Chuck: Chuck Versus Tom Sawyer
By fred | October 28, 2008
(S02E05) As I said recently, I’m actually liking Chuck more this season. Might be that I’m more willing to accept the unrealistic illogical events that took place on the show, might be that it’s actually gotten better, might be a little bit of both. But in my mind, it’s no question that the show has gotten better, and the best example (for me) of that might be the Buy More plots.
I was never a fan of those, but for the last couple of episodes I think they actually were pretty good. The fact and the matter is, in this episode it was different than what Chuck usually is. This season at Buy More, despite everyone still relying heavily on Chuck and considering him to be the pivotal element that keeps everything together, I think they’ve had to learn to deal without him.
He hasn’t been around much, and that’s really not a complaint because Chuck’s been having fun kicking ass elsewhere. But after all those missions outside, including the one we didn’t get to see requiring for Chuck to wear a mustache for some reason, this week it was all about the Buy More, and it all happened there - almost.
The first part of the episode I thought was really good, and pretty hilarious. From Chuck’s dealing with his worrying sister, to everyone at the Buy More being interviewed by the future new assistant manager, to Jeff’s geek-superstar past, to the scare Morgan and Lester had over the new friendship in the making of Chuck and Jeff, to Jeff’s special video montage of Anna, to him waking up and giving Chuck his own sister as he was going to go after Sarah, to his business card that reads “My name is Jeff and I’m lost”, to Atari’s own nerds making fun on Chuck and one nerdy Casey, it was all really good fun!
Even though, didn’t they miss a lot of possible jokes when Sarah was the slutty nerd, where she could have played one nerd against the other to keep her cover intact while getting them to do all the work, and generating laughs ?
But as the second half of the episode kicked-in, I felt things considerably slowed down, both in terms of laughs as well as the actual rhythm of the show. The entire scene of Chuck playing Missile Command and saving the world might have add that double reading, them cheering for his accomplishment in geek world while he was actually happy to have prevented a real WWII, but wasn’t it weird that all those guys would conveniently live near by and all show up to see an old guy play some old video game ?
Even worse though was that Chuck did it. I know much like in other shows we have to go with silly things on Chuck because that’s how the show rolls, but seriously, had he somehow plugged Morgan’s Zune — just kidding, it was an iPod of course, product placement kick ass — into the video game, so if the actual song was controlling the game, somehow, I could have been fine with it.
It would have made no sense whatsoever, but who cares at this point, right? But how in the world are we to believe that just because he had the right Tune in the back, Chuck managed to do out of the blue - and with some heavy pressure as the fate of many people’s lives was possibly on his shoulders - what generations of nerds who dedicated their entire lives to the game, playing it non-stop 24/7 for years, could never achieve ?? I’m sorry, but if back in 1983 Jeff spent three years on his life on that game, and I’m sure he wasn’t the only one, and if he still couldn’t beat the game, if no one ever could, there’s no way Chuck did it.
But at least that got him his Standford diploma, which suddenly made her sister feel much better, even though I’m sure she’s now expecting him to move on and leave the Buy More behind him. I mean, what was the point of getting there if not to go anywhere?
All in all this was a good episode, although I really felt the second half of it was not as good as the first, which was really fun. What did you think of it ? Did you like this Buy More-based mission ? Do you see Jeff any differently now ? Anyone knows where to download that Anna video ?
