Chuck vs. the season 2 DVD

"Chuck" comes back on Sunday night (I gave a few early thoughts on the new episodes last month), which means purchasers of the "Chuck: The Complete Second Season" DVD set (which hits stores and places like Amazon tomorrow) will only have a few days to dive through the 22 episodes to get up to speed for the new batch. (In fairness to Warner Bros., the release date was set back when everyone assumed season three wouldn't begin until March, and I don't know how easy it is to change course at the last minute.)

After the jump, a few thoughts on the DVD set, and if you're interested in a chance to meet the cast and/or help out a real good cause, go check out the We Heart Chuck site for details, ASAP...

My review copy was one of the limited-edition ones, which includes the 3-D version of "Chuck vs. the Third Dimension" as well as two pairs of 3-D glasses so that you and your special lady or gentleman friend can watch it together. Having just seen "Avatar," it's hard to be as impressed by effects like a knife flying at the screen or Big Mike's donut moving towards his mouth, but the episode itself remains fun.

And that's my sum feeling about the set in general. The special features are interesting to varying degrees, but the real draw is 22 episodes of one of the most purely fun seasons of TV I've ever had the pleasure to watch and review.

As to the other features, my favorite was probably "Dude in Distress," a breakdown of how they put together the show's stunts (with an extended look at Sarah and Nicole Richie's shower smackdown in "Chuck vs. the Cougars"), but there are also deleted scenes from most episodes (nothing plot-heavy from what I saw; mostly it's jokes that got cut for time), the webisodes about the Buy More staff that ran early last year, a funny gag reel (if you like that sort of thing; if nothing else, it's a rare opportunity to see the usually serious Yvonne Strahovski smiling and laughing), a more general behind-the-scenes featurette, and a couple of funny sequences where Captain Awesome and Casey separately offer tips on how to deal with everyday problems like job interviewing, first dates and going to your high school reunion.

But, again, I was much happier to just have a permanent copy of episodes like "Chuck vs. the Santa Claus" or "Chuck vs. the Colonel" than I was to play with the bonus features. This is going to become one of my go-to DVD sets whenever I'm having a sick day. (Which I'm hoping today doesn't turn into.) Click here to read the full post

Chuck: "Chuck vs. the Ring": Greatest American hero?

Extremely long spoilers for the "Chuck" season finale coming up just as soon as I get my backup hosiery from the car...

"Sometimes, I think you have super powers." -Ellie
"Yeah, I wish." -Chuck

"If, in two weeks, that is the last episode of the show to ever air, it will be one of the least satisfying finales of all time." -Josh Schwartz, 4/20/09

Far be it from me to disagree with the almighty Schwartz, but I have a hard time attaching the phrase "least satisfying" in any context related to "Chuck vs. the Ring."

I will be beyond frustrated if NBC doesn't renew the show a week from today, and I sure as hell want to see how (of if) Schwartz and Chris Fedak (who had a lot to say about the finale and the season in our interview) can maintain the series' brilliant comic tone now that Chuck appears to have superpowers. But if this should unfortunately be the last episode of "Chuck" ever -- and I hope enough people did their part, followed Zachary Levi's lead and went to Subway tonight -- then dammit, they went down swinging with the best episode of "Chuck" to date, even better than last week's stupendous "Chuck vs. the Colonel."

I'll get to Chuck's "Matrix" moment (and has it really been 10 years since Keanu Reeves said "I know kung fu"?) in a bit, but I feel like any discussion of "Chuck vs. the Ring" has to start -- has to -- with "Mr. Roboto."

When I wrote my open letter to NBC, I focused more on the business reasons than creative ones, because arguing purely for quality rarely has an effect. ("Friday Night Lights," great show though it is, simply wouldn't be on the air without the DirecTV deal subsidizing much of its cost.) So now, as I write my last "Chuck" review of the season -- and, hopefully, not ever -- I want discuss the reasons why I love "Chuck," and the "Mr. Roboto" sequence neatly encapsulates all of them.

There are deeper shows on TV, more complex shows, shows with tighter plot logic, possibly even better comedies -- though I find that last statement hard to believe after an episode that featured a line like "Why are you letting Sam Kinison and an Indian lesbian wreck your wedding?" -- but none features as much pure, concentrated fun as "Chuck." It's overflowing with joy, as if Schwartz, Fedak and company (in this case, Allison Adler, who co-wrote the finale with Fedak) repeatedly ask themselves, "What else can we put into this scene that's awesome?"

The "Mr. Roboto"/wedding shoot-out sequence features so much concentrated awesome that it might be illegal in certain states, summing up "Chuck" while at the same time exceeding anything the show has done before. I know I just did a list of all the wonderful things in last week's episode, but these are all wonderful things in the same scene, so please indulge me. It combined:

• The macabre '80s prog rock of Jeffster! (and the horrified gasp of the wedding audience as they get their first look at the duo makes me laugh every time), and Jeff invoking Marty McFly as he tells the wedding orchestra to "watch me for the changes";

• Chevy Chase at his absolute smuggest, telling Chuck, "Just think: that terrible pun is the last thing you'll ever hear";

• Sarah trying to find a weapon in the stack of wedding gifts (And the only conceivable way the scene could have been any better was if Sarah couldn't find the knives and had to kick ass with some other stereotypical wedding present. If Casey could fight with a radiator last week, surely Sarah could have found a creative use for a juicer or a salad shooter.);

• Morgan telling Awesome "Listen to me: if you hit me, know that it only teaches me to hit," followed by Awesome's complete change of mood upon realizing he can help Chuck with a spy mission;

• More Jeffster!, including Jeff singing into a vocoder and Lester dancing the robot;

• Casey and his commando team descending through the skylight and shooting up the entire reception hall, and Casey delivering one more cheesey kiss-off line;

• Chuck's most girlish screams yet as he watched the ice sculpture shatter;

• Scott Bakula punching Chevy's lights out (southpaw!) and relishing the moment;

• Bryce entering the reception hall as the soundtrack shifts to an orchestral version of "Mr. Roboto" that, like the use of Jeffster!/Toto's "Africa" over Morgan and Anna's kiss in "Chuck vs. the Best Friend," stripped away the song's corny reputation and made it sound really cool;

• Jeffster! playing so loudly that none of the wedding guests could hear the shootout;

• Ellie (the only truly normal character left) doing yoga to avoid dealing with what's being done to her wedding; and...

• Jeffster! setting off Roman candles inside the church.

Frankly, it's all I can do just to keep from watching the sequence for the 50th time so I can finish writing the review. DVR technology may cease to exist, and I'm still going to have this episode saved at Keep Until I Delete status just so I can watch it whenever I'm having a bad day.

But here's the thing: if "Chuck" was just a collection of in-jokes and '80s references, then... well, then it'd be "Family Guy." And while "Family Guy" has its place, what makes "Chuck" so special -- what suddenly has this storm of bloggers and Tweeters and sandwich aficionados doing all they can to help it get a third season -- is that there's a fundamental warmth and humanity underneath the jokes about "Back to the Future" and "Tron," and then cool action and high stakes piled on top. It's a cast of appealing characters played by very good actors, and so the laughs feel more satisfying, the action cooler, then if it were all just a big joke.

When Chuck thanks Casey for "saving my life once a week," it's a hilarious meta gag, but works even better because we just saw the two of them strut side-by-side, like partners, through the Buy More to tender their resignations to "fuh-laming heterosexual" Millbarge. Chuck's terror during the wedding reception shootout is funnier because we know he's not just scared for his life, but upset about his spy life ruining his sister's wedding. Casey and his team planning Ellie's do-over wedding with military precision ("No, no! That clashes with the bunting!") works not just because they're such obvious macho men, but because of the amount of time the show has devoted to showing how vigorously Casey attacks any assignment.

