Rating the TV Romance, Part 4: Chuck and Sarah

When I was re-watching a few episodes of Alias for my last "Rating the TV Romance" post, I re-watched an episode called "A Higher Echelon", the second ep in a 2-ep arc in which Marshall Flinkman (nerdy SD-6 spy gadget inventor extraordinaire) gets to go on his first mission (with Sydney of course).  Towards the end of the episode, Sydney is in the middle of saving him after he has been kidnapped by bad guys, and after she saves him, he manages to bust out a moment where he returns the favor using sheer nerdy ingenuity (i.e. one of his inventions) - a secret parachute that can be hidden in the lining of a jacket.  Syd and Marshall are stuck in a tall building with no way out, so the parachute comes in very handy at that moment.  The moment when Marshall suddenly turns from nerd to bad-ass spy, at least for that short minute in time, is when he straps Syd onto him so they can jump out a window together, and follows this up with: "My name is Marshall J. Flinkman, and I'm here to rescue you!!"

Take the essence of that moment and turn it into its own t.v. show, and basically you've got Chuck (2007-2012).  Chuck is another show that I had no desire to watch based on previews alone, and I actually never bothered to check it out until more than halfway through season 2.  It used to air in the timeslot right before Heroes (which I was still watching despite the fact that it already sucked by that point), so occasionally I'd see the last minute of Chuck before Heroes came on.  I still never paid attention to it, though, until the time I caught the last couple minutes of an episode called "Chuck vs. The Best Friend":

Suddenly I was like - What the hell is this ridiculous show??  Who are these weirdos doing a terrible cover of Africa by Toto??  Why is that dorky curly-haired guy who's singing and bopping his head along to the music so awesome??  Clearly the blonde has been engaging in some bad-assery earlier in the ep hence the cuts and bruises on her face, but why is no one bothering to ask her what the hell happened to her??  (that question was sadly never answered, but avoiding plot holes was never Chuck's strong suite haha).  Chuck and the blonde spy chick are holding hands, but they are clearly not "really" together.  Hmmmm, suddenly I was very intrigued by all of these weird random things, and I had to check this show out.  And it very quickly became my new favorite t.v. show.

The "will-the-won't-they" romance on Chuck had an interesting twist too - In that part of the whole spy cover is that Sarah is pretending to be Chuck's girlfriend to all his family, coworkers and friends.  So the poor guy has to fake being her boyfriend when he is really getting no lovin' out of this deal at all.  Chuck has gotten himself into this mess by accidentally "downloading" a bunch of government secrets ("The Intersect") into his brain via a file sent to him by his old college buddy (Bryce Larkin), who Chuck didn't realize was actually a spy.  Bryce destroyed the servers that contained The Intersect (no offsite data center with disaster recovery servers, guys??), so Chuck's brain is conveniently the only place it now lives.  Sarah and Casey are sent by the CIA and NSA to protect and utilize Chuck (i.e. the Intersect) while a new one is built.  This premise creates all kinds of fun situations, and of course, Chuck and Sarah eventually fall in love for real.

So, of course, Chuck and Sarah are in my list of favorite fictional T.V. couples.  For some background on my rating system for these "Rating the T.V. Romance" blog posts, check out the Alias post and/or the Felicity post.  In the meantime let's get right to the Chuck ratings (WARNING: Major show spoilers ahead):

Danger Factor: 8/10

As I explained in previous posts, this is one of my two ratings categories that are related to figuring out whether the existence of "soapy" elements in a t.v. show increase or decrease my enjoyment of the show and the fictional romance within.  I'm a huge sucker for what I call the "danger factor".  Alias had a HUGE danger factor being that it was a spy show.  Chuck was also a spy show, but it differed from Alias in the sense that it was actually a comedy as opposed to a drama.  Well, in actuality it was a dramedy, because it really had equal parts comedy and drama.  This meant that the stakes on Chuck never really felt quite as high as they did on Alias.  I would actually say that in season 2 (Chuck's best season IMO), the danger factor felt more like a 10/10 with the whole Fulcrum storyline, but they seemed to kinda lose that edge at some point in late season 3 or so.  I think that factors highly into why I liked season 2 the best.  But as the series went on, you started to realize as a viewer that neither Chuck nor Sarah were ever going to be in any real danger.  And as a result, poor Casey was the one the show writers threw under the bus EVERY single time.  They literally shot this guy four times over the course of the series and also threw him off a building once for good measure!!  It started to annoy the crap out of me about 3 seasons in.  Overall I'll still give this an 8/10 though because there were points in the series where the stakes did feel pretty high and it created some great drama, especially in season 2.

