CHUCK: Second Season Premiere

Maybe the best season opener so far for 2008. It really had all the things I like about the show, and served as a great "coda" for the series.

My favorite character, by far, is Casey. He had some awesome moments in this episode. I like his fondness for Chuck, and the fact its not overdone. I also love that we will never know if Casey would have actually followed his orders and killed Chuck. Also? Love Casey's apartment with its secret spy stuff.

The only thing I don't like about the show is the Buy More silliness (especially when it doesn't involve Chuck himself). The cage match battle wasn't really funny, and Morgan continues to grate. The inclusion of the Buy More staff in the opening credits has me fearful. I was hoping for LESS of that element, certainly not MORE.

But all the stuff with his sister and Captain Awesome> awesome. That stuff really works for the show. I love Chuck's relationship with his sister. It's 100x more interesting than Morgan. And I love his interplay with Awesome. I hope they live together for the rest of the season.

Oh, and Chuck's first date with Sarah was very cute.

CHUCK: Three episodes in...

I thought I'd take another look at some of the new shows after three solid episodes. It's hard to accurately review a show on the pilot alone. Sometimes it takes a few episodes for a show to find its footing. And sometimes a great concept can't carry weekly installments.

So.... CHUCK three episodes in... Something about the tone of this show doesn't quite work for me. There's a real sense of danger (kidnapped in helicopter) and then there's the total camp-comedy (knife-wielding spy on the dance floor). Something isn't calibrated correctly in this show. The drama stuff just isn't very engaging. It seems like even the show doesn't know where to go with things. Are we supposed to take Casey (thee excellent Adam Baldwin) seriously while he's working at Buy More? In the pilot, the two spies were working at cross purposes and now they are getting orders together? Huh?

I actually think it would fair much better as a half-hour show. The plots would move along quicker and they could play up the comedy a bit more. This could be a very clever 21st century GET SMART. The cast is great and they would be pretty adept at comedy. It would also make the siller plot mechanics easier to swallow.

As it stands, CHUCK is on the bubble for me.

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.