Chuck was one of the stand-out debuts of 2007. A sharp, witty and effortlessly fun spy caper, think Burn Notice through the prism of goofy ‘90s workplace slacker comedy or a Gen-X Get Smart. Criminally overlooked, it should have been much bigger than the small blip on the radar it actually was. It has already attracted a degree of cult-dom in the US through a successful ‘Save Chuck’ campaign, but here in Australia it remains a DVD nugget. The first season found Chuck Bartowski (Zachary Levi) juggling his menial job at the big box electronics store and a career as ‘The Intersect’; the holder of a fountain of government secrets downloaded into his brain by some opportunistic twist of fate. Adam Baldwin stole the show outright as the uptight, lantern-jawed and long suffering NSA agent John Casey and was rewarded with noticeably more screen time as the show progressed.
For the return season, Chuck is no longer the confused Kafka-esque ‘man in the middle’ – he wants to be part of the system, he wants to be a full-on spy. But as we all know from Charlie’s Angels, espionage and being pursued by the Russian Mob isn’t for tousle-haired softies. Accordingly, Chuck spends much of his time trying desperately to prove he’s not a total screw up. Unsuccessfully. Some of the quaint charm and sparkle has worn off a little this time around as limitations in the concept begin to creak at the edges and frankly the production design is hardly in the realm of Mad Men. Still, that was never the goal. In reality as an early champion of the show I’m probably being unnecessarily harsh, these are really inconsequential quibbles. Chuck is a strange beast; an instantaneously gratifying, lovable slow burner.
