Wednesday, October 1, 2008

CHUCK VS. THE GIRLS OF CONSTANCE BILLIARD: I have probably never made a greater DVR mistake than leaving Gossip Girl higher in the season-pass queue than Chuck -- a relic of the order in which I heard about the shows and programmed them in. With the Spacewoman-mandated HIMYM at the top of the Monday 8:00 to-do list, Chuck got bumped, and it took me another day to remember that I thankfully had a backup subscription on the other box.

Even if I didn't know that Sepinwall is raving about the step forward the show has taken this season, I would say that Chuck is exactly the kind of TV that we need right now. There's a lot of heavy stuff on TV, from the apocalyptic Heroes to the jittery Fringe to the dyspepsic CSIs. Even the lighter fare is kind of a downer: Gossip Girl is angsty and navel-gazing; The Office is melancholy slapstic; 30 Rock reruns are sharp-elbowed and caustic; and even HIMYM gets me down because so much of it is shot at night or in cramped, poorly-lit places. And don't get me started on the news. I'm not opposed to the indulgently serious -- I love Lost, for example -- but sometimes you need some sorbet to cleanse the palate.

Chuck is loose, nimble, and good natured, and it never takes itself too seriously. The season opened with a deft meta joke: A bad guy hangs Chuck by his ankles out a window and asks a pretextual "who are you" question so that Chuck can deliver a previously-on-Chuck monologue that is pure exposition, but we never find out how Chuck ended up hanging out the window in the first place. An hour of fighting, bantering, and blowing-up later, Zach Levi can still play up the show's central conflict -- Chuck is trapped in a life he may not want -- without compromising his everyman charisma. No, the show doesn't always make sense, and yes, it would be nice for there to be a sense that the show is moving toward something, rather than enjoyably standing still, but I'll take an hour of Chuck over an hour of Dan and Serena and Blair and the Duke any day, and I have the DVR season-pass amendment to prove it.

Incidentally, I haven't watched last night's Friday Night Lights premiere, but I will tonight and will report the results in a similarly untimely manner.

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