Similarly, "Chuck" gets a pass from me on a lot of things that drive me nuts when other shows do it, partly because the show and its characters are so likable, but also because the execution in and around those things tends to be so good. Most series drive me nuts with how they drag out the Will They Or Won't They? sexual tension between the two leads. But the chemistry between Zachary Levi and Yvonne Strahovski is so palpable that these big teases the last two episodes (the condom IOU coitus interruptus last week, Papa Bartowski interrupting Sarah's "I want..." with news of Bryce's abduction) somehow only make me happier. Like, if the actors are this good when they aren't getting together, and the timing on the near-misses so elegant, that I have no doubt their eventual coupling(*) will be even better.(**)

(*) From here until the end of the review, I'm going to avoid the obvious "assuming there's a third season" disclaimer, both because it's understood and I don't want to face the idea of a world without "Chuck" right this moment.

(**) And for the people who think that resolved sexual tension equals creative death, I have four words: Jim. Pam. "The Office."

Similarly, where I might be deeply concerned with another show that ended on this kind of cliffhanger, Schwartz and Fedak have enough credit banked that I'm going to assume they know what they're doing in fundamentally altering the main character in this way.

As Fedak talks about in our interview, Chuck the kung fu fighter is the exact thing that he and Schwartz always insisted they weren't going to do. But then Schwartz suggested it in a brainstorming, and they realized it had real possibilities. As I point out to Fedak, a whole lot of the show's appeal is in seeing a relatively average guy, who doesn't know how to fight or hold a gun or any of the other things that are second nature to Casey and Sarah, still find a way to save the day through his knowledge of "Call of Duty" or Eastern European porno computer viruses. If Chuck has that, and the Orion wrist-cuff, and all the powers contained inside this new Intersect, well... doesn't that take all that fun stuff away? When I asked Fedak about this, he said:

No. It doesn't take away. I'm going to answer your question rather cryptically. I'll say that the show is not going to lose its sense of humor.

Note that he also ducks my question about "The Greatest American Hero," where the main character had all these super powers that were incredibly unreliable. Sure, Chuck may be all Neo-meets-Bruce-Lee-meets-Bruce-Leroy in that one moment where he's facing off against Casey's traitorous team member and the other guys from the Ring, but who's to say it'll work that well every time?

I'm disappointed that we may wind up skipping over the whole "Chuck learns how to be a spy" idea, which there was a lot of potential mileage in, but I also can see them getting as much out of this idea, while still letting "Chuck" be "Chuck." As Fedak also promisingly notes:

He's not suddenly going to become Jack Bauer.

And thank God for that. But, frankly, if there isn't good news from NBC next Monday, I may have to go all "TELL ME WHERE MY SHOW IS!!!!" on somebody. Because this show is too smart, too entertaining, too damned happy to say goodbye to.

Some other thoughts:

• Rest in peace, Bryce Larkin. Matthew Bomer's USA series got picked up, so he likely wouldn't be available much for a season three. Beyond that, though, it felt like time for Bryce to leave the picture. Whatever complications are created by Chuck becoming the Intersect 3.0, Sarah has committed to Chuck as her guy, and Chuck now appears to have all of Bryce's moves and then some. And after being written as a more abrasive rival to Chuck back in "Chuck vs. the Break-Up," Bryce gets every inch the hero's death, selflessly offering himself up to Roark to save Ellie and the other wedding guests, and later revealing that he knew Chuck's dad was Orion and specifically destroyed Chuck's college career (keeping him from being recruited into the CIA) at Orion's request.

• Rest in peace, Ted Roark. I doubt Chevy Chase was going to be in this long-term, but they made brilliant use of him in these last two episodes (particularly in his recreation of Cyrus' speech from "The Warriors", but also here with the disgust in his voice as he told one of his agents to stop chewing gum) before killing him off -- and more or less killing off Fulcrum in the process. Now we have a much larger organization -- "the Ring" -- to contend with, which Fedak says "has a very specific goal" that's different from whatever it was that Fulcrum was doing.

• Rest in peace, Buy More? Fedak isn't willing to let go of it yet, but now Morgan, Chuck and Casey have all quit, Tony Hale's in a pilot (Fox's "Cop House") that's probable for a pick-up, and Chuck doesn't appear to need as much protecting as he used to. I'm sure the show will find a way to justify the continued use of it -- the CIA did build a multi-million dollar base underneath the place, after all -- and I certainly wouldn't want to lose Jeff and Lester, but it does feel like time.

• Even by Josh Schwartz/Alex Patsavas show standards, the music in the finale was incredible, so much so that I want to point all the tunes out. "Mr. Roboto" you know, and they played The Cure's "Friday, I'm In Love" at the start of the reception in the apartment building courtyard. The others: "Now We Can See" by The Thermals (Chuck and Casey stride through the Buy More on their way to quitting), "Looking at the Sun" by Gramcery Arms (Chuck getting ready for the wedding, and then Chuck walking away from Sarah), "Christmas TV" by Slow Club (the montage of the beach wedding and Roark's death), and "3 Rounds and a Sound" by Blind Pilot (Chuck and Sarah dance at the reception). Most of this review has been written with those songs (and the rest of the latest Thermals album) on heavy iPod rotation.

• And speaking of music, composer Tim Jones was also on the top of his game, not only with the orchestral "Mr. Roboto," but with the superhero movie-style music playing throughout the final act, which nicely set up the moment when Chuck discovered his powers.

• Also doing some of their best work of the series: director Robert Duncan McNeill, keeping a tight handle on the comedy and the action and even the quieter moments like Chuck apologizing to Ellie; visual effects chief Dan Curry, who made the new Intersect room look several million times cooler than the one from the pilot; stunt co-ordinator Merritt Yohnka, who made Zachary Levi look plausibly like a martial arts master despite no formal training; and editor Matt Barber, who helped cut it all together so that everybody else's work (particularly the fight stuff) looked that much better.

• Even outside of the "saving my life at least once a week" line, Adam Baldwin made Chuck and Casey's apparent farewell scene sing with the look of confusion and rage on his face when Chuck finally forced a hug on him.

• It doesn't look like we'll be seeing Orion again anytime soon. Scott Bakula did a nice job of shifting back into the crazy man pose -- which turns out to not be that much of a pose -- upon Stephen realizing that the danger to his son and himself is far from over.

• Do they teach female agents how to properly rip up a bridesmaid's dress to optimize it for combat? Because Sarah made a pretty clean break with the hem, didn't she? It reminded me a little of the custom ballgown Carey Lowell had as the Bond Girl in "Licence to Kill," though on that one the skirt was designed to detach.

• Seriously, go watch that "Last Dragon" clip, particularly from about the 5 minute mark, and compare it to right before Chuck decides to activate the Intersect. Something tells me Fedak and/or Adler and/or the entire "Chuck" staff recently had a viewing of it. Yet another reason to cheer for a third season: because at this rate of the show's plundering of '80s movies that were on HBO every five minutes, you know the "Just One of the Guys" pastiche is inevitable.

Okay, so that's "Chuck vs. the Ring," more or less.

Right now, I'm not sure what to think about the show's future. I'm impressed by the passion and the thoughtfulness of the Save Chuck campaigners, and I've let myself be sucked into it, in a way I didn't think I could anymore.

This is my 13th season as a professional TV critic. The very first pilot I ever watched on the job was CBS' "EZ Streets." It blew me away. It was essentially canceled after two episodes aired. I learned an early, painful lesson: this job will break your heart if you let it. I gave in and got hurt a few more times in those early years, but by the time "Freaks and Geeks" rolled around, I had trained myself to spot the heartbreakers early, and to create enough professional distance so that, when the inevitable cancellation came, I could shrug and say, "Well, I'm glad I got to see as much of it as I did."

With "Chuck," though, I'm having a hard time doing that. Even in this splintered TV universe, even in that suicidal timeslot, it just doesn't make sense to me that "Chuck" hasn't done better than it has, and that it's future should be so precarious at this point. "Chuck" should be a hit. Maybe it could still be a hit. But in today's narrowcasting landscape, at Ben Silverman's NBC (where product integration seems at least as important as ratings), maybe that doesn't matter. It was a good show in its first season. It's become quite a bit more than that this year. And these last few episodes have taken the series into new creative stratosphere.

