Reviewed by Suw Charman-Anderson & Kevin Anderson
Stars Zachary Levi, Yvonne Strahovski, Joshua Gomez, Adam Baldwin, Bonita Friedericy,
Matthew Bomer, Sarah Lancaster, Scott Krinsky, Vik Sahay | Created by Chris Fedak & Josh Schwartz
UK certification 15 | UK RRP £39.99 | DVD Region 2 | Runtime 562 minutes | Directed by Robert Duncan McNeill
The second season of the geek-turned-secret-agent comedy Chuck raises the game significantly. For those of you who missed the first season, Chuck Bartowski (Levi) is a bit of an underachiever. Kicked out of Stanford University for allegedly cheating, he's spent five years working at the Buy More, fixing computers as part of the Nerd Herd and trying to keep his pal Morgan Grimes (Gomez) from being beaten up by girls. But for the last couple of years, Chuck has been leading a double life as The Intersect after his old college roommate Bryce Larkin (Bomer) emailed him an intelligence database that automatically downloaded itself into Chuck's brain. His "girlfriend" Sarah Walker (Strahovski) is really his CIA handler and his colleague and neighbour John Casey (Baldwin) is his NSA guard. Hijinx, quite clearly, ensue.
The first season of Chuck was entertaining, but occasionally slid into cliche particularly when focussed on Chuck's Nerd Herd coworkers who were presented as one-dimensional geek stereotypes: the creepy guy with boundary issues (Jeff, played by Krinsky) and the sleazy guy with chronic insecurity and an unhealthy obsession with beautiful women (Lester, played by Sahay). But even so, the central dynamic between Chuck, Sarah and Casey kept the series going effortlessly through 13 episodes, cut short like many other series by the writers' strike.
The writers could have played it safe and simply worked with these cliches. They would have ended up with a rather superficial comedy, but in the second season, they didn't take the easy route. They fleshed out the characters and pumped up not only the action but also the emotional impact. John Casey, in particular, gets a good fleshing out. He's not just a goon with a gun but someone who, over the course of 22 episodes, we see starting to genuinely care about Chuck. Although he tries to hide it, his actions belie his emotions eventually leading him to risk his career in order to save Chuck. Casey's mettle is tested most severely not by Chuck, however, but by a figure from his past who has betrayed everything Casey believes in.
These themes of loyalty, trust and family are the central to the series, cropping up again and again. Sarah, for example, comes face-to-face with her absent father, an old school rival and an ex. Slowly, bits and pieces of her past come to light, much to Chuck's delight and her discomfort. Chuck too has an ex, Jill, to deal with. Jill broke his heart at Stanford, and for a moment it seems as if Chuck might be able to rekindle the relationship but nothing is ever that straightforward. He also starts a search for his absent father, a search which brings him a lot more than he bargained for.
But at the end of the day, Chuck is still a clumsy, awkward geek who is both painfully aware of his astonishing good luck and yet desperate to go back to a normal life. It's hard not to fall for him. Not to mention the fact that he's got all this information in his head that he can access when he needs it - and how many geeks haven't dreamt of being able to download data direct into their wetware without having to do it the hard way?
Behind the drama of Season 2, though, laid some real drama. Mid-season, industry gossip was rule of chatter that NBC was going to cancel the show due to only average ratings and various American TV schedule shenanigans. Fans rallied around and embarked on a campaign to persuade Subway, one of the show's sponsors, to go just a little bit further with a special product placement deal that saved the day. If you notice the occasional shameless Subway plug in an episode here or there, remember why!
Whether it was the uncertainty about the show's future or whether the arc was planned out from the start, the writers went to town on keeping the show pacey, whilst at the same time developing the characters and plot in some very satisfying directions. Chuck spends most of the series trying to find a way to get the Intersect out of his head and by the penultimate episode you're wondering what will happen if he does? Is a life of normalcy really what he wants?
Chuck is one of the best comdy-action-dramas on TV at the moment and the show's creators have set up what could be an explosive season three. If you've not seen season one and two, you've got some catching up to do.
EXTRAS **** Each disk has 'Declassified Scenes', but there's little there to entertain - it's pretty easy to see why most of them were cut. The real gold is on Disk 6, which has a couple of enjoyable features: Exploring the Mythology of Chuck and Dude in Distress, which runs through some of the series' best action sequences. Then there are a series of Webisodes which are mildly amusing but not worth a second viewing. Chuck's brother-in-law gives us Chuck: A Real-Life Captain Awesome's Tips for Being Awesome. Tongue is firmly in cheek with John Casey Presents: So You Want to be a Deadly Spy. There's a gag reel too, but it's really short which means either they just weren't very funny on set, or that Levi, Strahovski and Baldwin are just consummate professionals.