Watched the first few eps of Chuck off the DVR last night. Good fun, plenty of chuckles, enough bite to lend it a bit of substance, but nothing too heavy or serious.
Basic premise: Chuck is a serious nigh-stereotypical computer nerd, painfully single, still smarting over his old college buddy getting him kicked out of Stanford (and stealing his girl), spending his days as head “Geek Squad”-style techie at a Best Buy-esque store (insert The Office riffs here), and his nights playing video games with his fellow nerd-loser friend Morgan. Until the day when that old college buddy of his — who seems to be a rogue CIA agent — downloads (and demolishes) a joint CIA/NSA intel integrating computer, then before he dies downloads the data in an e-mail to Chuck — which intel then gets implanted in his head. Hilarity — and spy games and car chases and narrowly-averted assassinations — ensue.
The info in Chuck’s head is invaluable, but neither the CIA nor the NSA seem willing to pull him in to sweat it all out again, especially since Chuck’s doing a fine job integrating info at random times and helping the Feds nail the bad guys — but they do give him two escorts who seem to spend as much time trying to screw each other other as protect their country. The CIA agent is a stunning — and deadly — blond beauty, publicly Chuck’s impossible girlfriend — while the NSA agent (Adam Baldwin) is a churlish killer (think Robert Culp’s character from Greatest American Hero, only without being sure if he’s going to protect or gun down the protagonist next time they meet), now also working at the Best Buy-esque store as a trainee salesman.
Indeed, there’s more than a bit of Greatest American Hero flare to the series, with a bit of Bond, a hint of The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes, some Fugitive, large dollops of 00s cynicism about the Big Brother government (thank you, George W. Bush, for making the NSA into a band of info-hoarding assassins), a bit of True Lies tossed in for good measure (duck out of water civilian in the spy game), and, of course, fan service galore (of all sorts) for the geek/nerd audience NBC is trying very hard to attract.
To date the two episodes have been largely stand-alone, with some light arc in the background — when will the NSA decide it’s time to bump off Chuck, can the lovely CIA agent really be trusted, etc. — meaning that missing an ep isn’t going to mean you lose the entire thread of the show.
Quite decent entertainment, all told. Nothing to tell my grand-kids about, as of yet, but I’ll be back for more.
Dave you forgot my running commentary – Why are we seeing her in her underwear…Again! To that end it had a real Weird Science vibe to me.
If this was a Primetime Adventure game her personal set would – Naked
That said there were some funny if over the top bits.
Ah, yes.
Well, I was lumping that in under the “fan service” category I mentioned. I’ll have to make a point, though to watch it some more to see if that’s a recurring motif.
I sure hope so.