Chuck is saved!
Every TV season, we watch a few episodes of as many of the interesting shows as we can manage. This usually means a mix of stuff, with a few genre shows thrown in. This time, it meant a whole lot of genre shows and nothing else. After a few showings, we ditched Reaper and Moonlight (sorry, Kira). Journeyman was on the bubble, because frankly, the poor hero seems like fate’s football, and it’s hard to fall in love with a show that offers no hope for the future. And Bionic Woman is a narrative mess — major characters (and showrunners?) coming and leaving by revolving door.
Top two shows? Unquestionably Pushing Daisies and Chuck. The former is almost too stylized to be watchable week after week — we had trouble believing that the pilot could be sustained, but yes, it could! I suspect that watching a season on DVD might rot your teeth.
Of course, with the writer’s strike, many of the new shows are at real risk of failing to build sufficient audience, followed by cancellation. (Rumor has it that Journeyman may not even air the last episode it already has in the can). Lucky for us, NBC is ordering more episodes of Chuck, which makes us very happy. This show clearly has actual geeks in the writing room; there’s usually at least one deep nerd culture reference per episode which you know can’t have been faked.
21 Responses to “Chuck is saved!”
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I’m a big fan of Chuck and glad to hear they are making a second season. I must say the main reason I like the show is because of the characters none of which I find annoying. The entire plot for the series could revolve around a DMV for all I care as long as it had the same cast of characters I would watch it. Adam Baldwin as Casey is particularly great even though he’s basically just portraying Jayne from Firefly.
You ditched two of my favorite shows! Current shows I’m watching are Dexter, Prison Break, Reaper, Stargate: Atlantis, Robin Hood, NCIS, and Moonlight. In that order. I’m waiting for 24, The 4400, and Lost. I’m also catching up on Andromeda.
Already watched all seasons of each, excluding Andromeda, in addition to Californication, Dead Like Me (only 1 season), Entourage, Eureka, Firefly, Heroes (only 1 season), Lucky Louie, Real Time with Bill Maher, Rome, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Enterprise, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Voyager, Stargate SG-1, Taken, The Dresden Files, The Sopranos, The Tudors, The Unit (except most recent season), and Weeds.
I’ve never seen Bionic Woman, Chuck, Journeyman, and Pushing Daisies. My sister mentioned Chuck to me yesterday. I’ll have to check those out. After I’m done with Andromeda.
Yeah, Chuck is definitely one of my favorite shows on TV right now.
From all the inteviews I have read, it seems like Zachary Levi and Joshua Gomez are big time gamers, along with a large chunk of the crew. Levi even showed up to work one day with a Wii-injury (hand through a vase, I believe). 😀
Chuck, Life, and Burn Notice are my favorite new shows this year.
Chuck is just great. Nerdy, funny, Adam Baldwin, I thought for sure it would get canceled since that’s what happens to most shows I like. Especially ones with Adam Baldwin (RIP Angel and Firefly)
Life is pretty good, I like quirky detective shows and it’s got an underlying plot that carries from episode to episode which is becoming rarer every day.
Burn Notice I like because it reminds me of MacGuyver and well let’s just say that I had a “MacGuyver Mullet” until Billy Ray Cyrus came out and ruined it.
Chuck rocks. They blow it on the computer stuff once in a while but it’s good fun. But Relm… it’s not a second season, they’re just filling out the first.
But Chuck holds nothing to Pushing Daisies. That show is pure awesome.
Reaper was just too repetitive. Dexter was too dark for me, I wasn’t into it. Prison Break I do watch. And Burn Notice, we watched all of, but it’s on break right now 🙂
I guess we should have watched Life. Oh well…
Likewise happy CHUCK got its back nine, and LIFE too — I’m enjoying both plus PUSHING DAISIES quite a lot. I’m particularly happy that the fresh, inventive DAISIES is doing so well.
No hard feelings re. MOONLIGHT, natch. 🙂 It’s not for everyone, but I do think we hit our stride about 3-4 episodes in. Here’s hoping the strike ends soon and that the show survives it.
I think we gave it four eps — which is about what we are willing to give a new show. So you just didn’t catch us quite in time.
I assume the improvements in the show involved giving Jason Dohring three times as much screen time? 🙂 I do hope the show survives, though.
I really enjoy the idea of Journeyman, and the main character. I think that the show does a lot of things right, but misses on a few items that annoy. It’s like the writing team has some solid people, and some shaky people, and neither party is in total control so the good and the bad are in balance…
I’d like to see it carry on though, and have time to work on the idea and improve. It’s not just Quantum Leap II, and has potential. 🙁
Repetitively original. Unlike Heroes.
