Chuck vs. Me hating him

Sometime last year I developed an appreciation for the NBC series Chuck.
This appreciation had a lot to do with the sort of nerdy references that the show frequently made and also because of the interesting will-they won't they chemistry between the shows two leads, Chuck, played by Zach Levi, the one on the right, and Sarah, played by Yvonne Strahovski, the one on the left (and I would be lying if I didn't acknowledge the fact that Sarah's choice of attire, or lack there of, in some episodes is also a slight draw to the show, but totally not in a creepy way if you're reading this Yvonne... ok, maybe it's a little creepy, but still, if you wanted to go out or something I totally wouldn't be creepy at all. We could just go Panera or something, get some soup, maybe go catch a movie, talk for a bit then maybe go for a walk down by the river and then we'd both go our separate ways. Then maybe a couple days later I'd text you something like, "I had fun the other night" and you could text back something like "me 2 :)", and I'd be like "That's cool, we should get married. LOL" and you'd be like "that sounds awesome! LOL" then I'd be like, "No. I'm serious" and you'd be like "Me 2."). But recently I have fallen out of favor with Chuck.

The show is more or less a spy procedural, and as such, there aren't a lot that changes from week to week. The problem with this is that it's not a particularly good spy procedural. It seems like it was written back in the 90's before the general population had seen Jason Bourne movies or Munich; when the world believed, for the most part, that spying and counter-intelligence worked pretty much like it did in the Roger Moore James Bond movies (It's all about gadgets and witty comebacks and terrorists wanting to blow up the world unless they got paid a million dollars). Living in a post 9-11 (I hate using that phrase) world, Americans are (or should be) too smart to fall for this kind of nonsense. It's not that all TV should depict the world as it really is, but Chuck seems to take a remarkably juvenile approach to how the world works, and in a completely earnest way. There is nothing ironic about the depiction of the world in the Chuckverse (or the Chucktinuum as I sometimes call it). The struggle between the good guys and bad guys in Chuck is so painfully black and white that it approaches Disney levels of naivety. There are a couple of instances where the show veers off into slightly greyish moral areas (When Sarah shoots a guy in cold blood to protect Chuck) and, for me these are some of the shows high points.

Chuck (the show)'s inability to have any sort of significant changes to the main characters from episode to episode is also a bit frustrating to me. I don't know who along the line made the decision, but at some point, someone decided that at the end of every episode, the status quo should be immediately restored (unless it's the end of the season). Sarah gets fired? She comes back to save the day at the end of the episode. A new Intersect is made rendering Chuck (the character) unnecessary? The new intersect is actually a bomb and blows up the whole project so they have to start from scratch. The gang of bad guys from the first two seasons is defeated? It turns out they were just a puppet organization of the real enemies, The Ring. The lengths this show goes to not change absolutely anything about their formula for episodes is beyond ridiculous. It undermines any of the drama that could possibly be created because the audience knows at the end of the episode, all will be returned to normal. It punishing the fans of the show by essentially making them watch the same episode over and over again, which goes a little something like this:

Bad Guy: I'm going to steal something/kill somebody... In Los Angeles!
Meanwhile....

Sarah: So this bad guy and this thing the bad guy wants are in Los Angeles.
Chuck: I know where they are. I can stop them.
Sarah: Ok, let's go.

Chuck tries to stop them but fails, comically (usually because the bad guy isn't where he's supposed to be).

Chuck: I couldn't stop them.
Sarah: I don't believe the bad guy is really here anymore. Blah Blah Blah, boy who cried wolf.
Chuck: Well if you don't believe me, I'll just stop them myself.

Chuck runs away, gets into trouble, Sarah and Casey save him.

Chuck: Thanks guys, I guess I shouldn't have gone after them by myself.
Sarah: No, it's our fault for some reason.
Casey: Chuck, you know Sarah is in love with you.
Chuck: What!?

Chuck and Sarah have a moment, but it's cut short by some ridiculous bullshit. The end.


So to sum up, I don't like Chuck because it completely refuses to be postmodern. It his an extremely conventional TV show that has, somehow, amassed massive critical goodwill by mentioning Arcade Fire a couple times in its first season and occasionally playing Spoon songs. That being said, I will continue to watch it, because it's still funny frequently, it occasionally has awesome guest stars (Chevy Chase, Scott Bakula, Vinnie Jones, Brandon Routh...) and because Sarah walks around in her bra and panties every three episodes or so.