General Soap Factor: 8/10

Chuck borrowed a lot from various shows and movies (e.g. Spies like Us), and it also borrowed from Alias in certain key respects.  And not surprisingly it also had many of the soapy elements that tend to come along with sci fi and spy stories:

• The biggest elements that Chuck borrowed from Alias were the storylines involving Chuck and Ellie's parents.  When the show starts out the parents are referred to as being absent from Chuck and Ellie's lives entirely.  But eventually their dad is shockingly revealed to not only be a spy but to be the inventor of the Intersect itself (a "good guy" spy like Jack Bristow).  And like Irina, their mom is later revealed to be a spy who works for the "bad guys", but her apparent allegiance swings back and forth as the series progresses.
• Many love triangles occurred over the course of this show.
• Chuck unfortunately used the soapy plot shenanigan that I have always despised the MOST out of all of them: the dreaded amnesia storyline.  Uggh.  And sadly they ended the entire series this way, which I was NOT thrilled about.  I'll explain more on that in a later section.
• We got lots of shocking twists with good guys suddenly being revealed as bad guys, and vice versa
• There were characters who were evil seemingly just for the sake of being evil and adding drama to the show
• There were plenty of other family dramas and twists, such as a long lost daughter being revealed for Casey in season 3, and major new revelations about Sarah's past with her mother in season 5.

I'm sure I'm forgetting a lot of stuff but let's just say Chuck had a pretty good helping of soapy elements.  Not quite as high as Alias, but it was up there.  And unfortunately it also suffered a similar fate in the end in that it kind of buckled under the weight of its own convoluted spy mythology (though luckily not nearly to the extreme extent of Alias).

Overall Rating of the Show Itself: 9/10

O.k. I'm probably being slightly generous with this rating, but Chuck could somehow get away with a lot more ridiculousness than the other shows on my list, because it was at least 50% a comedy.  Seasons 1 and 2 were most definitely the best, and the quality of the show clearly went down several notches in seasons 3 - 5 (NBC required major budget cuts to renew the show for season 3 and the show lost literally its entire writing staff except for the showrunners when NBC dragged their feet until the very last second to renew it for season 4).  But somehow, despite all its problems, this show never ceased to be fun as hell.  Every other show on my list eventually went far enough off the rails that it became a slight chore to watch towards the end, but Chuck never became a chore, because the comedy aspect remained great even when the drama side suffered, which still made it fun to watch.  And for that, despite all its many flaws, I greatly appreciate Chuck.  Oh and it's also literally the only show on my list that I could actually watch with my husband because he was a fan too.

First Chuck & Sarah "Getting Together" Scene: 9.5/10

O.k. this is kind of a weird one because Chuck and Sarah actually kissed twice before the scene that I consider to be their "real" first kiss - Once in season 1 when Sarah has a panic moment right before a bomb is about to go off, and then another time early in season 2 when they have to do a "fake" kiss related to a mission.  The first kiss is cute and the second one is damn hot ... but it's not until "Chuck vs. the Colonel" (penultimate ep of season 2) that we got the kiss that was "the one" where they really admitted their feelings for each other.  And let me tell you, it's a great scene.  My favorite "getting together" scene of any t.v. show up until that point.  Chuck and Sarah are on the run from everyone - CIA, Fulcrum, everyone (high danger factor creates great drama!!), and they are hiding out in a motel in the desert.  Conveniently there is only one bed in the room.  They go to sleep on separate sides of the bed, but they wake up having subconsciously moved into a nice spooning position in their sleep overnight.  They both open their eyes, realize they are spooning, look at each other, and you can almost see them simultaneously think, "fuck it, let's do this thang," and then they MAKE OUT LIKE CRAZY.  And let me tell you, it is HOT.  Well I mean, as hot as it can get at 8pm on NBC.  And to make things even better, a Bon Iver song plays throughout the entire scene.  Now I always think about this scene when I listen to that song, haha.  The only reason I give it a 9.5 rating instead of a 10 is because they sadly get interrupted before they can close the deal - by Casey catching up to them in his hunt for them and also by a hilarious note from Morgan that Chuck finds in his wallet: "I.O.U. one condom," you can almost hear the record scratch right at that moment.

