Chuck: Twice as Awesome

Spoilers for tonight's "Chuck" sandwich coming up just as soon as I work on strengthening my thighs...

So how does a "Chuck" sandwich taste, anyway? Kinda bittersweet, I have to say. On the one hand, I'm grateful to get any original "Chuck" at all after nearly two months. On the other, I had sort of made peace with its absence from my weekly viewing, and after two hours, it's gone again. Much as I enjoyed these, I'd almost rather NBC had stuck to the original plan of saving them until they had more episodes produced.

"Chuck Versus the Undercover Lover" was definitely the stronger hour of the two. It had a heavy dose of Casey, who's become the not-so-secret weapon of the show. ("Breathe, Casey! Breathe! Or grunt! Grunting is good, too!") It had that great fight scene with Chuck strapped to Casey's back (I've seen martial arts movies do variations on this, but it usually involves both people whooping ass, where Chuck's squealing uselessness was the best part). While both episodes used the ancillary characters a lot (hence the post title), I thought they were used better here, particularly Captain Awesome being trapped at the Nerd Herd strip poker game. (I was assuming that this was Morgan the amateur therapist's attempt to scare Awesome back into Ellie's arms, but no, the guys are just that sad and creepy.) And it had greater consistency than "Chuck Versus the Marlin," which was ragged in a way that lots of episodes written right before the strike have been.

If I had one real complaint with the first hour -- and it's hard to complain much about an episode that makes such hilarious use of "Love on the Rocks," or that contains a line like "I don't want to die a male stewardess!" -- it's that they should have used the "Casablanca" parallels back in the return of Bryce Larkin episode. If there's an analogue to Rick, Ilsa and Victor Lazlo, it's with our central love triangle -- which, oddly, would make the show's main character the Victor Lazlo stand-in. (Maybe they can do an episode soon where Chuck leads the Nerd Herd in a round of "La Marseillaise.") Also, I think there was a missed opportunity for a "Mr. & Mrs. Smith"-esque scene where Casey and his Ilsa, having discovered each other's true identities, get off on shooting bad guys together.

Where I really enjoyed the doomed romance at the heart of "Undercover Lover," the best parts of "Marlin" tended to be on the fringes: Chuck's cell phone photo of Captain Awesome is of Awesome kissing his own bicep, Jeff telling Lester how to deal with the "pigs" (and then folding under interrogation), Big Mike not noticing the emptied and/or restocked versions of the store until his fish came into play, the "Over the Top" reference in Lester and Jeff's thumb wrestling match, Big Mike literally turning up the heat on Chuck, and Awesome finally discovering a situation that was unequivocally not awesome.

The main story was funny in spots -- particularly Jeff and Lester's mammary cam video turning out to a plot point -- but what held the rushed script together was Zachary Levi's work in the scenes where Chuck tried to say goodbye to people, just in case. Levi's good with the jokes and all (see the weak thighs joke from "Undercover Lover"), but what really makes the show work is the vulnerable charm he brings to the part. I knew Chuck wasn't going to be sent to the bunker, but Levi at least made me feel recognize how lousy even the possibility was.

One other note: I hope Yvonne Strahovski has spent a good chunk of the strike hanging at the dojo, because she looked badly outclassed by the actress playing pita girl in the latest Wienerlicious throwdown.

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Chuck: Who can retell the things that befell us, who can count them?

Spoilers for "Chuck" coming up just as soon as I try some of Jeff's eggnog...

"Chuck Bartowski will return after the New Year... at least, we hope so."

Well, thanks to the back nine (or whatever) pick-up, not to mention the two episodes in the can that are being saved for whenever production resumes, we know "Chuck" will be back -- at some point -- and this wasn't a bad one to go out on for however many weeks or months it's going to take for the strike to end.

The meat of "Chuck Versus the Crown Vic" was ostensibly the status of Chuck and Sarah's relationship post-Bryce and post-kiss, but for me the real heart of the episode was Casey. Casey always gets stuck as the third wheel, posing as the limo driver or the roulette dealer or the cater waiter while Chuck and Sarah get glammed up, but he's kind of carrying the team, staying level-headed and (other than his boxers-and-handcuffs incident) not letting himself get sucked into the romantic shenanigans that so often distract his partners. As he said to Sarah, they made a choice when they became spies, and he has no problems living with the ramifications of that choice -- but damn if he didn't look conflicted when reminded that Chuck would be taken care of once the new Intersect gets up and running. The guy's human, after all, and not just for inanimate objects like his bansai tree, his guns or his beloved, now-totaled Crown Vic. Adam Baldwin always brings the one-liner-y goodness on this show, but last night he had a number of really nice dramatic moments, like his speech to Sarah or the aforementioned reaction to the Intersect news. But my favorite may have been a combination of the funny and the serious, as Casey tried to deal with the Crown Vic's destruction, and you could see him going through all five stages of grief simultaneously. He wanted to kill Chuck, but he also understood why it happened.

(That said, couldn't the three of them have just jumped off the boat? Or were there too many unconscious bad guys lying around who would have blown up real good?)

