*** CHUCK aired on NBC WCMH Channel 4 for Time Warner and Insight Communications customers ****
Okay guys. I might get really long on this one. But here we go.
It was six years ago, 2007 that was the year of the geek. And I was elated. September 24th, 2007 was the night, a Monday evening, and two shows aired that night that affected me on some level. While some poo-poo’d on the other geek show that night, CBS’s The Big Bang Theory, (at least at first) I loved it dearly, then there was the hour-long spy-show Chuck. And both won my heart.
As the geeky nerd growing up, I was very much both Leonard and Chuck in personality, but while The Big Bang Theory had more laughs, despite having heart, at the end of the day, Chuck on NBC not only had heart, but like any good geek, it wore it’s heart on it’s sleeve.
So cut to now. After many failed attempts at canceling the show, marking for a rough period in the show’s development as a story, it has come to this, the 2 hour finale, made up of two episodes entitled Chuck: Chuck Versus Sarah and Chuck: Chuck Versus The Goodbye. And so, how did the show end? Well I’ll be honest. For those not caught up, this entry of ‘Final Thoughts’ is gonna be busting out some spoilers, not only of the series finale, but of the show to this point in general, so be forewarned.
With that said, the obligatory ‘spoiler warning’, let us continue down memory lane, shall we?
Chuckalways worked best with it’s heart on it’s sleeve. In the pilot we were introduced to CIA agent Sarah Walker (Yvonne Strahovski), a bad-ass female agent, with seemingly a soft spot, and John Casey (Adam Baldwin), an NSA agent. Both are after the intersect, on behest of CIA Director Langston Graham (Tony Todd) and Brigadier General Diane Beckman, USAF (Bonita Friedericy). Apparently Bryce Larkin (Matthew Bomer), Chuck's former Stanford University roommate and now Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agent, steals the Intersect, the entire merged database of the CIA and National Security Agency (NSA), and destroys the computer storing it. The sole surviving copy becomes subliminally embedded in Chuck's brain via encoded images when he opens an email from Bryce. The NSA's Major Casey and CIA Agent Walker were dispatched to investigate, where they find Charles ‘Chuck’ Bartowski (Zachary Levi) is in his late twenties, working at a dead end job as a computer service expert at the Burbank, California Buy More (a large retail consumer-electronics chain comparable to Best Buy) with his best friend, Morgan Guillermo Grimes (Joshua Gomez). Chuck is intelligent, but lacks ambition. His sister Ellie (Sarah Lancaster) and her boyfriend Devon "Captain Awesome" Woodcomb (Ryan McPartlin) are doctors who are constantly encouraging Chuck to make progress in his professional and romantic life. Realizing that a nerd from the Nerd Herd has the intersect embedded into his brain, Walker and Casey guard over Chuck who while on the outset, seems bumbling, but is unwittingly recruited to use the knowledge he now possesses to help thwart assassins and international terrorists, upending his previously mundane life. The Intersect causes Chuck to receive involuntary "flashes" of information from the database, activated by triggers such as faces, voices, objects, and keywords. In order to protect his family and friends, Chuck must keep his second occupation a secret. Casey and Walker are assigned to watch over Chuck officially. They are forced to establish an uneasy alliance and cover identities; Walker poses as Chuck's girlfriend and takes a job at a fast food restaurant near the Buy More, while Casey reluctantly becomes part of the Buy More sales team.
From the get go though, Chuck is absolutely goo-goo over Sarah Walker, and for some reason, Chuck’s nerdy sensibility was a bright spot for the hardened CIA agent, and as Chuck and Sarah danced around the intersect, they eventually fell in love. Despite everything the show did well, which was a lot of fun stuff, (Jeffster, Captain Awesome and Ellie, Big Mike, Morgan, and even Casey) the thing the show always never failed was in it’s treatment of the relationship between Chuck and Sarah. And maybe it’s my penchant for loving any story where the geeky nerdy guy pines after the girl who is almost always out of his league, but Chuck seemed to not just play on that, but every other sensibility that I seemed to have. From loving spy stuff to nerd stuff (from Tron to Sneakers) and even musical tastes, the show seemed to ‘get every aspect’ of a show I wanted.
Now through the years, the show hasn’t been perfect. Chuck was never a show that surprised me too often week to week; watching the show, you knew what you’d get: Chuck would flash on someone, Casey and Sarah wouldn’t agree with Chuck how to handle the situation, Chuck and Sarah give each other passing glances, Chuck pines for Sarah, and does what is right, which involves coming off bumbling the mission but stopping the bad guys and saving the day.
Never once did the show’s final moments or end results or arc for the episode ever really surprise me too often. The real beauty of Chuck was that the show, despite not being surprising was it’s heart, and the characters it had built up, that despite knowing that Chuck would bumble a bit and save the day, and Casey would grunt but secretly enjoy his teammates and Sarah really loved Chuck no matter how many roadblocks (such as Bryce or Jill returning) caused, because we knew/you knew it’d be okay. The show made you love the characters so much that despite knowing deep down that everything would be okay again, by the end of most episodes, that was the greatest hat trick the show pulled on you; it made you suspend disbelief enough because, gosh darnit, poor Zachery Levi played Chuck with all his heart and soul, that when he pined and wept for Sarah, you wept with him for Sarah. When Bryce Larkin showed back up, you were happy but also sad, because well, Chuck was (at least towards the end of Bryce’s life) happy to see his friend but sad to see him because he knows of what Bryce means to Sarah. The show was truly about Chuck, and how we rooted for him, cheered for him, cried with him, for him, and laughed with or at him. And soon, by the end of the show, it became about Chuck’s family, such as John Casey, Alex Casey, Morgan Grimes, Captain Awesome and Ellie, the Buy More gang and of course, Sarah Walker. Heck, even Beckman was well loved and endeared to us, in her own way.
In Chuck: Chuck Versus The Bullet Train, Chuck’s wife Sarah Walker who had downloaded the intersect, was trying to escape to find a way to get the intersect out of her head, after Angus Macfadyen’s Nicholas Quinnnoted his want to get the intersect, even if it’s in Sarah’s mind. By the end, Sarah sacrifices herself for Chuck, and in the process, loses every memory she had ever had about Chuck. So by episode’s end, when Sarah wakes up in her old hotel room/apartment, Quinn shows up, claiming he is her handler, and their next mission is Charles Bartowski, who she must kill. Meanwhile Chuck is desperately looking and searching for Sarah with Morgan and Casey followed in hot pursuit for their friend-
-which is where we pick up with Chuck Versus Sarah. Between the two hours, Chuck Versus Sarah is the darker of the two, with Chuck and Sarah finally facing off in what is a strong performance from Zachery Levi. To see Chuck throw it all out there, literally, as he takes a beating, crying and pleading with Sarah to listen to reason, that he loved her with everything, that “I won’t hurt you, Sarah” was more than heartbreaking and truly a masterful take at the geeky Nerd Herder who we rooted for. Never before had we seen Chuck seem this desperate and this heartfelt in his love for Sarah, that it was even more crushing when Quinn not only admitted that he duped Sarah, that he attempted to shoot her, where Chuck took the bullet.
To continue Nick’s thoughts on the finale of CHUCK then click here.
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