Chuck [television]
One of the things that is great about E is that he gets really, really, really into things upon occasion. I think that it's awesome that he displays a high level of passion for things.
Recently, one of those things was the show Chuck. At his behest, I began watching the show (Season on on Netflix, Season 2 on Hulu), and I'm now caught up.
As a comedic spy show, Chuck is near pitch-perfect. Equal parts tech, jokes, geeks, spies, and action, Chuck is an hour of well-written fun.
To sum up the premise of Chuck (the show), Chuck (the character) is an employee at Buy More's Nerd Herd (i.e. Best Buy's Geek Squad), complete with his own car (the Nerd Herder, which is very similar in pronunciation to the famed Star Wars "Nerf Herder." This is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to geeky linguistic puns. Honestly, it really is the tip, it seems like every guest character is an homage to some geeky character/show/etc. My favorite? A character in the last episode before the winter hiatus was named Ned Ryerson).
Chuck is clearly an intelligent guy, but a geek that's just stuck in a rut and working at this dead-endish job. He gets an email from his old college roommate, Bryce Larkin (who happens to be a spy), which contains something called the Intersect that gets imprinted into Chuck's brain. The Intersect is basically a repository of all of the intelligence from the CIA/NSA/FBI/etc. The Intersect contains tons and tons of images, which are all in Chuck now.
Eventually, intelligence operatives find him, and he is protected by two agents, CIA agent Sarah Walker and NSA operative John Casey. The government decides to keep Chuck in his current situation, for TV-plot reasons. Casey becomes an employee at Buy More, and Sarah takes cover as Chuck's girlfriend, and works at a fast-food hot dog restaurant. There are also Chuck's "real-life" friends and family: his sister and her boyfriend, his best friend Morgan, and plenty of other Buy More employees that are solid characters.
From there, each week our heroes are tasked with stopping some mid-level national security emergency. Frequently, these emergencies tie back in some way to a shadowy agency-within-an-agency known as the Fulcrum. The Government wants to make sure that no one knows Chuck is the Intersect, and Fulcrum wants the Intersect, but first has to find out where it is.
Within this narrative framework, the show's best work is done through character interaction. Themes of family, friendship, trust, and realized/unrealized potential are all explored in deft and interesting ways. Furthermore, each episode builds a little bit more into the history of the characters, which really creates them as believable characters, albeit ones operating in an incredibly stylized world.
I wouldn't recommend that you jump into the series when it picks back up in a couple of weeks, but I would say that if you're looking for a solid hour of popcorn level fun each week, catch up while you can, you'll thank me (and E).
