CHUCK!
...For Dummies.






Meet Chuck - A normal, college drop-out working at a Buy More (Best Buy but in green) as he languishes about his southern California town. Bitter about being kicked out of Stanford for a crime he didn't commit (cheating on an incredibly important test), and about losing his girlfriend to his best friend all those years ago (the same guy who lied about him cheating to boot), Chuck is a smart guy stuck in a lame situation.

Enter Bryce Larkin, that asshole who set Chuck up and stole his girl. Except, well. Bryce is a super-spy, one whose turned rouge and is escaping with some tech (the intersect) when he's shot down. Moments before he collapses, he decides to do his old buddy Chuck a favor and email him that tech, resulting in the instantaneous download of all of the combined information of the CIA and NSA in the brain of our wayward, geeky hero.

(No, it doesn't make sense. That doesn't make it any less awesome! Go with it!)

Because of this, Chuck is understandably bewildered when he’s watching the news and a thousand-odd images flash through his head, leading him to believe – nay, know - that some dude’s going to get killed.

So that’s a little confusing.

For obvious reasons (super-computers are hard to make and stuff), the CIA and NSA aren’t too happy about all of this information being stuck in the head of some dweeb in SoCal, so they send folks in to handle the situation.



John Casey is from the NSA and happens to be the guy who shot up Bryce. Now he’s going to protect the intersect. And by ‘protect’ I mostly mean continuing to shoot a lot of people. It’s what Casey does best. (And grunting. He’s great at grunting.) And as an added bonus – DUDE IT’S JAYNE!!!! (Type casting? What do you mean type casting? *shifty eyes*) Casey’s cover is working at the Buy More, a situation that is frequently hilarious and often awesome.



From the CIA is Sarah Walker. Bryce’s girlfriend, full of mystery and intrigue – and frequently shown scantily clad (or wearing a 'work' uniform for a fast food place she's pretending to be an employee at... Yep. Great sense that has...)– she’s pretty much a hot bad-ass who actually has Chuck’s best interest at heart… Usually. She’s ‘posing’ as Chuck’s girlfriend, you see. Perfect! Except for all of those mushy feelings that tend to get in the way of doing your job and all that. But whatevs. It’s not like the romance is a major part of the charming heart that makes this show so great or anything… (Also - a lady getting to play the part of the strong silent type while the guy is the squealing one that has to be dragged around everywhere. Yay!)

Anyway.

So Chuck starts doing super-spy stuff (which is both hilarious and occasionally genuinely scary) while dealing with family, work and friends all at the same time.

Which is when we get to the best part of the show.



CAPTAIN AWESOME!

Okay, fine. He may not be the best part, but he’s the boyfriend of Chuck’s sister (Ellie, aslo pictured), and since he frequently proclaims the awesome-ness of all that is around him, Chuck’s named him Captain Awesome. He even calls Awesome’s parents The Awesomes. They all have real names… but honestly, bringing them up just ruins it.

But Awesome and Ellie are home base, Chuck living with them while he proceeds not to live his life, and as such they are the two who (amidst both of them being doctors and therefore incredibly busy) keep trying to get Chuck out into the world again. A dysfunctional family, to be sure, but one that manages to give me the warm and fuzzies regardless.



Which only leaves work, with a rag-tag group of co-workers and friends that would make a job like working at the Buy More far more entertaining than such things are in real life. Big Mike is the manager, a guy who will let his underlings do whatever they so please so long as he has his doughnuts to tide him over. We also have the fellow Nerd Herders – Anna, Jeff and Lester. Anna’s the feisty Asian lady… Who kicks anyone’s ass who messes with her. Jeff's the older guy with the thinning hair. He’s creepy. Very creepy. The Indian guy (the one awkwardly photoshoped into this picture...) is Lester, Jeff’s best friend. Less creepy, but more annoying. And finally, there’s Morgan, Chuck’s best friend and a Buy more green-shirt, or sale’s guy. At turns ridiculously dedicated (second season) and ridiculously clingy (first season – yay for writers taking constructive criticism and doing something with it!), Morgan’s got Chuck’s back… Even when Chuck continually bails on him for no obvious reason. (Although, we of course know that he’s actually off saving the world, so, you know. Cry Moar, Morgan. Cry Moar.)

At the end of the day, in the Buy More there’s an unacknowledged understanding that Chuck’s the only guy who really knows what’s going on at any given time, and he’s often expected to assume roles of responsibly/sense when all of those around him fail to do so. This, for clear reasons, happens often.

Add on top of these normal problems the new spy-life that has suddenly pounced on him in combination with a very attractive woman pretending to be his girlfriend, and you have the basics of Chuck’s life, and why it’s so entertaining to watch. And really, at the end of the day that’s what this show is – damn entertaining. It’s not the deepest thing you could be watching or the most complex, but it is among the funniest, and certainly one put together with a lot of care and warmth. Quintessential feel-good fare, often silly and always aware of its own goofiness, “Chuck” is what people should be watching when they actually want to root for their television characters again. And as much as I love my twisty goodness (and you should all know how much I love my twistiness), it’s really hard to unequivocally invest in those characters. Cause, I mean. They deserve most of the crap that happens to them, right? Chuck’s not perfect but, as a certain someone would say, he is AWESOME. And I think round about these times we need some more awesome (geeky/average) folks to laugh with. (And oh, you will laugh.)