"Chuck" Season 3 (1 Viewer)

[Josh Dial]

Originally Posted by Lou Sytsma

The production cost cutting is playing to the show's favour. The rotation of the supporting cast makes for tighter story telling since they no longer have to try and shoehorn all the show elements into each episode.

Exactly. Numb3rs has been doing this for years now, where various members of the FBI team are "on days off" in a rotating fashion. It also allows for some interesting pairings (like Awesome and Chuck) other than the standard "team" and "pairings."

 

[Jeff Ulmer]

I liked the first three episodes, but agree that the opener was pretty disorienting at first. New Chuck has a lot of potential, though I hope they don't get too carried away. I also hope they don't just drop Chuck and Sarah's relationship that had developed by the end of S2, there is still room to complicate it further. Like others the Buy More works better to me if it isn't being shoehorned into the episode.

I did NOT want to see that preview either.

 

[Lou Sytsma]

Canucks got 3.04 one night early.

Boom. Boom. Pow! Jack Bauer eat your heart out!

Ryan, Angie, and Brandon all rocked this episode. Episode ruled.

out of

More tomorrow after it airs in the US.

 

[Jeff Ulmer]

Another good episode, managed to avoid the spoilers for next week.

 

[Josh Dial]

Great episode. Though, it seems that after Jay moves back to his old timeslot, the Canadian channels will stop airing Chuck 1-day early. Oh well, it was nice while it lasted. http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/television/news/e3ieea0d35bc59ea6b95fe1b4a1896f0720

 

[Greg_S_H]

Good episode. Classic Chuck family ending. Almost made it feel like a Thanksgiving episode, but in January.

 

[Lou Sytsma]

Sadly true Josh. After the Olympics we will lose Sunday night Chuck.

Daniel Shaw's intro was the best one yet for a character on Chuck. His presence on the team will shake things up and push them out of their comfort zone. Sarah defending Chuck's stance on family was merely the first but a big one for her character to make.

Devon's inability to lie was used for great laughs, though my favorite moment was a freaked and shocked Devon yelling to Chuck, 'Chuck you killed Julius!' lol Nice role switching too as Devon channeled first season Chuck and Chuck channeled Sarah.

Props to Angie Harmon who was deliciously evil as a Ring Agent and composer Tim Jones for the cool spy action scoring.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

I actually think that Brandon Routh was better suited for this role than he was for Superman. Shaw is a strange mix of Clark Kent and Superman attributes. Instead of arguing with Chuck, he engages Chuck and tries to redirect him toward what the C.I.A. needs doing.

 

[Lou Sytsma]

Just watched 3.05 - Hannah is so cute. She will be very hard to dislike.

Shaw continues to shake things up. Best new character to come to the show yet.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Please use spoiler tags until its airs on at least the east coast in the US in the future.

 

[Lou Sytsma]

Done - though general impressions hardly seem spoilery.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Thank you. It's not a huge deal, I just get paranoid that something big is going to get spoiled whenever there's a time mismatch between the Canadian broadcast and the US broadcast.

 

[Lou Sytsma]

Understood - I fear that too - hence my modus operandi is not to go into plots points until after the US airing.

 

[mattCR]

Lana is still wicked hot. I'm sorry, just stating facts.

 

[Patrick Sun]

Let's just hope she gets better material, rather than the wide-eyed soap-opera-ish gaze she used to give Smallville viewers week after week, stopping each episode in its track with such a lovely gaze.

 

[Lou Sytsma]

Well she's still a show stopper but in a very good way so far.

 

[Lou Sytsma]

Great episode - the PLIs are much more layered and interesting. Much more than vanilla extract employed this season!

Chuck is still Chuck - his reaction to a first class ticket was perfect.

With the BuyMore storylines tooled to get Casey into the store as opposed to getting Chuck out - these sequences are a treat to watch.

 

[ThomasC]

What are PLIs?

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Originally Posted by Patrick Sun

Let's just hope she gets better material, rather than the wide-eyed soap-opera-ish gaze she used to give Smallville viewers week after week, stopping each episode in its track with such a lovely gaze.

On Smallville, it had gotten to the point where I cringed every time she popped up on screen because I knew the show was grinding to a halt.

Tonight's "Chuck" was a reminder than, yes, Kristin Kreuk can be an engaging screen presence. It helps that her scenes with Chuck was written a 100 times better than any of the Clark/Lana scenes since season two (if ever). Lana and Clark stared longingly toward each other, forlorn about how things could never be. Chuck and Hannah actually had a conversation about things.

Given the promo for next week, it looks like Hannah will be taking Anna's slot as resident Asian nerd herd girl. Will Hannah's future replacement be named Diana, to keep the rhyming scheme going?

Originally Posted by Lou Sytsma

Great episode - the PLIs are much more layered and interesting. Much more than vanilla extract employed this season!

Indeed. To be an effective potential love interest, characters need to be effective as characters period. Both Shaw and Hannah pass that test.


The thing I love about Shaw is that his role in the show makes him a natural antagonist to Chuck, so it would be easy to make him a prick that we love to hate too. Brandon Routh, though, is in full Clark Kent wholesome mode. He makes life difficult for Chuck, but no more difficult than it probably should have been right along if Sarah and Casey weren't so fond of their asset. At the same time, when he overreached with the plane mission, he didn't waste any time defending his record; he did what he had to do to get his asset home safely. Making Shaw nice, polite and professional was the most interesting choice the writers could have made, because it makes their job so much more difficult.

Hannah's interesting because she finds herself basically where Chuck did right after he got expelled from Stanford. She makes a viable love interest because she can relate to all of the parts of Chuck's life that Sarah can't. Sarah knows what it's like to be a spy. Hannah knows what it's like to be an IT professional whose career just got derailed in a sudden and unexpected way. She offers the prospect of a public identity that Chuck wouldn't feel ashamed of living.

With the BuyMore storylines tooled to get Casey into the store as opposed to getting Chuck out - these sequences are a treat to watch.

I agree. The biggest stumbling block to having Chuck go on missions by himself and be more generally self-reliant is that it raises the question of what you do with Casey and Sarah in the mean time. This episode proved they could have effective storylines largely independent of Chuck, which is important to the show's growth and continued viability.

In a weird way, Casey fits in as just another one of the social misfits that populate the Buy More. Instead of being a geek or an alcoholic, though, he appears to the rest of the world as that stone cold vet that returned from war damaged in the head and now marks time at a dead-end job scaring the shit out of everybody else. Adam Baldwin is such a terrific actor that he completely sells it. At the Buy More, all of Casey's aggression comes through with none of Casey's acute intelligence.

 

[Adam Gregorich]

The Casey Buy More scenes were great. All in all I am very happy with the season so far. It will be interesting to see what Sarah thinks/reacts to Hannah.