After Casey, my favorite part of the episode was Lester hustling the staff at dreidel to the tune of "Pimp Juice." (One of two superb hip-hop selections on the soundtrack, the other being Run-DMC's "Christmas in Hollis" at the party.) I had almost forgotten that Lester was taking bar mitzvah lessons for whatever reason, and the idea of him trying to exploit his apparent conversion to Judaism to get over on his co-workers -- whether with the dreidel, forcing Big Mike to refer to the Christmas party as a holiday party, calling Jeff "bubeleh" (Hebrew -- or maybe Yiddish, I forget -- for "sweetheart") was damned amusing to me on the night before the Festival of Lights begins. Even though Schwartz refuses to make Chuck Jewish, it's nice to have some kind of Semitic culture from the man who gave us Chrismukkah.

The episode had a few weak spots -- after being really engaged in the Chuck/Sarah thing for the last three episodes, their bickering here didn't click for me, and Morgan with Anna's parents was definitely on the low end of the Morgan curve -- but what other show is going to give me gratuitous "Passenger 57" references in the middle of a Bond parody scene?

Bye, "Chuck." Of the new shows being scuttled by the strike, I'll miss you most of all. Come back soon, okay?

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Chuck: The pineapple incident

Spoilers for "Chuck" coming up just as soon as I practice my hurdling...

So on the same night that NBC announced that "Chuck" was getting a full-season order (the number of additional episodes will depend on how long the strike lasts), the show presented a strong example of why it deserved the extension. Maybe it wasn't the life-altering hour promised by the promo monkeys (more grousing about them in a minute), but it was the usual amount of fun, and in at least one area improved on what the show had done to date.

As a blend of comedy, drama and action, "Chuck" has been consistently good at the first, often good at the second and usually just acceptable at the third. Doing cool action with the budget and, more importantly, schedule of a weekly TV series is hard ("24" and, especially, "Alias," are the only recent shows I can think of where the fights and shoot-outs rarely felt perfunctory), and outside of Bryce's parkour-flavored escape from the Intersect lab in the pilot and Sarah and Casey's spork-off at the Wienerlicious in episode two, the action on "Chuck" has been just north of okay. Sarah throws a couple of high kicks, Casey fires off a couple of shots, and... scene. Fortunately, those sequences are usually over so quickly that it's not a big deal, and I'll take funny jokes and likable characters over kewl martial arts, but the action was definitely lagging behind the other parts of the show... until last night.

I'm not saying the big showdown at the Buy More would have fit seamlessly into a John Woo or Jet Li movie, but moments like Casey two-fisting a pair of semi-automatics or Sarah and Bryce fighting back to back looked a lot more impressive than what this show has typically given us when it's time for a bit of the ultra-violence. It helped to have Matthew Bomer back as Bryce, since he's clearly more assured with this stuff than Yvonne Strahovski.

And yet, in typical "Chuck" fashion, the most impressive bit of action was comic. I went back and replayed Big Mike's vault over the counter three or four times, both because it consistently made me laugh and to make sure there wasn't an obvious edit or other kind of cheat in there. But no, that was actor Mark Christopher Lawrence, invoking the old comic book cliche of "How can anything so big move so fast?" Maybe he had help from a hidden trampoline, but I don't care. That was just a splendid moment, and one of those lighter bits that reminds me not to take the show seriously enough to start nitpicking the reality of stuff like Casey's weapons cache in the home theater room. (Plus, Chuck did a good job of pointing out the silliness of that one.)

I worried that bringing Bryce back so soon wasn't the wisest decision, that it was something Schwartz and Fedak could have saved for down the road when the episodic stories were wearing a little thinner. But there's always this weird dance a new show has to do, especially one that didn't get much love from the network until late in the game: you can't pull a Lou Piniella and try to save your big guns for games that might not get played. Bryce's return led to a solid episode with nice dramatic work from Strahovski and Zachary Levi (who was superb in the moment where Chuck recognized what a perfect match Sarah and Bryce were), and they wrote him out in a way that will allow him to come back and cause trouble for Chuck down the road, if need be. (Maybe even as someone who's gotten too deep into his cover identity and gone rogue for real?)

And not that I was exactly panicked about which phone Sarah would answer -- the show's called "Chuck," not "Bryce" -- but the promo monkeys once again did a splendid job of ruining the fun with their ad for next week's episode. I guess they thought the promise of Strahovski in a bikini was a better hook than finding out who she chose.

Some other quick thoughts on "Chuck Versus the Nemesis":

-Much like Ellie, I think it's time for a moratorium on the big family dinners. Captain Awesome trying to bond with Casey was funny as the Captain always is, but the Thanksgiving dinner scene, like a similar sequence back in "Chuck Versus the Helicopter," was more labored than this show usually gets.

-I always like Julia Ling (in her brief appearances as the drunken viola player, she was one of the few genuinely amusing parts of "Studio 60," and she made a great band geek in the otherwise forgettable Chris Brown guest arc in the final "O.C." season), but there needed to be some kind of explanation for why Anna is back with Morgan after he humiliated her with the public dumping last week.