Distance be damned, I'm not ready to say goodbye to "Chuck" yet. I wrote the open letter. I took my family to Subway tonight. I'm going to keep a good thought between now and next Monday. And if I hear anything concrete before then, I'll let you know. And until then, I imagine I'm going to be watching the "Mr. Roboto" scene a lot.

So, go read the Fedak interview, and then let me know: what did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Chuck: Chris Fedak vs. the finale

As promised, I spoke with "Chuck" co-creator Chris Fedak about the developments in the "Chuck" season two finale, "Chuck vs. the Ring" (you can read my review of it here). After the jump, Fedak discusses -- and, in many cases, tries to avoid discussing -- the implications of the final scene, the musical talent (or lack thereof) of Jeffster!, the whereabouts of Vincent from Fulcrum, and more.

What exactly does that final scene mean in terms of what Chuck can do now?

The first thing I should say is Schwartz has sent over a Warner Bros. security expert to my house. So if I say anything that might spoil season three, I think he's authorized to take me out. He looks like former KGB.

The final scene is a launching pad for season three. It's something that we've kind of teased, ever so slightly earlier in the season. It gets back to what you asked me the last time we talked about the Feistel code, the scene (in "Chuck vs. the Dream Job") where Chuck's dad asks him to look at the computer screen, the idea is that his dad knows inside the Intersect is the ability to decipher a code. That was our first subtle hint that maybe the Intersect didn't just store information, but it could provide abilities. In our final scene, with the new Intersect update is that there's now abilities stored inside.

So he knows kung fu now. Can you tell me what else?

I can't tell you what else. The security expert from Warner Bros. is putting a silencer on the gun right now.

So let me ask you this: the Intersect was supposed to go into Bryce, who we know from past experience already knows kung, fu, knows parkour, etc. Why would he necessarily need to be given Neo's kung fu skills?

I think that the new Intersect skills are even more advanced than the classically learned-skills that Bryce had.

How long had you been thinking about doing this? Where did the idea come from that, at the end of season two, you'd turn Chuck into a bad-ass?

The idea started early on by being the idea we said we weren't going to do. When we were pitching the studio and network, we were very clear that Chuck would not have powers, would not have abilities, that the Intersect would only give him information that would be vital to the mission, but wouldn't give him critical skills for the mission. We were working on stories, on pitches, it was always a given inside the room that Chuck would not have abilities. I think it was Josh, when we were describing where we wanted to go in the season, and we knew the last scene would be Chuck re-uploading the Intersect, and he asked, "What happens if he does have abilities? What if we do the kung fu scene that we've always said we wouldn't do?" It was a great question to ask. It got us all thinking about the great possibilities for the third season of the show.

Well, that brings me to my next question. Let me play Devil's advocate: you went into the series knowing that a lot of the appeal of the show is seeing this ordinary guy struggle to be a spy without any real training, he doesn't know how to fight, how to use a gun, he doesn't know spycraft, and he's just a nerd who has this intelligence in his head, saving the world because he's good at Missile Command or whatever. Does giving him these abilities take away from the appeal of the show?

No. It doesn't take away. I'm going to answer your question rather cryptically. I'll say that the show is not going to lose its sense of humor.

One of the things I wondered about is, are the abilities going to be reliable, or will this be like "Greatest American Hero" where he can only do things some of the time?

I'm sorry. The Warner Bros. security expert is looking rather frightening at the moment. You'll have to wait for season three on that.

Well, then the other question is, if Chuck knows kung fu, and he has the Intersect, and he also has the Orion wrist cuff, which we know can do a lot of cool things on its own, at what point does he still need Casey and Sarah?

Oh, I think he absolutely needs Casey and Sarah. He's not suddenly going to become Jack Bauer.

Does Zachary Levi have any martial arts training, or was that all stuntwork?

We had really no idea how much Zach would be able to do for the final kung fu sequence. We're asking ourselves, "Should we have a stunt guy do the whole thing or could Zach be in for a little bit?" A few days before we got to the fight scene, we were working on the finale script and we got a call to come down to the set to see what Zach and Merritt Yohnka and his stunt crew had choreographed. So I showed up on the stage, and Zach started the stunt sequence, and he was amazing. So much of it is Zach, it's unbelievable. He's just an incredibly gifted physical actor. He can do the comedy, he's a gifted comedian, but he can also do the action as well.

As I was watching it, I was getting excited for season three, because there's now so much more stuff we can do. I ran back to the writers' room, and said, "Guys, he's great."

YouTube has some video of a feature "Access Hollywood" did during the first season, and there's this B-roll of Zach and Yvonne trading fan kicks at each other's heads.

It's the weirdest thing in the world. I was there when he was doing that. When you're the producer of a television show, and you're watching your incredibly attractive female lead and male lead kicking at each other's face, just missing each other's nose by a few inches, I was like, "What are you guys trying to do? Give me a heart attack?" But watching Zach do kung fu was like going back to the pilot. I knew Yvonne had a dance background, but I had no idea if she could dance like we needed her to in the scene where she's dancing and fighting the other guys. And when she first did it, I went, "Wow."

What can you tell me about the Ring? Is that, in fact, its name?

I think it goes by many names. It's cryptically known as the Ring. If you think about Fulcrum as a subsidiary, a franchise of the Ring, that it's a larger organization.

So what is it that introducing the Ring does for the show that Fulcrum wasn't. Why did you feel the need to introduce a larger evil organization?

(Long pause) I'll say this: the Ring has different goals than Fulcrum.

But wasn't Fulcrum already pretty vague in its goals? One of the advantages and disadvantages of Fulcrum is that we didn't really know what they were about, so you could do anything with them.

Thinking about season three, it was important that the Ring have a very specific goal. And that plays out in season three.

The last time we talked, you said you had most of season three already mapped out. Obviously, you're reluctant to give away too much, but let me ask you one of the more obvious questions: Chuck has quit the Buy More, Casey has quit the Buy More, Morgan has quit the Buy More. We love the Buy More, Jeffster and Big Mike are still there, you still have that set, but how do you keep using it as a part of the show at this point?

Unfortunately, I think you'll just have to wait and see season three.

Couldn't you just convert it to a Benihana set?

We look forward to building the Benihana set.

At any point did you consider something with more closure, or would that have made things too easy for NBC?

This was our finale. We knew it from the beginning of the season that this is what we were working to. This was the coolest ending we could imagine. This was the one we had to write.

Is Vincent alive or dead?

Vincent is dead. But when you're dead in the "Chuck" universe, there's a tendency to not be dead.

And he had more of a tendency to not be dead than anyone else.

When we cast Arnold Vosloo in the part, with "The Mummy," it was Jeremiah Chechnik's idea, he directed the episode, "Chuck vs. the Predator." Arnold's very sophisticated, and it was really fun for us to make him more and more sickly as the (season) went by. It became a joke: how can we hurt Arnold this week? So I think he's dead right now. He was inside the drive-in when the F-16's dropped their bombs.

He's dead, but don't hold me to it.

Are we done with Fulcrum? Have me moved past Fulcrum now?

I can't say.

How did you guys decide Captain Awesome would be the one to find out? Are there specific stories you have in mind for that, or was it just that you thought he'd be funnier to be in the loop than, say, Lester?

The reason we chose Captain Awesome is because, of all the people in the "Chuck" universe, he's the one who thinks he has it all figured out. That type of certitude, especially with the way Ryan plays the part, it's so much fun to throw him a curveball. We really enjoyed the idea, of all the people you could tell, whose world would be rocked the most? And who would respond the best, who would have Chuck's back the most? It would be Captain Awesome.

One of my favorite scenes from last week's episode was Captain Awesome losing it in front of Ellie because he couldn't deal with the secret.

Was it your idea of Allison (Adler)'s to use "Mr. Roboto"?

