Chuck Season 2
Reviewed by Russell Burlingame
The second season of NBC's Chuck hits the stores today. Go buy it.
Chock full of geek humor, clever homages and plain, old-fashioned great characters, Chuck is the story of a brilliant-but-underachieving retail employee who becomes conscripted to work for the government when a top-secret intelligence-gathering computer is downloaded into his brain, leaving the original destroyed. His combating CIA and NSA handlers fight for control of the operation, control of Chuck and often find themselves desperately trying to contain their homicidal urges as people who are used to living lives of high adventure become stranded in the suburban California service industry.
The second season is largely preoccupied with what's ultimately a dead-end attempt to replace Chuck with a "New Intersect" and allow him to return to his normal life. Along the way, though, we find out whatever happened to Chuck and Elle's disappearing father and his bitchy ex-girlfriend referenced in the pilot; and what's to become of dead-again, alive-again secret agent Bryce Larkin, Chuck's ex-college roommate who sent him the files in the first place. Guest appearances by Jordana Brewster (Annapolis, Fast & Furious), Scott Bakula (Quantum Leap, Men of a Certain Age) and Chevy Chase (Fletch, Community) last for at least a couple of episodes each and really liven up the season, contributing to the terrific cast dynamic that made the show so watchable the first time around.
The only thing that really hurt the show in the second season, in my opinion, was the addition of Tony Hale (best known as Buster from Arrested Development), who came in as a corporate efficiency expert and ultimately took over as manager of the Buy More where Chuck and his friends work. Hale's character is trite and stereotypical and even the effervescence he brings to the role can't help him, as "Emmet Milbarge" sucks the life, energy and fun out of every scene he's in, leaving the spy stuff in the second season to be far more interesting than most of the Buy More stuff. In fairness, that seems to be where they're headed for season three, and with Jeffster apparently taking on a life of its own and both Chuck and Morgan poised to leave the store in season three, it may be that they've just decided they got as much mileage as they were likely to out of that set.
Chuck, starring Zach Levi, Yvonne Strahovski and Adam Baldwin, returns to TV with a two-hour premiere Sunday on NBC, and then returns on Mondays next week.
Reviewer Bio
Russell Burlingame is a journalist and columnist living and working in New York City. In high school, Russell interviewed Elliot S. Maggin for a review of the Kingdom Come novelization, and since then has worked consistently in and around the comics industry. He interned for Wizard magazine, and has freelanced for Wizard and Newsarama, in addition to a number of non-comics publications, Russell is currently working on a graphic novel based on Cap'n Internet, the comic strip that ran in his college newspaper; and a graphic biography of folk singer Phil Ochs with artist Marion Vitus.
Currently, in addition to his freelance work and his comics projects, Russell writes a number of columns for ComicRelated, including Conscientious Sequentials, The Gold Exchange, What's Perhappenin', Closing Statements, Reflecting 'Pool and To See or Not To See.
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