-I loved that Jeff has to fix the cash registers because he's the only guy in the store old enough to remember the '80s, and I loved him and Lester cowering under the Nerd Herd desk while Morgan tried to talk them out.

-You make the call: was the use of "pineapple" as the safety word another lift from "How I Met Your Mother" (where one of the show's best episodes revolved around a pineapple incident), a bit of friendly ribbing (Schwartz and the HIMYM guys have been photographed hanging out together on the picket line), or a complete coincidence?

-I'm enough of a nerd to immediately recognize that Bryce and Chuck were speaking Klingon, but not enough of one to be able to translate any of it. Any of you who are nerdier than me: did the dialogue match what they said it was supposed to be, was it one of those "My Name Is Earl" things where they were saying something else entirely for the audience's benefit, or was it just gibberish?

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Chuck: I find the pastrami to be the most sensual of all the salted, cured meats

Spoilers for "Chuck" coming up just as soon as I sharpen the knife in my shoe...

For a long time, the NBC promo department was unsurpassed at two things: 1)Getting better-than-expected (or sometimes deserved) tune-ins for shows, and 2)Ruining all the big surprises for the people who tuned into those shows. Based on NBC's perennial cellar-dwelling these days, they're not so good at the former anymore, but man do they still kick butt at the latter.

There was a major development (Chuck and Sarah kiss!) and a major surprise (Bryce lives!) at the end of "Chuck Versus the Hard Salami," and of course, the ads ruined both of them with overly-strong hints. Grr. Argh.

Fortunately, the episode's A-story was strong enough that it didn't need to rely on the "Holy crap!" factor, as the writers and actors had a lot of fun with the all-too-brief Chuck/Sarah/Lou love triangle. Among the many things Josh Schwartz proved with "O.C." season one is that he can give good triangle: the Seth/Summer/Anna trio were written well enough that, even though the audience had been geared up to root for Seth and Summer, I think most of us would have been okay had he stayed with Anna longer. Similarly, there were obvious pros and cons to Chuck being with either Lou (beautiful, normal, funny, overtly into him, but someone he'd have to lie to all the time) or Sarah (beautiful, in on the secret, but also scary and still hung up on Bryce) -- which oddly, makes Rachel Bilson the Anna, not the Summer, in this scenario.

I'm not sure what it is about sandwiches that makes them both so good and so funny, but making Lou a sandwich impresario remained an inspired choice -- not so much in the fake orgasm sound gag at the beginning (one of several predictable jokes in the episode; more on that when we get to the Morgan story) than for Chuck making his sandwich order sound like dirty talk. ("This is a hot sandwich, sweetheart. In the reuben family.") I'm going to miss Lou, but it's not like she could never resurface, what with her store being in the same strip mall and the break-up having been fairly amicable.

Meanwhile, I know there's been some debate about what value that Yvonne Strahovski brings to the show -- besides looking great in the Wienerlicious uniform, of course. I had recently concluded that she brought enough dramatically and in chemistry with Zachary Levi that it didn't much matter that she wasn't funny. Turns out, she can be -- at least, in a way that plays off of how good she looks in the Wienerlicious uniform, as her terrifying seduction of Lester may have been the episode's comic highlight. ("What about that movie?") Some actors are inherently funny, while others need material tailored to their strengths. Based on that scene and the "Out of Sight"-esque argument in the car trunk, it looks like the "Chuck" writers may be figuring out what Strahovski's strengths are.

I know there's also been a lot of debate about what value Morgan brings to the show. I've generally been agnostic to favorable about Morgan, with "Chuck Versus the Sandworm" being a symbol of all the good things he can add to the show. This episode was the flip side of that, the first time I actively disliked the Morgan/Buy More portions, which so telegraphed all their punchlines (Morgan wrongfully assumes Anna is telling the guys about the kiss and blabs it himself, Morgan dumps Anna way too soon) that even the NBC promo department couldn't have ruined them any more.

(Again, the A-story had some telegraphed jokes of its own -- see also Lou's crate of smuggled salamis -- but enough good things were going on around them that it didn't matter so much.)

We all figured Bryce would be back sooner or later, so I doubt my jaw would have been on the floor whenever he turned up, but it would have been nice to find out without any help. I wonder if it's a one-time-only return or if he'll be some kind of recurring nemesis.

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Chuck: The Summer of truth

Spoilers for "Chuck" coming up just as soon as I do a gymnastics routine...

A lot went on in the damned entertaining "Chuck Versus the Truth" -- the end of Chuck's (maybe not so) fake relationship, the beginning of a new (and potentially real) one, and sodium pentathol/near-death-fueled revelations by Chuck and Ellie -- but I want to start with the most permanent change:

Oh my god, they banished Harry Tang! You bastards!

While I'm sad to see the control freak go, the producers really didn't have any choice in the matter. In between pilot and series, C.S. Lee got promoted to regular cast status on "Dexter," and when you have a full-time job on one show, they're usually not wild about you moonlighting on another. That "Chuck" got to engage his services for this many episodes was kind of a bonus, and if Masuka should ever get as close to uncovering Dexter's secret identity as he did here with Chuck, he'd likely suffer a far worse fate -- which in turn would allow Lee to come back here.