Dark! Dark? Dexter’s all about enlightenment.
Dexter and Moonlight are driven by character development. Four episodes isn’t nearly enough!
Blah… the first four of Reaper were all simple monster-of-the-week. And four’s all you get! I have too many other shows to watch as it is. 🙂
I have to admit Reaper was sticking to a monster of the day approach but they seemed to have corrected their approach with the last few episodes. The one where Sam was framed for murder was particularly interesting.
Yeah Dexter is too dark for some people. If you were uncomfortable with the tv series whatever you do don’t pick up the books. Still I think I’d rather have the darkness of Dexter compared to the casual brutality of all the gangsters/mobsters series on the premium channels.
Dexter, Eureka, Prison Break, and Pushing Daisies are the only shows I still really like. Pushing Daisies can be hard to take in large doses, though. Great show, but I need a week or two break in between them.
Haven’t seen Chuck or Life yet, though. Maybe I’ll have to try ’em.
Dexter is the best show on television. The characters don’t revert back to their “default selves” at the end of the season losing all development they have made in the storyline.
*cough weeds, big love, 24, alias, etc.*
How can Raph and I have the same taste in TV shows? My world will collapse if we can’t disagree.
Chuck and Pushing Daisies are my favorite new shows this year. I want to love Journeyman mostly because of the cast, but the storyline keeps getting in the way.
Moonlight offends me, in part because of the horrendous teasers they did before the show premiered. And also because Angel was just so damn good.
I also love many of the shows on FX, such as Nip/Tuck, Damages, the Shield, and especially Sunny.
For me, Life has been the absolute charm of this season. You owe it to yourself to download at least the pilot from NBC.com. Might be hard to come in mid-season, but worth a shot.
I too, ditched Reaper and Moonlight after 2-3 episodes. Bionic Woman is on the chopping block, but I keep watching it in hopes that they’ll come back to some of intelligence that the pilot suggested.
Journeyman has been mostly hit. Everytime I’m concerned that the show is devolving, the characters evolve (or show more of themselves) and I’m pulled right back in. Even the twist in last weeks episode was extremely well done.
Chuck has been good, and I’m glad they’re renewing it.
Buffy spinoff. Buffy was bad to boot. Bleck. When I read the “Angel” synopsis and saw the promo photos, I was thinking that the Angel character would be a badass vampire with a bone to pick, but no, in every episode I watched he looked like he was going to curl up into a ball and cry his eyes out because the world’s so cruel. Fans of Buffy and its spawn probably wouldn’t like Moonlight. Moonlight’s intelligent and more realistic. Vampires shouldn’t look like their heads were run over by a bus over and over.
Moonlight is MUCH more sentimental than Angel and Buffy. I wouldn’t call it more intelligent, either. Buffy/Angel were very very witty shows.
Realistic — I guess I’d say Buffy and Angel are a lot more emotionally realistic. But not literally realistic.
I think you should give Reaper another try. In the latests episodes they delve more into contract and Sam’s origins which really pulled me in.
The devil just keeps getting funnier imo in the show.
If you enjoyed Dexter, you might want to try Jekyll, a small BBC miniseries with the star of Bionic Woman. Only six episodes unfortunetly.
It’s too bad about Drive.
I love Pushing Daisies and Chuck. I stopped watching Moonlight (though my wife loves it) because it’s way too much like Forever Knight (come on, vampire becomes cop to make up for his past evils, etc, it’s already been done). I dropped Bionic Woman after the first episode. I watched two or three episodes of Journeyman but just couldn’t get into it. I also loved Dead Like Me, and the replay time it’s getting on SciFi.
We really like Chuck too. It has made me LOL a couple of times at it’s geekiness, which is really nice. Glad to hear there will be more to like. We’ve got Pushing Daisies on the Tivo. Only watched 2 eps, but liked those 2 eps very much. We’re also watching a few girly shows, Gray’s Anatomy (which B says is too much about Grey’s Anatomy), Dirty Sexy Money. We also like Scrubs.
Currently catching up with Battlestar Galactica now that they’ve recently replayed all of the season 3 eps. I’m so sad this is going away after season 4. It’s probably time, though.
Did you watch Tin Man?
I am also love, love, loving Ace of Cakes on the food channel. heheh.
My Tivo has been screwed up since they released the 9.1 software update, and they haven’t released the 9.2 patch yet. Tivo may or may not record my shows for me – it’s a big crap shoot. So annoying.