Chuck: The Complete First Season

Review By: Andrea Tuccillo
AndreaTuccillo@TheCinemaSource.com

Chuck seems poised for a breakout. The second season of this action-comedy hasn’t even aired yet (it returns September 29th), but it already received the full season pick-up from NBC and is boasting enough high profile guest stars to make your head spin. That’s a lot of confidence in a show that only get to air 13 episodes last season due to the writer’s strike. I guess NBC saw what I saw: an incredibly fun, addicting and always-entertaining show!

Before season two arrives, though, here’s your briefing on season one: Creator Josh Schwartz has made a new geek hero with Chuck Bartowski. But unlike Schwartz’s previous geek hero, The O.C.’s Seth Cohen, Chuck is less whiny, less self-involved and, dare I say, cuter and more endearing. That’s thanks to charming star Zachary Levi. Chuck’s a computer nerd who works a dead-end job at a BestBuy-like store called the BuyMore. He lives with his caring sister Ellie (Sarah Lancaster) and her boyfriend Devon (Ryan McPartlin), whom Chuck refers to as Captain Awesome (‘cause the guy is near-perfect and his favorite word is—you guessed it—“awesome”), and plays video games with his best friend/BuyMore co-worker Morgan (Joshua Gomez).

Chuck’s destined for bigger and better things, though, and it all comes in the form of an email from an old college friend named Bryce Larkin (Matthew Bomer). Said email contains thousands of encoded images filled with government secrets which then get downloaded into Chuck’s unwitting brain. Turns out his old friend was a rogue CIA agent who stole the secrets from a massive government computer called the Intersect and sent them to Chuck. Both the CIA and the NSA shared the Intersect’s intel, and now that Chuck is the Intersect, two agents from each respective organization are sent to protect him.

There’s CIA agent Sarah Walker (Yvonne Strahovski), the blonde bombshell super-spy who could probably hold her own in a fight with Sydney Bristow. And speaking of which, Alias alum Kevin Weisman (who played techie Marshall Flinkman on the show) pops as a villain who uses poisonous truth serum as a weapon of choice in the episode Chuck Versus the Truth. Needless to say, Chuck is immediately smitten with Sarah and their undercover status as boyfriend and girlfriend. Sarah also has an undercover job at a hot-dog restaurant with perhaps the best name ever: Weinerlicious. There she dons a uniform probably designed specifically to drive the fanboys crazy.

Then there’s NSA agent John Casey (Adam Baldwin), who’s all business and no pleasure. He begins working undercover with Chuck at the BuyMore as a salesman, a far cry from the shoot ‘em up lifestyle he’s used to. Baldwin finds comedy and quirks in his character’s over-the-top gruffness. Just look at how he treats his prized 1985 Crown Victoria in the episode Chuck Versus the Crown Vic.

Chuck is the kind of show with an ensemble cast of characters that you get to know ...