Chuck- I Want My Hour Back

Wait, is this not, like, the same show? Dude, I was confused by the totally wicked writing and, you know, the fact that you've already stunt-cast that brunette chick.


NBC has high hopes for Chuck. It’s getting really great reviews. This is another one of the shows that I was able to watch over the summer and then again at the Paley Center. Having seen it twice now, I can honestly say I think it’s one of the most shrill, annoying, self-congratulatory pilots I’ve watched in quite some time. Chuck is about a college-dropout computer geek who works as a supervisor of a Nerd Herd in an electronics store. He’s pathetic, lonely, and has no future. One night, for reasons that the show will probably never bother to explain to us, his former college roommate who became a secret agent for NSA (or the FBI or the CIA, who the fuck cares) sent him an email containing a file that when opened downloaded the contents of a supercomputer into Chuck’s head. Apparently there was only one copy of this supercomputer thingy hanging around and when the NSA or FBI or CIA or whichever one of those his roommate wasn’t working for killed his former roommate, they destroyed that copy so now Chuck is it. Oh, have I mentioned that for some reason the CIA and NSA (one of those two is possibly the FBI, I don’t care enough) are violently fighting each other on this show? They kill each other’s agents and damage large sections of Los Angeles and Washington in the process. Office politics can be such a bitch. One of those organizations then sends a hot chick (of course it has to be a hot chick) to kill and/ or protect him. The other government organization sends Adam Baldwin to kill both of them for no reason that’s readily explained.

If that description sounded convoluted and confusing to you, don’t worry. Chuck doesn’t concern itself with things like “logic” and “explaining plot holes.” This show is all about having the producers sit in a room and say “Oh, aren’t we so clever and hip.” There are frequent explosions, car chases, women in lingerie, ninjas, and climactic bomb-disarmings thrown in to keep the mostly ADD-afflicted, douchebag audience happy. I kept hoping that Adam Baldwin would actually just kill everyone and rip off his face to reveal the robot underneath. There is not a single interesting, attractive, funny, or inventive character on this show. Chuck is such a waste of space. He’s supposed to be some kind of lovable loser; but he’s actually just devoid of any personality whatsoever. Any glimmers of action he ever has (I think they show that he’s a nice guy by having him help a dad recreate a little girl’s dance recital) are just completely generic and mundane. He’s also very quietly bitter and has this giant victim complex about his college roommate and his college girlfriend and how they’ve ruined his life. Why would I want to watch a show set around him? The worst part of this show is that it thinks it’s witty. It thinks it has elevated TV to some amazing level and it really hasn’t.

Verdict: The same people of questionable taste who tune in to Heroes every week will eat this shit up. It’s a lead-in to that show, so they can plop their lazy asses on the couch at 8pm and turn their brains off completely until at least 10 (unless they also tune into the next show we’ll be reviewing; in which case, make that 11)

Would I Watch It? I’m making a Chuck voodoo doll already. Where do I stick pins in
for cancellation? I hate NBC.