Chuck vs. the Review
After I finished watching the first couple of episodes from Chuck I asked myself two questions. First: How is it possible this has been going on for two whole seasons without me knowing? Second: How many brilliant television series I don’t know about are still out there? Clearly, measures to prevent future oversights of this magnitude were desperately needed, so I quickly subscribed to the blogs of a couple of TV critics. I should now be protected from these kind of catastrophes.
I do enjoy a good television series. In contrast to films, which last only a couple of hours, series can take their time to develop characters that you, when done right, will start caring about. In that respect, series are a lot like books. The danger is that when you go from ‘compressing a story into two hours’ to ‘spreading a story over 20 episodes’, some of those episodes might not be as good as you’d like. Chuck has a bit of a slow start, but from that point onwards it grows only stronger.
Sarah, Chuck and Casey. This is an obligatory promo-picture, attempting to compensate somewhat the nonsensical use of a mouse as the only other graphical feature of this entry.
The series is named after the lead character, Chuck Bartowski, who is accidentally implanted with a CIA intelligence database in his brain. From that point forward Chuck, helped by two secret agents that have been sent to protect him, thwarts the plans of criminals operating conveniently close to his home. It’s mad, I know, but it is the basis upon which is built the most pure-fun television I have seen since Firefly.
Of bigger importance to your enjoyment than the premise, are the immensely enjoyable characters at the heart of the series. On top of that, Chuck is pretty damn funny. Not the bad kind of television humour, the kind that involves putting the cast in a room for twenty minutes of joke-tapping each week, but the good kind of humour, where it flows naturally with good storytelling and dialogue.
Currently two approaches to studying the behaviour of humour in a vacuum are being explored. One involves a mouse in a vacuum chamber containing low pressure nitrous oxide gas. The other project is known as ‘The Sitcom’.
The music is of the show is done particularly well too. Part of it consists of some excellently picked songs that did already exist before Chuck, though again outside of my knowledge. Some of these songs now sit comfortably on the flash card that goes into my Mp3 player. Another part of the music was made for the show, and pays plenty of homage to the Bond and Bourne spy films. This music is in fact not seated on the previously mentioned flash card, but this is only because a soundtrack of the series has sadly not been released.
That is about the maximum amount of free advertising I’m willing to do. As is customary with reviews, I’ll wrap up with a short conclusion telling you whether the product is something for you. Here it goes: I can recommend Chuck, humans should love it.