Chuck (Bartowski)
Kia ora, friends!
I only started watching this show for the first time a few weeks ago, and honestly, I wasn’t expecting to like it at all. But the first couple of episodes made me laugh, so I stuck with it. Now I’m almost to the end of season 2 and I absolutely adore it. So I figured, if I’m enjoying this stupid show from the mid-2000’s, in the year of our lord 2022, maybe some of you all will.
I’m watching it on Jeff’s Big Website (Am*zon Pr*me Video) in Aotearoa, but it’s probably still available either on there, or on some other streaming service in your area. But I’m sure there are… “other ways” that you could watch it too.
I’ll admit, it’s not a particularly smart show despite its premise; once you’ve seen a few episodes I got to a point where I can pretty easily spot the macguffin, the Chekhov’s Gun that will show up again later and save the day. But the human moments here are what really got me invested; the relationships between Chuck and his sister Ellie, Ellie and Morgan, Ellie and Devon, Chuck and Sarah, Chuck and Morgan, and even, dare I say it, Chuck and Casey. I have now cried at multiple episodes! I mean, I’m prone to crying at the drop of a hat, but this show so often has these really sweet personal moments between characters; the kind of thing that will bring a tear to your eye while you go “Awww…”
I think what put me off watching this, back when it was on the air, was the TV ads for it. I don’t remember much about said ads, except that I got the impression that it was just a very stupid show for very stupid people. It’s a little bit of that, sure, like, I’m not exactly ever the smartest person in any given room, but it has some real heart and you get the sense that the actors were having a lot of fun on-set. And while the writing is not always super tight, the character moments I alluded to above have a real authenticity to them - these actors really breathe life into their characters. Zachary Levi, Yvonne Strahovski and Sarah Lancaster are my favourite things about this show. But the supporting cast is great, too; especially Julia Ling, Joshua Gomez, Vik Sahay, Ryan McPartlin and Tony Todd (yes, that Tony Todd). Adam Baldwin is here too, I guess, and he does his job; I just wish they would’ve cast someone else in the role.
This show has become one of my comfort watches now. It’s what I put on while I eat lunch or dinner, and I usually only watch one or two episodes at a time because I don’t want to “waste” it. I’m sure that once I’ve seen every episode it will become one of those shows where I’ll just select a random episode from time to time, or one of those shows I put on on the days when I don’t have enough spoons to get out of bed.
I think the one thing that does bug me quite a bit about this show is how it sometimes overtly sexualises Strahovski and other female characters. They are, of course, cast and these roles explicitly because of their conventional attractiveness, which is a whole other conversation, but when the show does cutaways to women characters in slow motion, bent over slightly, or standing seductively with their hair being softly blown by a wind machine, it just kind of feels gross. There’s an episode in the first season where the character Jeff is filming women’s breasts when they come to the counter in the store, which he later plays back and the viewer can see it - it’s used as a plot device to discover the identity of an enemy agent, but I feel like they didn’t have to be so weird about it. I guess that’s just what happens in 2008 when two men are the showrunners on a show with hot women in it. The character of Jeff really bugs me in a lot of ways, and I’m glad it seems like that archetype doesn’t really show up anymore in modern media. Chuck, as a whole, is definitely a product of its time.
Overall though, I really like this show. It doesn’t linger too long on the things I don’t like about it, and I don’t think those things detract too much from what makes it great. If you want to watch, as I said before at time of writing it’s available on Jeff’s Big Website (at least in Aotearoa New Zealand it is), and it seems to be available from Google and iTunes for rent or purchase. But I bet you can probably also find the show… elsewhere online.
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Feel free to leave a comment on this post online, or hit me up at one or more of the many social links at the bottom of the page. And if you want to read more stuff I’ve written, I recently reviewed Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers (2022). Tomb Raider (2018) and Taxi Driver (1976) on my Letterboxd, if you’re into that sort of thing!
For those who celebrate; Merry Christmas for this weekend! I hope you all have a great time with whoever you’re celebrating with - and if you’re not celebrating, I still hope you have a wonderful day.
Thanks again for reading, and I’ll talk to you all again in a few days.
Ka kite anō au i a koe. 💚
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