First "Sexy Times" Scene: 7/10

I thought Chuck and Sarah's first "Sexy Times" scene was actually kind of a letdown after the hotness of the first "real" kiss scene.  If you watch much t.v. at all, then you know how common it is for t.v. writers to not have the balls to get the "will-they-won't-they" couple together and then KEEP them together.  They're always afraid it'll ruin the excitement.  So instead they make the mistake of forcing them apart in contrived ways that usually require the characters to behave unnaturally.  And most t.v. fans would agree that that is much worse than just letting the damn couple get together and act like normal people.  Unfortunately the Chuck writers made this mistake with Chuck and Sarah - They got them together at the end of season 2 only to immediately break them back up again in the FIRST ep of season 3.  And it of course required major plot contrivances and for C&S to act somewhat out of character for the next 13 episodes, which is how long they were kept apart.  Unfortunately Chuck lost a decent chunk of its audience during this timeframe.  In season 3 ep 13, C&S finally get back together again and close the deal.  It's a cute scene, thought not hot like the other one.  They just kiss and pull up some covers and then the episode ends.  By that point it was mainly just good to finally see the two characters get together for real this time.

Overall Rating of the Romance: 9.5/10

I'd say that when you take the fictional romance as a whole, I'd give Chuck and Sarah the highest rating of all the couples so far, because I will give the Chuck writers this: Once they put C&S together for real, they KEPT them together and kept the romance going strong.  The characters even got married before the series ended (I think in the season 4 finale).  They didn't take the romance in some weird or crappy direction like Gilmore Girls or Felicity ... well ... that is, until RIGHT before the series ended.  And this is where my most hated soapy plot trick comes into play: the amnesia storyline.  AARRGGH!!  At the end of the 3rd to last ep of the entire series, Sarah gets kidnapped by a bad guy and he erases the last 5 years of her memory (oh what a coincidence, that's the exact amount of time that's passed since the series started!!) by manipulating a faulty Intersect that she has "downloaded" into her brain.  She forgets everything from that timeframe, including Chuck, effectively rebooting the entire series for her character.

Now look, Chuck had plenty of issues during its last few seasons - rushed and disjointed plotlines due to the showrunners never being sure whether they'd get a renewal past the next 13 episodes, a lack of continuity, gaping plotholes and logic issues, etc etc. - BUT the one thing the Chuck audience could always count on were the great characters and great relationships the characters had all built with each other over the course of the series.  The growth in Sarah's character over the course of the series was just as significant, impressive and important as that of Chuck, but somehow the showrunners decided to erase EVERY BIT of that character development right at the end of the series.  It should be said that there were a lot of fans out there who were absolutely livid about this ... I was not in that category, but I was not thrilled about it either.  I was conflicted.  I know why the writers did it, and it did accentuate Chuck's character growth, because we got to see him deal with it much more maturely than he would have 5 years ago.  It also allowed them to basically see if Chuck could "re-win the girl" all over again.  But was that really worth it when it required taking such a jackhammer to everything they'd spent 5 years building towards?  I don't think so.

The one thing I will say it gave us was a way to end the series on as much of a bittersweet note as the entire cast and crew and all the fans were feeling about the show ending.  Otherwise they would have just gone out on a totally happy note and that would have almost been too happy as compared to how sad everyone was about it ending.  ;-)  Luckily the show does end on a hopeful note though - Sarah is starting to get flashes of memories back, and she and Chuck kiss on the same beach from last scene of the pilot episode.  It's clear that they will wind up together, but they certainly have a long road ahead of them to rebuild everything that the writers decided to yank away from them right at the end there, heh.

So, final verdict on Chuck and the C&S fictional romance: They both score higher than any other show so far, and the "soapy" factors on this show were pretty high.  It's very clear that the soap factors served both to make me love this show immensely, and to also kinda screw it up a bit at the end.  Same result as with Alias.  But the good news is that the Chuck writers/showrunners didn't even come CLOSE to screwing the pooch as badly as the Alias writers did.  Good job guys!

Next up, we have what will by my final entry in this series (at least for now based on every t.v. show I've seen up until this point in my life) - Castle and Beckett!!  Woot.