CHUCK: "Pilot"

The premise looked intriguing. I thought this was going to one of the shows where I'm either instantly hooked or instantly turned off. Turns out, I'm neither. I felt a whole lot of "meh" during the pilot episode. The set-up is interesting, but they didn't do anything particularly entertaining with it. I didn't really laugh and I didn't really feel for Chuck. His friend sorta annoyed me.

I realize the show isn't meant to be realistic, and I'm willing to let it go "out there" from time to time. I mean, the whole premise of the "e-mail with secure info stored in images" is a lot to swallow. But I'm willing to go with it. The scene where the blond spy dances and throws knives around the club was a little much, even in the context of the show. No one in the club notices this? MUCH BETTER was the street chase, where blond chick hit the button that activated the road spikes. More of that, please.

The scene in the Home-Depot type store was odd, in that the store was completely empty except for vaguely-European-black-leather-jacket-assassin-ish dude (another in the long list of New Cliches) -- and then after Chuck has his "flash" and panics, he turns around and the store has TONS of people milling around. And this wasn't a dream sequence? I have no idea what they were going for in that scene.

I think that's the problem... The tone of this show is all over the place; It shifts from Emo break-up Chuck (awww) to "the wacky" to "we're serious about the danger now". It lacks that BUFFY-like balance of the serious, funny and dramatic. (yes, everything gets compared to BUFFY with me).

Then there's the whole idea of him continuing to work at Buy More. There's no way the government (especially Adam Baldwin's character) would let him run around freely and NOT extract him. I get it, it's a pseudo comedy — but the idea of Adam Baldwin working at Buy More, given his character, is perhaps more than I can take. I think I would enjoy the show more if he was given a 'cover' job (a la Sydney Bristow's bank job) and had to keep a secret identity from his sister and friend.

Given its premise, I'm not sure how many times we can see the same types of scenarios without it getting grating. We'll see. The show MAY find its footing. I'll give this one a couple of more episodes, but I think the over-reliance on shennanigans will eventually turn me off on this one.