We kind of got it in our head. Back when we first started working on the show, my wife is a big "Roboto" fan, and if you listen to the lyrics, it almost sounds like it could be the Chuck story in a way. Allison and I were listening to different song options, we were trying to come up with something big and ludicrous and operatic. And then this being a Josh Schwartz show, you have to go through the man, and he kind of got into it.

Well, when you do a scene like this, particularly where you have characters performing the song, how far in advance do you have to get the legal clearance? Like, if Toto had refused to license "Africa" the last time Jeffster! appeared, would you have been in trouble?

It's a big huge process, and you have to start early. I think in the original script, we had "November Rain" in there, and we couldn't clear it. Then we started thinking about other, going new, a modern contemporary band, or did we want to go back to the 80s where we live, and Styx was just out there. I love me some Styx. We thought about "Come Sail Away," but "Mr. Roboto" seemed so perfect.

Are Jeffster! supposed to be getting better? Because it actually doesn't sound bad, and that's even before the Styx version comes in.

There's three different versions of the song. There's the Jeff and Lester version, then our composer Tim Jones in to add score, when Bryce comes into the reception hall, it's Tim's score playing an orchestral "Mr. Roboto," and when the paratroopers fly through the window above, that's the actual Styx music kicking in.

Jeff and Lester are not the best performers in the world, Jeffster's not the best wedding band in the world, but they've got enthusiasm. Since they are technically proficient, I thought this song was perfect for them, because they rock when they have a vocoder.

What were some of your favorite things that you got to do this season?

The season was amazing. When it comes to the physical production of the show, our team has done an incredible job. In the "Chuck vs. the Gravitron" episode, we shot in a real moving Gravitron. I was inside with our camera operator and Zach and the guest character. The different fights that we've done: the car fight in "Chuck vs. the Best Friend" is just stupendous, and the F-16s blowing up the Fulcrum presentation was huge.

There's my geek excitement for certain filmic parts of the show, but there's also the people I got to work with this year. Everyone who came onto the show was wonderful, and our cast is fantastic. It was a dream: I got to work with Chevy Chase, Scott Bakula, Bruce Boxleitner, Morgan Fairchild, everyone was in our finale. And we have a great production team, the people who make this crazy show possible, from our stunt coordinator, Merritt Yohnka, our special effects team, the entire crew. The most exciting part of the process was telling a big story over 22 episodes. That's something that you rarely get the chance to do. Working with the staff and Josh was the biggest change. When you start on a season, you're working on episode 1 and it's impossible to imagine you're going to get to it all.

Well, speaking of geek excitement, are there moments where you're thinking, "Man, I got Chevy Chase to do Cyrus' big speech from 'The Warriors' on my show!"

Absolutely. There's nothing quite like it. You're sitting on set, talking with Chevy Chase, about to blow up a wedding reception, and you're feeling pretty good. This is awesome.

I know you said last time you didn't have any regrets about this season, but were there any stories you wanted to tell in this context that didn't work out in one way or another?

There's a number. When you're in the "Chuck" writers room, you've got board after board of different notions, half the idea don't make it into the episode. There's always a board with all these raw ideas. From my perspective, I look at them as the stories we haven't gotten to. There are some that have been up there for quite some time, but I always think of them as ideas we just haven't figure out where to use yet.

But were there any that you now can't tell because Chuck has super powers?

None comes to mind.

So what are you hearing right now from NBC?

We had a good meeting with NBC and Warner Bros., and everybody's very positive. We're still in the same holding pattern. There's no ETA.

So if, unfortunately, NBC decides not to renew and this is the ending, what do you want the audience to take away from the show?

I love endings that imply further adventures. If this is the end, and God forbid that it is, our fans should know that Chuck and Sarah and Casey are off saving the world. They're amazing and thye're a great team, and hopefully we're going to get to see that.

And how would you react to knowing this was the last episode?

It would be gut-wrenching for our entire writing staff, and our cast as well. We've all fallen in love with these characters. You probably feel that from the show that we write. It's hard to imagine not having more experiences and more fun, taking those characters out into the world and telling their story.

Knowing that there's a chance the show might not continue, in hindsight are you happy with the pace at which you moved the Chuck/Sarah relationship?

Absolutely. Especially for season two, it was imperative to the show that Sarah's job is to protect Chuck. If they have an emotional relationship, she's not as good at her job. So keeping them apart and having that tension was organic to the show.

That then leads me to the inevitable follow-up: Sarah was able to have a relationship with Bryce, Chuck now appears to be perfectly capable of taking care of himself and much more of an equal to the other two. Are the obstacles no longer there?

Sepinwall, you're not gonna get that out of me. Unfortunately I'm just going to say you're going to have to watch season three.

God, I hope I can.

God, I hope you can, too.

Alan Sepinwall can be reached at asepinwall@starledger.com Click here to read the full post

Chuck, "Chuck vs. the Colonel": The most Awesome episode in the history of Awesome

Spoilers for the season's penultimate "Chuck" coming up just as soon as I get right...

"Is everything okay?" -Chuck
"Yeah. No, dude: for the first time, everything is fine. It's all over." -Morgan

I feel like I've been invoking the Dayenu Rule(*) a lot lately, and not just because Passover recently ended. But if I can't invoke it for an episode like "Chuck vs. the Colonel," when can I?

(*) For those of you new to the blog -- and/or to Judaism -- "Dayneu" (pronounced "Die-ay-noo") is a traditional folk song sung during the Passover meal, where you list all the amazing things God did for the Jews during the story of the Exodus from Egypt. After you list each one, you say if only God had done just that, "Dayenu," which means "it would have been enough." So when I see an episode like this one, overflowing with awesomeness, I feel the need to sing its praises as if I was just sitting around the seder table with my family. To wit...

• If "Chuck vs. the Colonel" had only featured Chuck and Sarah's passionate makeout session, scored to Bon Iver's beautiful "Creature Fear" (when Bon Iver's "Skinny Love" played over the great final scene of "Chuck vs. the Break-Up"), followed by one of the funniest excuses for TV coitus interruptus I can remember... Dayenu.

• If it had only featured Casey going all vengeful on Chuck and Sarah, and even successfully shooting the Chuck target he subconsciously missed back in the season premiere... Dayenu.

• If it had only revived (and expanded) the hilarious "New Ass Man" gag from "Chuck vs. the Seduction"... Dayenu

• If it had only featured Casey kicking major Fulcrum butt with nothing but the radiator from Chuck and Sarah's motel room... Dayenu.

• If it had only featured Casey discovering Devon in his apartment and growling, "I hate this whole family!"... Dayenu.

• If it had only featured Devon's struggle to assimilate the news of Chuck's true identity, and Chuck's absolute belief that Devon could live up to his nickname and keep the secret... Dayenu.

• If it had only featured Casey admitting that all he wanted was for Chuck and Sarah to ask him along, followed by him refusing Chuck's offer of a group hug... Dayenu.

• If it had only featured Chuck's dad pulling a modified version of the "Superman II" trick of taking away Chuck's powers instead of giving new powers to Fulcrum, followed by the airstrike taking out the drive-in and most of the bad guys... Dayenu.

• If it had only featured everyone's reaction -- particularly General Beckman's completely dismissive attitude -- to Chuck being cured of the Intersect... Dayenu.

• If it had only featured Morgan's shirtless exit from the Buy More, while getting a slow clap from the staff (and you know what a sucker I am for a slow clap, ironic or otherwise)... Dayenu.

• If it had only featured the one-two punch of Chuck bringing his dad home to Ellie, followed by Casey and Sarah accompanying Chuck to the rehearsal dinner as friends (and in Sarah's case, hopefully more) and not handlers... Dayenu.

And that's not even mentioning Jeff partaking of Casey's chloroform supply, or Millbarge belly-crawling through the Buy More under the assumption they're under siege, or Morgan's speech to Anna about his futile dream of being a Benihana chef ("and I don't even know where to get the knives!"), or Big Mike's turn as Vito Corleone, or Ted Roark going even more Evil Steve Jobs with his motivational speech to the Fulcrum agents, or...