(That Harry Tang -- and even in his farewell episode, it's a sign of what a vividly-etched character he was that I feel compelled to use the full name every time -- could stumble across Team Chuck conducting confidential government business in the middle of the Buy More illustrates what a contrivance it is for them to use the home theater room for that purpose instead of Casey's apartment, but at least it's a contrivance they've been using since episode two. If they'd dreamed it up just to get rid of Harry, I'd be annoyed.)

Not sure yet what I'd like to see happen with the assistant manager position. It could be a new character, or it could be Harry Tang protege Lester, but I feel like we've been given several hints now that Morgan will wind up with it, and that might be best. It would give Joshua Gomez a different color to play and also create some interesting tension between Chuck and Morgan. It's one thing for Chuck to sneak around behind that jerk Harry Tang's back to do his night job, but could he handle lying even more to his best friend -- especially after an episode in which the weight of all these lies and secrets (secrets and lies!) finally becomes too much to bear?

I'm glad the writers didn't string out Chuck and Sarah's cover relationship forever. Chuck's a nice guy and kind of a pushover, but that was just a cruel situation for him to be stuck in, with this blonde goddess blocking his access to other women and yet not allowing him access to herself. If the government needed an excuse for Sarah and Chuck to be spending so much time together, they could have had her move in to his building, or work at the Buy More (though it would have deprived us of the Wienerlicious uniform), or pretend to be Casey's girlfriend or whatever. This was unnecessary (in Chuck-world, though it created good tension in TV viewer-world), and good for Chuck for finally putting an end to it.

It helped that he had a good reason to end it in Lou the sandwich lady, AKA adorable and funny original Josh Schwartz player Rachel Bilson. Given the oft-discussed resemblance between Zachary Levi and Adam Brody (though I've realized it's mostly about the hair), there could have been a danger of this just turning into a rehash of Seth and Summer from "The O.C.," but Schwartz has written a character for Bilson that plays to her banter-y strengths without being the exact same person. Lou's passion for sandwiches reminded of of latter-day Summer's non-GE-mandated passion for the environment. But there's a straightforwardness and even a vulnerability to Lou that's new and appealing. I can't see Summer telling some guy she just met that she likes him so much she'd be into him if/when he dumped his current girlfriend, for instance.

What made "Truth" one of the strongest episodes yet (maybe not as funny as "Sandworm," but emotionally richer) was that it wasn't just about Chuck's bogus love life, but the larger question of him playing spy and lying to everyone about it. Chuck's angst would have worked even better if Ellie's situation could actually be blamed on his new life, rather than a coincidental case of wrong place/wrong time/loud-mouthed baby brother -- a point Casey or Sarah could have made more forcefully when he got too self-pitying -- but the scenes in the hospital were very strong.

In today's column, I talked about how the spy stories and villains aren't the series' strongest element, but this one was helped out mightily by the casting of Kevin Weisman, as he has more screen presence than most of the bad guys to date. Plus, it was bizarrely compelling to imagine Marshall from "Alias" as both an evil poisoner and a gymnast. And the gymnast thing led to that great Indiana Jones in Cairo moment where Weisman did a million backflips and then Sarah just shot him in the leg.

The sodium pentathol element to the poison provided several opportunities for good laughs, first with Ellie unloading on poor, unsuspecting Captain Awesome -- "If everything is awesome and nothing is unawesome, then everything by definition is mediocre!" -- then with Chuck and Casey being unable to lie about their plans to double-cross each other with the antidote. And of course it led to that sweet moment at the end where we find out Sarah was somehow unaffected by the truth serum. It wasn't exactly a surprise, as Yvonne Strahovski was playing the "Is this ever going anywhere?" scene like a woman madly in love with Chuck, but it was still effective.

Some other thoughts on "Chuck Versus the Truth":

• The moment where Chuck finally called Captain Awesome by his real name felt both earned and well set-up. (In contrast, "Scrubs" a few years ago built an episode's emotional climax on Dr. Cox finally referring to J.D. as J.D., but it wasn't quite as effective if you remembered that he did it a few times in the early days before the writers decided it was important that he not.)


• I will forgive the use of a Britney Spears song (albeit an on-the-nose one like "Toxic") because the episode also used Elmer Bernstein's soaring "Great Escape" theme (one of the most iconic film scores ever) as Casey talked Harry Tang into moving to Hawaii.


• Again, I realize Morgan is an acquired taste for some, but I really liked his "Her hair looked so much like licorice" line about Lou.


• Another funny, off-kilter line: Lou's "Our vast height difference intrigues me."

