Chuck

[migrated from myspace blog]

I really, really want to like this show. When a show is marketed at "Ed" meets "Alias", what I hear is peanut butter + chocolate. Unfortunately, the reality is more like oil + water.

Yes, the show has the quirky qualities that made Ed so watchable, except the dialogue isn't as clever, and after two episodes, it isn't really that funny, so I find myself wishing it was Thursday night instead, so I could be watching 30 Rock and The Office. The show takes itself too seriously to really go for the big laugh, or even just a really good subtle one.

"Computer nerd (herder) falls for attractive CIA agent working undercover to protect him" certainly sounds like an interesting premise, but the two sides to the show seem somehow in opposition to each other. Someone should be able to pull off a story about a guy who downloads all the government's secrets into his brain (accidentally), and keeps his day job at "Buy More", while Adam Baldwin's NSA assassin character also gets a job there to keep an eye on him. I can say, though, fairly definitively, that that person is not the "director" who calls himself "McG".

If the quirky side of the show is too serious to be funny, then the action side of the show is too slapstick to be taken seriously. Despite blatantly borrowing musical themes from sources such as the Bourne series, the action sequences lack the gravitas required for us to believe there's any real danger to the characters. It really sits on the border of being a parody of an action show more than anything else.

Unfortunately, the best thing I can say about tonight's episode is that one of the secrets apparently stored in Chuck's brain is that "Oceanic flight 815 was shot down by [indistinguishable]." If you don't get it, then you won't care anyway.