I wrote today's "Save Chuck" column before I got to see "Chuck vs. the Colonel," but this episode sums up so many of the reasons why I love "Chuck," and why I'm going to be burning down my living room (or just taking another hit of chloroform) if it's not renewed. This was like Chuck's Greatest Hits, not only featuring so many callbacks to previous episodes on top of the usual pop culture references, but featuring tons of moments that were much funnier, or more poignant, or exciting, for all the build-up to it.

When I interviewed Chris Fedak a few weeks ago, he said this about "Chuck vs. the Colonel":

For episode 221, we thought the episode is so big, has so many huge things in it, from an emotional as well as espionage in it, that we were worried people would think it was the season finale. It's a huge episode.

And that's certainly true. Chuck and Sarah (almost) get it on (and, again, the excuse for why they don't is funny enough that I didn't have the usual aggrieved reaction I sometimes get when shows drag out the sexual tension for too long). Someone from Chuck's nerd life finds out his spy life (and it's Captain Awesome, which is a funnier choice than virtually any other non-spy character, with the possible exception of Jeff). Morgan quits the Buy More, Chuck saves his dad, and his dad in turn saves Chuck from life as the Intersect. I can absolutely see where Fedak might worry people would think this was the finale -- not just of the season, but of the series.

Meanwhile, Josh Schwartz said today that the actual season ender, next week's "Chuck vs. the Ring," "will be one of the least satisfying finales of all time" if the show isn't renewed.

Now, I have not seen "Chuck vs. the Ring" yet, so I can only offer a guess on what might go down, based on my own years as a comic book-reading, pop culture-consuming nerd: Roark, having survived the airstrike by going back into the bunker, shows up at the wedding. He endangers some combination of Ellie, Sarah, Morgan and Chuck's dad, and somehow the only way to save the day is for Chuck to pull a Ben Grimm and reluctantly turn himself back into the Intersect.

Beyond that, I have no idea, and I'm dreading it in a way. I'm sure it'll be a great episode, but I don't want it to be the last "Chuck" I ever see, and I certainly don't want it to make me pull out my hair the way some other infamous cliffhanging series-enders (say, "Crime Story," or "Now And Again") -- did.

Sigh... focus on the good. Focus on the good, which "Chuck vs. the Colonel" most certainly was -- and then some.

Some other thoughts:

• I talked a bit about Yvonne Strahovski in the column today, so here I want to highlight the equally-indispensable Zachary Levi, for the way he played that moment where Chuck briefly pulled back from kissing Sarah just so he could take a moment to smile and be sure this was really happening after all this time. That smile so perfectly captured what I imagine a lot of fans were feeling. (And I imagine a lot of them were angrier than I was when Chuck found the condom IOU note from Morgan.)

• Where exactly was Vincent when the airstrike began? Is he going to pop up yet again to cause trouble in the finale? If, NBC willing, the show continues next year, will Arnold Vosloo become a regular character who appears to die every single week, like "South Park" with Kenny?

• When Chuck and Sarah went on the run last week, some people here said they hoped they'd stay fugitives for a long time, and that it would feel like a cheat if the status quo were restored. I'm fine with Casey lying to Beckman to save Sarah's career, since Chuck losing the Intersect is obviously a much bigger shake up than a "Chuck: Fugitives" storyline.

• Great moments in nerdhood: Chuck telling Casey, "You can't kill me with that radiator! It is far too confined in the car for you to get any torque!"

• Loved Lester calling Casey a classic perv, then looking to Jeff and saying, "No offense."

• Your Chuck Plot Hole of the Week: The Castle is the worst secret government base of all time. Not only are the cells equipped with keypads that would let any half-clever hacker take over the whole facility (see "Chuck vs. the Gravitron"), but now the cells apparently just open right up if there happens to be a power surge at the Buy More. Even if Jeff and Lester were using one of Casey's explosives, shouldn't the NSA have installed a self-contained backup generator?

• Not quite a plot hole, but worthy of discussion: as far as Ellie knows, her dad just ran out on her again, so would she really be that happy to see him return? She has no idea that he was abducted and that Chuck had to save him. On the other hand, I can see her being relieved to have one less thing to worry about, on a day when Devon seemed to get so flaky that she had to slap him back to reality.

• Say this for Captain Awesome; he threw a decent punch at trained killer Casey, and he also hit him with his beloved Ronald Reagan bust.

• Can I get back to the radiator fight for a second? I complained a few times last season that the fight choreography wasn't as inspired as a show like "Alias," but the stunt people have consistently raised their game this season, and the motel parking lot showdown was one of the best.

• I neglected to point out in "Chuck vs. the Dream Job" that Stephen Bartowski said "Aces, Charles," which is a line Ellie quoted from their father when helping Chuck get dressed for his date with Sarah way back in the pilot. Nice to hear Scott Bakula say it again tonight.

• As for our other guest star, there were times in "Dream Job" where I felt like the idea of having Chevy Chase appear was funnier than what they were asking Chevy to do. Not here, where he was on fire playing the relentlessly smug version of Roark without the nice guy businessman facade, particularly his delivery of "Nobody likes a cynic" after Chuck pointed out that Roark would kill them either way. (Speaking of which, if/when Roark is taken down for good, how does the government explain his disappearance? And what's to stop him from just going back to his corporate HQ and acting like nothing happened?)

• Did I mention that there was a slow clap? And that I'm an enormous sucker for the damn slow clap? I did? Well, I'm going to mention it again: slow clap!

So, one episode to go. I'm going to talk to Fedak again for a finale post-mortem interview to run at the same time as my finale review goes up (which should, I hope, be the usual time, right after the East Coast airing finishes), and then we can start rending garments over the possibility that "Ring" might be the last episode ever. Because if it is... it would not have been enough.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Chuck, "Chuck vs. the First Kill": Who can you trust? No, seriously, who can you trust? Have I asked you yet about who you can trust?

Spoilers for tonight's "Chuck" coming up just as soon as I enjoy the taste of a savory $5 Footlong...

"Chuck, you have to realize that there's some people you just cannot trust." -Sarah

Did you know that "Chuck vs. the First Kill" is about trust? About whom Chuck can and can't trust? About the difficulty of knowing whom to trust in a dangerous world? About whether Morgan can trust Millbarge? About the trustworthiness of mankind in general, and spies in particular?

I can trust that you understand this, I trust. Right?

Sigh... "Chuck vs. the First Kill" is, for the most part, another really strong episode as the show goes into the home stretch of season two. But for the first time since the start of the series -- when characters couldn't stop saying the word "secrets" over and over and over -- my teeth started to grind together as we kept hearing, ad nauseum, repetitions of that same question about whom to trust. It was almost like the writers didn't trust(*) the audience to understand the theme without spelling it out for them 17,000 times.

(*) Gah! I didn't actually realize what I was doing with that sentence until I went back to reread the paragraph. "Trust" now has a subliminal hook into my brain. I'm going to be using it in sentences for at least a week, dammit.

But if the theme for some reason had to be underlined and placed in yellow highlighter over and over, it's still a good theme, and an appropriate one for this point in the story arc. When nearly everyone in Chuck's life -- including his college roommate, the love of his life and, oh yeah, his father -- has turned out to be involved in the espionage, and when the people at the NSA have proven to not have his best interests at heart (and that's without him having the first clue how close Casey came to putting a bullet in his head in "Chuck vs. the First Date"), why wouldn't Chuck be a might confused about trust?