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Sepinwall on TV: More 'Chuck,' please

Ordinarily, I try not to write too many columns about any one show, even the ones I love, more than two or three times a season: once at the start, once near the end, and maybe once at the middle. The strike, however, wreaks havoc with that approach, and there are shows where I have to write about now or never -- particularly the borderline cases like "Chuck" that didn't get back nine orders before the writers walked. An excerpt from today's column:

Levi's appealing Everyman quality allows him to convincingly utter lines like "You know, if I had a blog, this would be a really big day for me" after discovering he may have been poisoned to death, and it allows the writers to sometimes get away with forgettable spy heroics. The espionage stories on "Chuck" aren't going to make anyone forsake the Bond or Bourne movies anytime soon, but because Chuck's in the middle of them, they're often besides the point. We just want to see how he's going to respond to being poisoned, or to having to land a helicopter with no training outside of video games, or, tonight, to being in a fake relationship with Sarah when a real girl would date him if she didn't think he had a girlfriend.

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Chuck: Survey course

Spoilers for last night's "Chuck" coming up just as soon as I put "Gotcha!" in my Netflix queue...

After last week's outstanding "Chuck Versus the Sandworm," it was all but inevitable that the next episode would be a letdown. "Chuck Versus the Alma Mater" wasn't a bad episode, necessarily, but it was probably my least favorite episode since "Chuck Versus the Helicopter" in week two.

As I've written before, I appreciate the attempts to make Chuck more than just a comic character, to make us care about him and his emotional journey, but "Chuck" as a series works better when the comedy and/or action quotient is a lot higher than it was here. So Chuck's not in a very funny place in this episode because he has to confront his Stanford past? Fine, but then give Casey more to do beyond the hilarious one-two punch of "Take a shower, hippie!" followed by "Leave the quips to me." Or involve Captain Awesome more in the trip somehow, or make the fight with the crossbow-wielding Icelandic dude more elaborate.

As it was, virtually all the comic load had to be carried by "Chuck" lightning rod sidekick Morgan, with some support from Harry Tang and the Nerd Herders. That stuff was funny, particularly all the guys once again getting overheated at any whiff of Anna's sexuality, but also Lester selling out Morgan for a yellow shirt, and Harry's "One remote to rule them all!" I don't understand the mechanics of the remote resolution, though; how did Morgan again get access to the thing to reprogram it? (On the plus side, I liked the callback to last week with Morgan pointing out that he can't be fired.)

Still, Zachary Levi did a good job with the pathos, and I figured Bryce sold out Chuck for more altruistic reasons, even if it doesn't explain why he then stole Chuck's girlfriend -- or why, four years later, he was willing to get Chuck involved in the espionage world when he had to do such a terrible thing to keep him out of it to begin with. But I imagine this isn't the last we've seen of Mr. Larkin, whether in flashback or some shocking return from death.

A few other odds and ends:

• "Don't Look Back in Anger" was a big hit during my early-mid '90s college days, so using it as the music cue for Chuck's flashback to 2003 seemed odd. On the other hand, the lyrics fit, and I suppose I prefer that to the "Journeyman" and "Cold Case" approach of just playing the biggest hits of that particular moment in time.
• Lots and lots of '80s references in this one, from Harry's remote code being OU812 to Morgan having ruined "Karate Kid 2" for Ellie (as if it didn't largely come pre-ruined) with his karoke take on "Glory of Love" to Anna seducing Harry to the strains of Hall and Oates.
• I again want to sing the praises of the "hippie"/"quips" double-shot. The first line was lame, but then made hilarious by the second, and Casey's belief that he's a master quipster.

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Chuck: For your ears only, Casey

Spoilers for the latest "Chuck" coming up just as soon as I rank the James Bond movies in qualitative order (a list that would have "A View to a Kill" at or near the bottom)...

Damn, I enjoyed that. Easily the funniest "Chuck" to date, and one with a decent emotional core, too. I don't know if the show has levels beyond what it's giving us now, but if the execution can be this good every week, I'm cool with it.

Start with the funny, with the episode hilariously bookended by Morgan playing Mystery Crisper (I'll admit that I have a weakness for comedy about people eating or smelling disgusting things) and Chuck tormenting Casey with a rehash of the desert island sandwich debate. In between we got the Captain dressed as Biblical Adam (twice!), the Captain teaching Morgan how to be a tucker (and does it speak ill of me that I'm several years older than both Morgan and the Captain and yet I prefer to be untucked?), and Josh Schwartz spoofing himself with the slo-mo montage of Chuck running to profess his bromantic love to Morgan, which was note-for-note from the New Year's Eve episode of "The O.C." season one, down to the use of Finley Quaye's "Dice" on the soundtrack.

(And if you're not an "O.C." viewer, it's still funny as a spoof of the climax to half the bad romantic comedies produced since "When Harry Met Sally.")

On the emotional core side, the villain of the week worked well as a counterpoint to Chuck, with some similarities but not so many as to be "ER" or "Grey's Anatomy"-level sledgehammer-y, and Chuck and Morgan both dealt with some maturation issues and yet still managed to end the episode doing the Sandworm dance.

Good stuff all around (with the exception of Chuck's "View to a Kill" love, though it's probably age-appropriate as one of the first Bonds he saw). As I'm still wrestling with my twee tolerance when it comes to "Pushing Daisies," I'd have to say this episode puts "Chuck" in the lead as my favorite new show of the season.

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Chuck: Sizzling siblings

Spoilers for "Chuck" coming up just as soon as I make a stakeout mix CD...

