Chuck
I have to admit that NBC´s Chuck was at first only an option when I had nothing to watch a year ago. Then I started to like it – after five episodes, I totally fell in love with this show and now, I think it´s one of the best in TV this year. Chuck is in his Season Two now and it´s getting better and better with every episode. Season One had only 13 episodes because of the writer´s strike (trust me, hold on until episodes 6 and 7) and Season Two will have 22 episodes.

And what is it about? Chuck Bartowski is an ordinary guy who has been followed by a bad luck. He was kicked out of Stanford, because his roommate framed him and seduced Chuck´s girlfriend. Chuck didn´t have a chance to finish school and is stuck in a Buy More store, with different creatures of a geek life. He himself is kind of geek, working in a Buy More section, Nerd Herd, where computers are repaired. His life is leading nowhere but he seems to accept it, even when his sister, Ellie, a succesful sister, tries to push him to do *something* with his life. He plays videogames with his best geeky friend, Morgan and World of Warcraft is a center of his life.
Everything changes when Chuck´s former Stanford roommate, Bryce Larkin, sends him an email, which contains all government secrets. When Chuck opens this mail, all those secrets are downloaded into his brain. The government supercomputer is called Intersect and Bryce Larkin is a rogue spy, who destroyed it and files sent to Chuck. And this nerd-herd ordinary guy suddenly becomes very important, actually, the most important intelligence asset in the world and has to be protected. CIA sends a beautiful, smart and dangerous Sarah Walker and NSA a silent, strong and dangerous major John Casey.
Those three create an unlikely team, where they are saving the world in a daily basis, with information from the Intersect that Chuck can use with help of „flashes“ – when he meets a bad guy, all information are flashed before his eyes.

Simple premise, you say. It isn´t original. We saw this before. Probably, yes. But Chuck is more than just a comedy/drama/spy show. There are also interesting characters with some character development, and every character exists in some kind of his own world. Chuck, Sarah and Casey in a spy world, where Chuck has to deal with the fact that he has to do a spy work without any training and agaist his will gets more and more involved – and also gets better and better in this job. He has to protect his friends and family, so Sarah, as his protection, has to pretend that she is his girlfriend. Eventually, of course, they both are more involved in a romantic way, which isn´t allowed. Chuck´s sister Ellie and her boyfriend, „captain Awesome“, don´t know about Chuck´s second life either and Chuck is often put into a tricky situation when he has to think out excuses why he missed a family party.
And also, what are you gonna do, when you know, that a dangerous bomb is about to explode and destroy the life in a half of the state and you can´t say to your family? Ellie is getting further from her brother and it´s only matter of time when their relationship crashes.
Then Chuck´s best friend, Morgan, who is as geeky as possible. He has no social life, no other friends, no family and so he kinds of adopts Chuck´s life as his own. This is the only part that can be annoying in some places – especially in the end of Season One, when Morgan´s selfish behaviour almost caused a disaster in Chuck´s life. Fortunately, in Season Two, Morgan seems to be a little bit more „normal“ and is pushed back by other Buy More life – Jeff, Lester and „Big“ Mike, a manager of Buy More.

There are two or three separate lines in every episode – Chuck´s latest mission, Buy More line, involving usually some crazy, for us unimportant but for Buy More employees life depending problem and sometimes, we can also see Ellie Bartowski´s perfect life with her boyfriend. All those lines are separated but also connected in many ways. How is a character of Chuck changing, his friends and family are changing with him. Morgan and also Ellie feel that they are „losing“ him somehow, and have to try to live without him. In latest episodes, there are very few scenes with Chuck in a Buy More – we can almost feel how he doesn´t belong there any more. He is more adult, mature and he still hates a spy life, but can´t help it because the Intersect in his brain is stuck and makes impossible for him to continue to live a normal life. He also fell for Sarah and she for him – but neither of them wants to admit it.

What a spy show would it be without a story development and secrets. There are some suprising twists during Season One, showing us, that nothing in Chuck´ s life is a coincidence and in Season Two (right now on TV), we are getting deeper and deeper into a spy life – and we are doing it with Chuck´s help, from his point of view.

I am curious how far can this show get without becoming too serious and darker. There are many changes, and they are made very well, still keeping its „spymedy“ premise. But sometimes, you can feel an indeterminateness of Chuck´s life and his not-so-certain future.
His life is in a constant danger – from people, who want the Intersect and also from people who are protecting him but are more interested in the Intersect than Chuck as a person. Also his hidden feelings toward Sarah will probably lead nowhere – unless those talented and great writers won´t come up with something really cool in the end. But we all hope that the end is very far, far away.