi) is your aver­age Geek Squad-type guy who unknow­ingly, on his birth­day no less, opens up an email he will never for­get. No, I don’t mean that cute sur­prised kit­ten or a Happy Birth­day e-card. The email con­tains a mes­sage from his Stan­ford roomie– turned rogue CIA Agent Bryce Larkin. Upon hit­ting “open”,  a Pandora’s Box of US gov­ern­ment secrets is dumped into Chuck’s head via some laser beam super­com­puter magic.  (Let me add that this intel had been stolen by Larkin — hence the “rogue” part.) This data­base is called “The Inter­sect” – and now, thanks to Bryce, Chuck IS The Inter­sect. (The government’s only other copy of the Inter­sect was destroyed as a result of his thiev­ery. Fail.)

The CIA and NSA learn that Chuck was the last per­son that Bryce con­tacted and want the intel­li­gence returned to them, as they are unaware it’s in Chuck’s brain. The CIA sends Agent Sarah Walker (Yvonne Stra­hovski) to retrieve the Inter­sect, and the NSA sends Major John Casey (Adam Bald­win) to cap­ture Chuck, as he “knows too much”. The two agents even­tu­ally cross paths and dis­cover that Chuck is now the only ver­sion of the Inter­sect. The agen­cies decide Chuck must be pro­tected at all costs, and assign both Sarah and Casey the task. So, now that Chuck’s brain holds all the cards, he must use the infor­ma­tion in his head to help Agents Casey and Walker thwart assas­sins and ter­ror­ists, all while not being killed by the bad guys in the process.  Fun times. 

Obvi­ously, Chuck-the-Spy (or Charles Carmichael as he likes to call him­self on mis­sions) must keep his new job a secret from fam­ily and friends, which makes for some funny sit­u­a­tions. He con­tin­ues his job as Nerd Herd Super­vi­sor at the local Buy More (aka TV Best Buy), while Sarah poses as his girl­friend (hello, love inter­est)  and takes a cover job at the Orange Orange next to the Buy More. Fan­tas­ti­cally sar­cas­tic Casey reluc­tantly becomes a part of the Buy More team as his cover. (Since I worked for Best Buy myself, I share his pain.) The base­ment of the Orange Orange is also their spy base (known as The Castle).

Let me not for­get to men­tion the sup­port­ing char­ac­ters that fill the show like Ellie and Devon, Chuck’s sis­ter and her boyfriend, BFF Mor­gan, Buy More co-workers Jeff­ster and Buy More boss Big Mike, amongst oth­ers.  I can hon­estly say they make won­der­ful filler for the rest of the hour, and would be ter­ri­bly missed. You will end up lov­ing all of them, as they each bring essen­tial ele­ments to the show.

Episodes revolve around var­i­ous spy mis­sions and the trouble-making blun­ders Chuck makes. (Hello, he’s not really a spy, what do you expect?)

Chuck is a fresh idea for a show. It has all I want in an hour of TV — com­edy, action, drama, wit and sar­casm all bun­dled up in a nice lit­tle pack­age. There is great con­ti­nu­ity to the sto­ry­lines, and the writ­ing is  super funny.  Guest stars thus far have included: John Laro­quette, Chevy Chase, Scott Bakula, Jor­dana Brew­ster and  Rachel Bilson.

I am not going to give away any twists and turns, so I highly rec­om­mend get­ting the first and sec­ond sea­sons on DVD or Net­flix. Chuck is a great show that is steadily gain­ing pop­u­lar­ity, so hope­fully it will be around for a long time. So catch up fast and don’t for­get to watch the new episodes Mon­day nights at 8PM EST, so TPTB at NBC keep it on the air.

Andrea

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