Despite Chuck's increasing (and increasingly-justified) paranoia as he attempted to find his dad and get the Intersect out of his head for good, "Chuck vs. the First Kill" was actually one of the lighter episodes in a while -- as you might expect from one guest-starring Ken Davitian (aka Azamat from "Borat"). Chuck actually gets his first two kills -- assuming we don't count the dead Fulcrum agents from "Chuck vs. the Suburbs," where Chuck set them up for the kill but Casey pulled the metaphorical trigger -- but they're both completely silly and Bartowski-style, thanks to his "move." First Uncle Bernie dies of a heart attack after a lengthy chase up too many staircases, scored, hysterically, to Duran Duran's "Hungry Like the Wolf"(**), and then Fulcrum muckity-muck Bill Bergey gets accidentally tai chi'd out the window when Chuck pulls The Morgan on him.

(**) This is as good an excuse as any to pimp Give Me My Remote's unofficial "Chuck" soundtrack -- and to ask the question of which songs you would put on your own DIY "Chuck" mix. Would you lean heavily on the ironic '80s songs? More on the contemporary indie rock? Both? And if there ever were to be an official soundtrack, what one song's presence -- other than the theme song -- would you consider most essential?

Beyond the funny deaths, we got the awkwardness (and occasional pathos) of Chuck suffering through a fake -- and hastily-assembled, it seems -- engagement party with Jill's family (including Boonton, NJ's own Hey! It's That Guy Peter Onorati as her dad), Casey's anger at doing so poorly on the Fulcrum test (and devoting one of his patented cheeseball kiss-off lines to it), and one of the season's most amusing Buy More subplots, with Millbarge tricking Morgan into assisting his palace coup, followed by Big Mike playing Michael Corleone to Morgan's Fredo.

But while Morgan makes a mistake in trusting Millbarge, Chuck's instincts are proven right on both the great loves of his life. Jill does help him, and even refuses to run away (and/or rejoin Fulcrum) when given the chance during Casey and Sarah's two-man siege on the Fulcrum office building, because she wants to help Chuck find his dad. And Sarah, of course, goes against orders by telling Chuck to run -- and running with him -- instead of taking him for permanent lockdown. Despite my irritation with how often the theme had to be restated, I thought Levi, Strahovski and even Jordana Brewster (and is she suddenly a movie star again thanks to "Fast & Furios" opening huge?) all brought it emotionally, even in the midst of a goofier hour.

Two more episodes left -- and that had better only be two more episodes left in the season, and not in the series. Because if "Chuck" dies because NBC decided to hand over five hours of primetime a week to Jay flippin' Leno... Well, I haven't let my heart get broken by the premature end of a TV show in a long time (even "Freaks and Geeks," I was braced for), but I feel like this one might.

Some other thoughts:

• Two links about the state of the show: 1)In case you missed it, last week I interviewed Chris Fedak about where things stand creatively, and with the network. 2)The folks at ChuckTV.net have their "Chuck" Watch/Buy/Share plan set up, which now includes suggesting that people try to buy Subway footlongs (like the Sweet Onion Chicken Teriyaki that Big Mike enjoyed tonight) on the night of the finale (along with a letter to NBC saying you're going to do that). I don't know if this will be any more successful than other recent Save Our Show campaigns, but if you feel like you need to do something, the chicken teriyaki is quite tasty.

• I really dug Sarah's last stand in the middle of the Fulcrum offices. No fancy fight choreography -- just her calmly gunning down wave after wave of bad guys. (And it was all nicely set up by Jill's warning that every single person in the building was Fulcrum, and by Chuck simul-flashing on everybody in the lobby.)

• "Obama Guava" - ha! Chuck's irritation that the CIA has time to come up with new fro-yo flavor names -- and, for that matter, to dream up the entire Orange-Orange (unless it's supposed to be a pre-existing franchise in the show's universe) -- was a nice touch.

• Getting back to the soundtrack question and this episode's musical choices: "Hungry Like the Wolf" or "We're Not Gonna Take It"?

• Every man has his weakness: Millbarge's is renaissance faires, Lester is his conversion to Judaism (he could work fast food if he didn't keep kosher), and Jeff's... well, I'm not even sure I can repeat it. Jeff has officially eclipsed any other contender for Most Hilariously Disturbing TV Character of '08-'09.

• Loved that Chuck wouldn't let Casey cheat off of him on the Fulcrum test. Serves Casey right for all the sarcastic congratulations (conjugal visits, first kills, etc.) Casey kept offering him tonight.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Chuck: Chris Fedak talks about the rest of season two

As promised last night, I spoke today with "Chuck" co-creator Chris Fedak about the revelations from last night's episode, where the rest of the season is going (don't worry: no real spoilers, except for last night's show), and what, if anything, fans can do to help influence NBC to order a third season.

How long ago did you decide that Chuck's father would be the creator of the Intersect?

We were on that page last season. At the earliest consideration of the show and the idea of who Chuck is, we thought about the mythology and asked ourselves: is Chuck Peter Parker or is he Luke Skywalker? Is he someone who randomly stumbled into this, or someone who was destined to get this power? For Chuck Bartowski, even though his father's kept him away from it, that is the family business. It was a decision we made early on, going back to the conception of the series.

Well, while most of the reaction to last night's show has been positive, there have definitely been people saying they'd much rather you stuck with the Peter Parker model.

I think the conceit of our show, going back to the Hellmouth logic of "Buffy," is in some ways there's a whirlpool of espionage that surrounds Chuck. It only goes so far -- there won't be a time where you find out that Ellie or Captain Awesome are spies as well -- but there are things about his backstory, the idea that there was this larger story involving Stanford and Bryce and Jill, and Chuck is in some ways the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern of that story. Our story is about a guy who, in most spy stories, isn't the hero of the story, but in this crazy tale, he is.

How does knowing what we now know about Chuck's dad change the series? Or does it?

I don't know if it exactly changes the series. Chuck is still a regular guy, other than his gifts of intelligence. He has regular guy dreams: to be with the girl he loves, to have a family. In some ways, the spy life is still pulling away from being the regular guy. I think that he does have potential. People talk about the fact that Chuck is slowly but surely getting better at this spy life, his skills are improving. We've always looked at the show as the origin of a hero. We're getting the first taste.

Well, there's that scene last night where Chuck's dad shows him that the Intersect is more powerful than he had realized, which is a staple of a lot of Joseph Campbell-style hero stories.

That's a big moment. Since Stephen Bartowski was the designer of all the cool stuff in the Intersect, we knew that he would know more about the way it works. In the script, there's a term we use called the Feistel code, Chuck has the ability, when he looks at that monitor, he can see the code and figure out how to get the door open. There's definitely kind of secrets and possibilities within that knowledge.

Without spoiling much, what can you tell me about the rest of the season and how it's going to end.

We're ending the season with a big game-changer that essentially redesigns the show for next season. Pushes us off into new territory.

(Some spoilers for next week's episode, "Chuck vs. the First Kill," redacted.)

Then episode 221 is "Chuck vs. the Colonel." For episode 221, we thought the episode is so big, has so many huge things in it, from an emotional as well as espionage in it, that we were worried people would thin it was the season finale. It's a huge episode. Our final episode, "Chuck vs. the Ring," is even bigger than that. There's even a point where you see an actual kitchen sink fly through frame.

If "Chuck vs. the Ring" winds up being the last episode of the series, how do you think the fans will react?

They're going to burn their living rooms. They're going to destroy their television sets. There could be chaos across the country.

My feeling is I always love endings that get you excited about the next part of the story. Even if, God forbid, we weren't brought back for the season, you would know there are great adventures out there going on for Chuck Bartowski, but it's not something I can wrap my head around. I want to be able to tell those stories.

Do you have an idea on what those stories will be?

We have most of the season broken. One of the things we really work on in the show is breaking out the seasons from a story perspective, from a one big story perspective. We definitely have a template for the whole show, how we would want to end season three. We've pitched it to the network and the studio and they love it.

What's it going to take for the show to come back, then?

It's the television gods in some ways. We're going to have to work with, hopefully our fans and critics can keep the drumbeat going, helping people realize how much people enjoy the show. NBC has been a real ally of the show. They're big fans of it. It's not like it's been one of those relationships where we've constantly been at odds with the nework. They love the story we're telling. There's a lot of good wishes and good feelings towards the show.