Thus far, the reaction to Morgan seems to have a range of "Gah, I can't stand him!" to "He's funny, but only in small doses," so the prospect of us having to spend An Evening Of Morgan along with Chuck, Sarah and Ellie wasn't that exciting. But you know what? It kind of worked, mainly because there was an effort to humanize him, to make him more than just the pathetic comic relief. He bonded with Ellie (the surrogate for the "Gah, can't stand him!" segment of the audience) and showed that sometimes he's a lousy salesman not because he's incompetent, but because he's too kind-hearted. By the end, I'd say my opinion of the guy was roughly on par with Ellie's: I still wouldn't want to spend a whole lot of time hanging out with him, but he seems like good people. I actually felt bad for him when the Nerd Herders deployed The Wounded Raccoon at the exact wrong moment (though I was also laughing at the time).

The spy story had some interesting touches, chief among them Chuck both screwing up royally and then saving the day (with the help of the fireworks that seemed like a throwaway joke earlier in the episode). It's going to get old eventually if Chuck is told on every mission to wait in the car and then disobeys that order, but it was worth it here for the fight scene with the freeze frames: the three spies each got a freeze frame when they were throwing an impressive punch or kick, while Chuck got one while stopping a really old man from getting away in his wheelchair. If you don't have the time/budget to do elaborately choreographed fights, might as well find a way to make them funny, and that was.

I also like how, once again, we're exploring some of the real emotional ramifications of Chuck's new life, this time in how it affects his relationship with Ellie. When I watched the pilot, I worried that Ellie would quickly become deadweight in the same way that Francie and Will Tippin did on "Alias" (until Francie got killed and replaced and Will went to work for the CIA), but that hasn't happened yet. Sibling relationships are something that most TV seem ambivalent about, because there can't (or shouldn't) be any sexual tension, but seeing Chuck struggle to be a good brother -- and learning how he and Ellie were effectively orphaned years ago -- makes me like him more and more.

Oh, and Chuck sang along to "Private Eyes." Since the Captain was absent this week (no doubt for budget reasons, same as Harry Tang), let me just say that that was awesome.

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Diamonds are for Mondays

Spoilers for "Chuck" and "How I Met Your Mother" coming up just as soon as I rip apart this headboard...

Interesting approach for "Chuck" episode four, which was fairly light on the laughs -- minimal Casey and almost no time spent with Captain Awesome or at the Buy More -- while working to give some emotional heft to Sarah and the inevitable Chuck/Sarah 'ship. I missed the Nerd Herd and Harry Tang, but, as with episode two, I'm glad Schwartz and Fedak want us to genuinely understand and care about these characters. Chuck needed to find out about Sarah and Bryce sooner or later, but I like that the bigger obstacle to their cover becoming an actual relationship was the matter of Sarah's secrets. (Dammit, there's that word again! Sorry.) Yvonne Strahovski could probably still use a good fight trainer -- though with the outfits they keep having her fight in, I'm not sure how much of the audience even notices -- but she and Levi have great chemistry and she did a really nice job with "My middle name is Lisa."

Other things I liked: Casey falling for the same stunt that got him in trouble in Prague, and Casey -- who somehow got his pants on even with his hands in that position -- trying to make nice with the mom and daughter in the elevator; Chuck seeking refuge in the hotel business center and showing off his mad label-printing skills to protect the diamond; and Carina with her remote-controlled jet ski. If I were in a letter grade-giving mood, I'd say, B, B+ episode...

... which is just a shade better than what I'd give the latest "How I Met Your Mother." I'm still concerned, as we're four weeks into the season and there hasn't been a really strong episode yet, but this one didn't bug me nearly as much as the last two. I liked Robin's breakfast encounter with the little kid (and remain amused as always that Brad Rowe, as the dad, continues to get work entirely on the basis of his vague resemblance to Brad Pitt, rather than any identifiable talent of his own), and I really liked Ted and Barney belittling all of Marshall's attempts to assert his own game.

Still, Ted and Robin remain the show's weakest links, comedy-wise, so this pattern of one getting the A-story and one the B-story isn't a good one; when they were dating last year, we were guaranteed to have one plot or the other devoted to some combo or Barney, Marshall and Lily. These two stories had some funnier moments than the last couple of episodes and I understand the writers' desire to start the season focusing on how each of Ted and Robin is moving on from their relationship. I just don't want it to go on much longer.

Unfortunately, I have a nagging suspicion that it will. When I interviewed Thomas and Bays back at press tour, they were rattling off a bunch of upcoming stories they had planned for the characters this season, and one of them mentioned that Marshall and Lily would begin looking for their own place. I asked what else they had in mind for those two, and both guys metaphorically scratched their heads and said that, at the moment, that was kind of it. I know we have Marshall's next slap coming up sometime in October, and at some point I guess we'll get to see the apartment hunt, but unless we go heavy on Barney storylines soon, this could wind up being a lost season.

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Chuck: She'll take the lead

Spoilers for episode three of "Chuck" coming up just as soon as I paint some happy little trees and happy little clouds...

And here's our show.

