By Buzz Byrne
Geeks are chic this new fall TV season. Fads don’t usually sustain themselves for long but then fads don’t always produce a show of the quality of CHUCK. Here’s hoping this new entry rises above the rest to stay with us a while. Funny, slick, charming and face-paced, CHUCK is a definite winner.
Chuck is your aimless everyman who works at Buy More with the tech support team the Nerd Herd- hard to spot the satire, I know. The show opens with Chuck and his best friend and co-worker Morgan trying to escape Chuck’s birthday party. His sister threw it for him and invited (ulp!) girls. A forced introduction and a lengthy explanation of the girl who broke his heart and left him for his college roommate, Bryce Larkin, and Chuck is left alone. As usual.
Cut to Bryce Larkin now, super spy, as he raids a government super computer, his tux covered in super blood. A fast download, a few handheld explosive devices to fend off the faceless government goons and Bryce is sending the stolen data to his old buddy Chuck. The sequence is up-tempo, violent and well shot. This is not the 8 pm show of old where the dispatched crawl away barely dazed. There were bones crunching and blood spurting. Bryce meets his end but the baton is passed.
The download contained every bit of intelligence gathered by the CIA and NSA as well as the computer’s ability to see patterns in the data. All of that is sent to Chuck and he absorbs it all unknowingly through the email from Bryce. Now Chuck is being chased down by Bryce’s girlfriend from the CIA, Sarah Walker (Yvonne Strzechowski), and the NSA agent, John Casey (Adam Baldwin), who put Bryce down.
Sarah and Chuck go on a date that he prepares for by trying on his sister’s boyfriend’s clothes- Captain Awesome- and she prepares for it by dipping weapons in poison and donning a Kevlar bustier. Casey catches up with them and now we get a car chase. Casey is armed with a government issue Escalade and Chuck has a Nerd Herd VW bug. The action is top of the line and moves the plot to the inevitable face off between the three.
Of course this is the time that the computer program, now in Chuck’s head, pulls together disparate info to tell Chuck that there is plot to kill the NATO Commander of Allied Forces who is visiting Los Angeles. He gets the agents on board and then in the final action sequence, Chuck proves he is more than a program in Chuck Taylors. The Commander is saved and the team is formed.
The premise is clever enough and the actors are very well suited for their roles. Sarah is a nice mix of tough and vulnerable who looks like Marcia Brady as a Maxim girl. Adam Baldwin plays a fine heavy and Joshua Gomez is fun as Chuck’s pint-sized best friend. Zachary Levi is strong in his insecure charm. He makes for a perfect Chuck.
Series premiere director McG paces the action to the proper throttle level. He shows a strong hand in the explosions, fights and light comedy. Hopefully the producers will make the rest of the season look as slick as the premiere. This is a perfect lead-in show to HEROES. If HEROES is geek heaven, CHUCK is pure geek fantasy: a super power bestowed on a good guy, who maybe if he thought a bit more of himself would get the girl all on his own. They are the guys to root for.