You said before that you like to break each season from the perspective of one big story. What would you say the story of seaso two has been?

I think the story is a kind of boy becomes man, in the simplest sense. Chuck, from the get go, has realized he wanted his old life back. He's wanted a life that other people could have, but being a spy has forced him down another road. With the realization that his father created the Intersect, and all that he's managed to do with Sarah and Casey, maybe there's a bit of a hero in this guy.

There was that game-changing episode a few weeks ago where Chuck takes the "Tron" poster off his wall and we realize he's been secretly working all this time to get the Intersect out of his head. How long ago did that come up?

At the beginning of seasons, we get the staff together and start talking about the general shape of the season. The "Tron" poster was something we talked about at that first meeting, as well as Chuck putting on the glasses in episode three so Bryce Larkin could give him the Intersect software upgrade. We knew we'd want Jill coming back into the story. Then we had the second half, which we knew would be focused around the return of Chuck's dad. And we knew we would finally have the Ellie and Awesome wedding. We knew we would have Ellie and Awesome getting married -- how that would affect Chuck, and Chuck trying to bring dad home. In next week's episode, we also have an escalation inside the Buy More story, with Morgan and Emmitt and Big Mike. Changes inside the Buy More are coming that are almost as big as the ones happening to Chuck.

Speaking of the Buy More, can you talk about the challenge of finding room for those stories every week?

There's three sets of stories. There's the Chuck spy story, the Buy More story and the Ellie and Awesome story. Based on the Chuck story, we figure out how the B story is going to fold into it. Last night was such a big Chuck story that there was very little Buy More in last night's episode. I think that that made sense. But there was also the Ellie and Awesome story was essentially the B story of that episode. Usually, we like to make the stories thematically tied together, so Morgan is having an issue inside the Buy More that Chuck is dealing with, be it trust, or growing up, or making life choices.

Fulcrum now knows that Chuck works at this Buy More where they've lost so many agents, that he was Bryce Larkin's roommate in college and dated Jill at the same time, and now they know that his father created the Intersect. At what point is someone in Fulcrum HQ going to do the math on this?

I think if you look at it from the Fulcrum perspective. Because we have so much story to tell in each episode, what we don't do is the scene where you cut back to the bad guy lair and hear them discussing their plans. Every time they've sent an agent inside the Buy More, they've lost that team; they look at the Buy More as a CIA station, probably everyone inside that store is a spy. In our next couple of episodes you're going to start seeing the Fulcrum plan come into focus.

Is there anything fans can do to help the show come back?

We're always looking at how fan reactions are to how episodes end.. I'd say just get the word out, tell friends and family to watch the show, as well as making their voices heard. Fans can be so helpful in getting the word out, letting people know how great the show is.

Well, do you think there's still the possibility of sending lots of one item to NBC, or did the "Jericho" situation kind of ruin that for fans of every other show?

Our fans are a creative bunch out there, so if they have any great ideas, go for it. Obviously, the "Jericho" fans took nuts and ran with that. Maybe there is a great idea, so yeah.

Looking back, is there anything you wish you had done differently this season?

We couldn't be happier with our season. Working on "Chuck," and with Josh and our writers and our cast and crew, it is a lot of fun and a great show to work on. We couldn't be happier with the season that we've created. We just look forward to doing more episodes in the future. Click here to read the full post

Chuck, "Chuck vs. the Dream Job": I am your father, Chuck

Spoilers for "Chuck" coming up just as soon as I go out for pancakes...

"I'm not who you think I am." -Chuck Bartowski
"Don't worry, Charles, I'm not who you think I am, either." -Stephen Bartowski

Chuck's dad serves neatly as a metaphor for "Chuck vs. the Dream Job" as a whole. The episode is rambling and confusing but still fairly entertaining (since it's not my long-lost father, after all), but it doesn't really kick into gear until we find out that Papa Bartowski is also Orion, father of the Intersect.

Let's get the bad stuff out of the way quickly. Even by the low standards of the "Chuck" Plot Hole Of The Week (insert your ad here), dad's explanation for not telling Chuck who he really was makes no sense. Sure, he's worried that Chuck thinks he's a nut, but any sentence featuring a combination of the worlds "Intersect," "Fulcrum" and "Orion" should have done the trick.

Also, while Chuck's brief stint as a Roark employee had its share of fine moments both dramatic (Chuck again viewing a cover identity as more appealing than his real life) and comic (Chuck struggling to balance himself on the exercise ball chair, Jeff throwing a body block while Chuck was running from Roark's goons), it felt like there were several scenes missing in the middle, and/or that some got shuffled out of order. One minute, Chuck's being dragged away by Roark security after turning a worldwide live product launch, and the next he's turning up for work at the Buy More to cast another glimpse at this place that makes him so miserable? Huh? Shouldn't there have been at least a throwaway line about Casey having to bail him out of jail(*), and/or someone from the Buy More confronting him about the gossip of him taking a job with Roark (or even about his appearance in said disastrous live webcast)?

(*) Glossing over the probable legal ramifications of that stunt feels like a missed opportunity. Sarah sold Chuck using his own identity as a good thing -- a way to boost his self-esteem by showing he has what it takes to get this job using nothing but his own (non-spy) credentials -- but instead it should have turned into a very bad thing. Even if Roark somehow didn't have him arrested, possibly to avoid the Fulcrum connection, Chuck has now been involved, on-camera, in a very public gaffe involving the biggest software company in "Chuck" World, while working under his own name. If he ever hopes to get out of the spy life and get an actual job in the computer game, wouldn't this come back to haunt him, big-time?

But any concerns I had about the plot holes started to waver when Chuck combat suit-ed up for the first time, and they vanished altogether once Chuck's dad turned up at Roark and took out Vincent(**), Orion-style. It was a moment a lot of us assumed was coming, but it was so well-executed in every phase -- from the "Princess Bride"-esque exchange quoted above to the way Scott Bakula effortlessly flipped the switch from crazy and ineffectual Stephen to vigilante genius Orion -- that the lack of surprise didn't matter.

(**) Didn't Casey kill Vincent the last time we saw him? Or will his Rasputin powers turn into a running gag?

And from there, things just got better and better. His true identity revealed, Stephen showed himself to be very much his son's father, talking about how didn't design all of the Intersect -- just the really cool parts. In a moment near and dear to any comic book or "Star Wars" fan, he taught Chuck that the Intersect in his head was more powerful than he could possibly imagine. And when Roark showed up -- outing himself not just as a smug, rich SOB, but an evil, smug and rich SOB -- the tension got even higher, until we came to that great moment(***) where Casey and Sarah had to pull Chuck away from his dad while under the gun of Vincent and his Fulcrum agents. As Stephen Bartowski himself said, while quoting Scott Bakula's most famous role, "Oh, boy."

(***) Time to play Pick The '80s Reference! Do you go with Han and Leia saying goodbye before he's frozen in "Empire Strikes Back," or McCoy and Scotty at the end of "Wrath of Khan" holding Kirk back from going into the irradiated chamber with Spock? The great thing about this game: everyone's a winner!

Of our two Very Special Guest Stars, Bakula got more to do, and did more with it. Again, I went in assuming he was Orion (despite Josh Schwartz playing with semantics by telling me at Comic-Con that Chuck's dad would not turn out to be "a spy"). But in spite of that, Bakula did a nice job making Stephen's crazy loner persona seem real enough that, if I didn't start to doubt my theory, I was at least impressed when he dropped the act (mostly; I think even as Orion, Stephen's a bit nuts). Extremely likable, believable in both personas -- and as Zachary Levi's dad -- and I look forward to more.