Set-up, done. Exposition, done. Questions of Sarah and Casey's loyalty, mostly done. (There's still the matter of what happens when the new Intersect comes online in six months.) "Chuck Versus the Tango" is, according to Schwartz, roughly what the series will look like going forward, and I'm perfectly happy with that.

Where "Chuck Versus the Helicopter" occasionally succumbed to Albert Brooks in "Broadcast News" levels of flop sweat, "Tango" moved very confidently and casually between Chuck's three worlds of home, Buy More and the spy stuff.

Ellie and Captain Awesome got shorter shrift than the other two -- save the bathrobed Captain inadvertently teaching Chuck the girl's part in the tango -- but I think that's just about right for most weeks. (On the other hand, with Casey and -- I think -- Sarah living in the same building with Chuck and Ellie, there should be excuses for more home stuff down the road. I look forward to the Captain trying to make Casey his workout buddy and Casey despising his irrepressible chipperness.)

The episonage plot is walking the right side of that line between being comic but vaguely real and a straight-up, "Naked Gun"-style spoof. The former is sustainable in a format like this, while the latter would get old. It's all goofy and in good fun, but there's at least a sense that Chuck is in real danger from La Ciudad and her henchmen, and that things could have gotten very ugly at the Buy More if Casey wasn't so good at tossing microwaves around. (That stunt was cool enough that I'll forgive him the "that's what I call moving some merchandise" kiss-off line -- or the writers for not having Chuck complain about it.) There were a lot of funny moments along the way -- Chuck busting his old classmate for insider trading, La Ciudad not caring that Chuck has to dance the girl's part, Chuck convincing La Ciudad of his true identity with some hardcore geek speak -- but there was just enough of a genuine spy story here to work as a frame on which the writers could hang the jokes. (I was also fond of the opening sequence, with everyone complaining about how ugly the painting was right before getting shot.)

But what really sold me on the episode -- and, by extension, the series -- was the material at the Buy More. I like that they're already establishing individual character traits for the employees, like Lester studying for Bar Mitzvah lessons or Anna stopping the guys dead in their tracks with the notion that she goes both ways. (Sexually adventurous nerds: breaking TV barriers every week.) I don't know that you can have Chuck being on a mission while simultaneously trying to defuse a Nerd Herd crisis every week, but the balance was good here, and gave everyone in the extended and very likable cast something to do. (And was I the only one who briefly though that Morgan was going to do such a good job motivating the Nerds that he'd suddenly become the dark horse for assistant manager?)

A few other brief thoughts:

• I doubt I'll often have cause to namecheck Oscar foreign language film winners in my reviews of this show, but the role reversed tango reminded me a lot of a similar scene in "Belle Epoque," though that one took it a step further by dressing the girl as a guy and vice versa. I doubt NBC would go for their hero cross-dressing in only the third episode (feels like more of a sweeps plotline).
• Speaking of wardrobe, this is two "Sarah dresses to provoke -- and to hide weapons on her person" montages in three episodes though this one was intercut not only with Chuck putting on his tux, but Lester and the Nerds trying to break a time record for fixing a computer blindfolded.
• I'm writing this review without having seen the new opening title sequence that's supposed to be attached to tonight's show (one DVR will be recording "HIMYM," the other the Yankee game), but I'll catch it online later. Any thoughts?
• Bob Ross reference! I will cut any show that makes a reference to the gentle afro'ed one a whole lot of slack.

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Wiener-iffic

Spoilers for the second episodes of "Chuck" and "Journeyman" coming up just as soon as I boot up my old Apple IIe for a game of Choplifter...

Many regime changes ago, someone in NBC research did a study claiming that even the most devoted fans of TV shows watch, on average, only half the episodes that air each year. The executives change, but that one theory stuck, and so many decisions at the network are made with it in mind: airing episodes out of order because they think no one will notice, or making producers of new series thematically repeat large chunks of the pilot episode with show two just in case people weren't paying attention or newbies waited a week to sample.

There's a little of that going on with "Journeyman" (more below), and a whole lot with "Chuck," where the second episode is basically an extra pilot episode. We get more of Chuck unsure of his loyalty to Sarah, Casey, or both; so much talk about "secrets" that I hope to God Josh Schwartz has the word banned from all future scripts (it wouldn't be half as annoying if they changed it up now and then, or stuck to a more official-sounding phrase like "classified intel" or whatever); an A-story designed to explain why the government can't just extract all the secrets (grr...) from Chuck's brain, etc. It's not really until the third episode that the series proper gets going -- which somebody in NBC promo agrees with, given how many of the "Chuck" ads during last night's Giants-Eagles game featured scenes from episode three versus this one.

That said, I appreciate what's going on here, especially after watching the "Bionic Woman" pilot. While the tones of each show are polar opposites, the basic substance is the same -- ordinary person gifted with superhuman powers and forced against their will to work for shadowy government types -- and yet the series that's actually taking the time to hit all the emotional buttons on the journey is the goofy comedy and not the dark drama. "Bionic Woman" just zipped past almost all of its lead's reactions to almost dying, losing her baby, turning bionic, having to work for Miguel Ferrer, etc., and if "Chuck Versus the Helicopter" is occasionally repetitive and maybe a shade too frantic (particularly the farcical dinner scene), at least it's trying to help you understand and care about its hero's feelings. Yes, it's mainly a comedy, but I've always believed that the best comedies feature recognizable human emotion at their core, and Schwartz and company are working at that.