Chevy Chase was mostly asked to be Chevy Chase -- specifically, the more obnoxious persona we've come to know in his later years, after everyone bagged on him in Tom Shales' "SNL" book and after everyone was so vicious to him at his Friars' Club roast -- and he did that very well. In some ways, the idea of Chevy Chase being on a show that owes such a debt to Chevy movies of the '80s is almost more important than actually getting him to do a lot. (In that way, it's sort of like the Bob Hope cameo in the Hope & Crosby-esque "Spies Like Us," which I'll link to again.)

Three episodes to go -- for the season, I hope, and not for the series. I'm hoping to get Chris Fedak on the phone tomorrow to post-mortem some of the developments here, and preview (without spoiling) what's to come. If so, I'd look for it (based on East/West coast time differences and other scheduling issues) late afternoon or early evening tomorrow.

Some other thoughts:

• I liked the symmetry of Chuck putting on Casey's combat gear (and proving surprisingly adept with his tranq guns) in the same episode where Casey and Sarah went undercover as nerds. I just wish their nerd disguises had been either A)More convincing, B)More imaginative than putting on glasses and striped shirts (if ever there was a time for the return of Sarah's Louise Brooks wig, or something else anime-looking, it was this), or C)Been mocked by Chuck for not being A or B.

• This episode was co-written (along with Corey Nickerson) by Phil Klemmer, whose previous gig was on "Veronica Mars." I mention this because one of the missions of the "Mars" writing staff was to try to smuggle, line-by-line, the entire script of "The Big Lebowski" into that show, and because here Casey warned Chuck, "You're entering a world of pain." If next week features Chuck being accosted at the Orange-Orange and declaring, "Hey, careful, man, there's a beverage here!," we'll know Klemmer has converted an entire new writing staff to the cause.

• As Fienberg pointed out in his eloquent preview of "Chuck vs. the Dream Job," this was a very good episode for Ryan McPartlin as Captain Awesome. You don't usually think of him as being the show's most nuanced actor, but he really nailed Devon's fear of disappointing Ellie. Sarah Lancaster, for that matter, was very good, playing her resentment of her dad so well that it added credence for a while to the idea that he really was just an ordinary guy who went out for pancakes one night and never came back.

• The amount of spy and Bartowski family drama meant that the Buy More gang got back-burnered for the week, but Josh Gomez did have that really nice moment where Morgan got off the phone with Jeff and Lester and reacted for real to the news that Chuck had seemingly abandoned him for the Roark job.

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Chuck, "Chuck vs. the Broken Heart": Number Six with a bullet

Spoilers for tonight's "Chuck" coming up just as soon as I empty out my wallet...

"Please take good care of him." -Sarah

Despite featuring one of the series' most concentrated doses of Captain Awesome to date, "Chuck vs. the Broken Heart" was decidedly less awesome than the two episodes that preceded it. Where "Lethal Weapon" and "Predator" were both game-changers that significantly moved both Chuck and the series forward, "Broken Heart" felt more like an hour that was treading water. There was a lot of fun stuff in it, and the conflict at the center of it needed to be addressed (though better than I think they addressed it here), but mostly it just made me antsy to see Chuck and his dad face-to-face next week, and to get back to the Chuck-becomes-a-spy business.

Sooner or later, the show did need to have General Beckman or someone else in authority question the closeness of Chuck and Sarah's non-business relationship, and the montage of heart-on-sleeve moments between the two was a reminder of just how closely the government is watching Chuck.(*) But the execution of how it went down left something to be desired, even if it gave us Tricia Helfer and Adam Baldwin arousing each other through a shared love of tranq darts, and even though it gave us Jeff and Lester leering at Helfer doing a pole dance in the middle of the Buy More.

(*) Though, given that, it seems weird to me that Sarah's apartment isn't in any way wired for surveillance. Wouldn't they, at the very least, have something rigged so if Chuck enters wearing his tracking watch, some microphones turn on? They have no problem peeping on every other place Chuck goes, including Casey's apartment; why does Sarah rate special treatment, other than for plot convenience?

Okay, so Beckman thinks that Sarah's losing the ability to be objective about her asset, correct? So what sense does it make to bring in an evaluator if the evaluator's first move is to bench Sarah and take her place as Chuck's handler? Either get Sarah out of there from the start, or else give her a chance to hang herself by acting in her usual capacity. There was a lot of mileage to be had in watching Sarah and Chuck try really hard to stay on their best behavior -- and only then, after they failed publicly, would we see Alex Forrest assume Sarah's duties. A much more logical, potentially tension or comedy-filled progression than what we got.

Beyond that, I'm not sure I buy General Beckman changing her mind about Sarah based on how the rest of the case went down. Sarah largely saved the day because she's a better safecracker than Alex, not because of her emotional attachment to Chuck. Yes, "Chuck" doesn't pretend to aspire to a "Wire"-level of verisimilitude about the way government espionage works, but if you're going to do an episode that's calling attention to one of the more obvious plausibility issues, you need to provide a better argument for why it's not that implausible than what we got here. Had Sarah tried to build a case on being able to be effective in spite of her feelings, rather than because of them, I'd go with it, but I don't see General Beckman buying the "because" argument, especially based on the facts in evidence.

That said, I did enjoy watching Helfer inserted into this world, and to see Casey manage to be attracted to Alex without being blinded to the fact he preferred working with Sarah(**). Some good comedy work by Baldwin, and by Helfer, who didn't often get to be funny on "Battlestar Galactica." She'd be in funny scenes, but most of the comedy would come from James Callis reacting to her; where here, I very much laughed at the expression on her face (and on Adam Baldwin's) as Alex and Casey were cleaning their guns together. And the climactic scene with Chuck and the evil doctor (played by Shaun Toub from "Iron Man") bonding as they got high on laughing gas was a nice example of the Funny Forgives a Lot rule.

(**) Though even that requires some willing suspension of disbelief. Casey, not that he wants to admit it, likes Chuck, and he and Sarah generally work well together, but he's as frustrated as anyone at having to cover for the other members of Operation: Bartowski when their emotions are getting in the way of the job. I could see him standing up for Sarah while at the same time preferring the new hottie -- unless, of course, he recognized that then the team would just have a different couple with unresolved sexual tension, and nothing would be improved by that.

I also have to invoke that rule on the Awesome bachelor party drama. I figured there would be some kind of artificial tension injected into the Ellie/Awesome relationship before the wedding, and using it to amp up Chuck's desire to get the hell out of spy world makes sense. But even if Chuck can't tell Ellie the truth about what he does, hasn't he learned just enough about lying by now to tell her something like, "Uh, Devon passed out after having too many drinks, and Jeff and Lester thought it would be funny to take some pictures of the stripper climbing over him"? Not hard -- even for someone as congenitally bad at deception as Chuck -- as it's basically the truth (minus the true identity of the stripper), and there's plenty of photographic evidence (as Awesome looks asleep in every shot) to support it.

But if I didn't buy that conflict any more than the rest of the episode, that subplot did give us Jeffster trying -- and spectacularly failing -- to be cool at their first-ever bachelor party, Casey hosing them down, Jeff buying Subway subs, Jeff hiring his sister as one of the gross initial strippers ("She gave us a deal!"), etc. Even when "Chuck" isn't making a lot of dramatic sense, it's still an awfully good comedy.

Some other thoughts:

• As if naming Tony Hale's character after the two leads in "Spies Like Us," and the show's go-to bugs after a bit of terminology from that movie isn't enough of an homage, tonight we get Chuck and the evil doctor recreating the famous "Doctor." "Doctor." "Doctor." "Doctor." scene from that movie.

• Still more '80s movie homaging: Alex Forrest is named after the Glenn Close character from "Fatal Attraction." Fortunately, no bunnies were harmed during the filming of this episode.

• Why would Chuck's computer be programmed to open a radio link to General Beckman if he ever says the name Carmichael? And even if it was, wouldn't that function be taken away the first time it accidentally happened in Captain Awesome's presence? Between that and Devon still being (barely) conscious when Chuck mentioned the CIA to Alex, methinks we're heading towards Awesome being the first person in Chuck's normal life to find out what he really does on all those in-home install calls.

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