Plus, it has that awesome fight at the Wienerlicious stand, which was miles better than the big "Bionic Woman" catfight in the rain. It featured so many wonderful things, including everyday objects (plastic forks, wooden hot dog sticks) being used as lethal weapons, plus a pretty girl kicking butt in a ridiculous outfit (the secret to the early genius of "Alias").

Next week's "Chuck Versus the Tango" is better, but there was other good stuff sprinkled throughout, including the "Lost" joke during Dr. Zarnow's test of Chuck ("Oceanic Flight 815 was shot down by (garble garble)"), Morgan trying to role-play with Casey, Captain Awesome (real first name: Kevin) saying "Indeed!" in delight when Sarah describes Ellie as awesome, the notion of mini-quiches with tracking devices (lest anyone try to take anything about the show too seriously) and even the tablecloth running gag (though there is no excuse for them to not have Morgan say "The flowers are still standing!" when his attempt failed).

Meanwhile, "Journeyman" loses a good chunk of whatever small goodwill the pilot's closing scene built up by coming back in episode two with Dan's wife again thinking he's a nutjob and not a time traveler. Then it loses even more with some of the least subtle period cues you can imagine (the disco/porno airplane, the "INTERNET EROTICA CONVENTION" sign at the hotel) and that completely random explanation for why Dan was tracking that girl's life. Why spend an hour getting us to, in theory, care about what happens to the girl and then reveal that she was entirely besides the point, and the entire mission was about the pilot who we met for all of 30 seconds? There's a difference between being unpredictable and just jerking the audience around.

There were a few nice touches on the margins, with Livia giving Dan advice on how to survive on his trips to the past (though the olde-timey cell phone is only going to work when Dan travels to a year when he had a plan for it, no?), but barring a brilliant episode in the next week or two, I don't think there's anything to see here.

What did everybody else think?

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Monday rookie round-up

I reviewed all three of "Chuck," "Big Bang Theory" and "Journeyman" in today's columns, but I'll have some brief additional thoughts on each coming up just as soon as I price out nail guns at the Large Mart...

Like I said in the column, of the three "Chuck" episodes I've seen, the third is the strongest (the second is the weakest). This one obviously spends a whole lot of time setting up the premise, introducing the three worlds in which Chuck will move (home with his sister, at work with the Nerd Herd, and saving the world with Adam Baldwin and Olivia Wilde lookalike Yvonne Strahovski). I like Chuck the character a lot already, thanks to Zachary Levi (who doesn't play it exactly the same way Adam Brody would have, even though they also look alike) and his chemistry with Joshua Gomez as Morgan the sidekick, and I love the little deadpan comedy moments, like Chuck being menaced at the Large Mart by the bomb maker, Chuck's "Any Way You Want It" ringtone going off in the middle of a crisis and, of course, the porn star computer virus saving the day.

One thing I didn't get around to mentioning in my "Big Bang Theory" review is how much obvious contempt the writers have for all three of the main characters. I'm not saying you can't have a comedy where the characters aren't very likeable for the audience, but the writers have to like them on some level for it to work. It was obvious that Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant had great affection for David Brent on "The Office" even as they made him behave like an absolute git, or that the "Taxi" writers probably would have preferred hoisting a beer with Louie DePalma more than any other character on that show. I don't get that at all between these writers and these characters, who just come across like the stereotypical two dweebs and an airhead that the premise suggests. Jim Parsons made me laugh a few times with the way he delivered his lines, but beyond that, bleah.

Where some of my optimism about "Chuck" comes from having seen further down the road, the lame second "Journeyman" only makes me less enthusiastic about a show I was already agressively meh about. As a literary-type drama, it's not going to hold a candle to a book like "The Time Traveler's Wife," and the creators aren't interested enough in the sci-fi trappings to have any fun with the rules of time travel. There was one scene in the original pilot that I really liked, the bit where Dan unearths the toolbox with the engagement ring to prove to his wife that he'd traveled to the past, but I realized in watching the final version that most of my affection for it came from the U2 song being used; The Fray doesn't carry it nearly as well.

What did everybody else think?

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I consider myself a nyerd...

The first of today's two columns reviews the nearly identical -- and almost equally good -- "Chuck" and "Reaper":

Meet Sam. Sam is in his 20s, an underachieving college drop-out who works at a big- box store and lives with his parents. One day, through the actions of his folks, he develops superhuman powers he doesn't want and has to moonlight for Satan or face eternal damnation.

Now meet Chuck. Chuck is in his 20s, an underachieving college drop-out who works at a big-box store and lives with his sister. One day, through the actions of his ex-roommate, he develops superhuman powers he doesn't want and has to moonlight for the U.S. government or face a quick execution.

Yup, a new TV season is upon us, and that means it's time for the annual case of double vision.

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