Chuck: The Complete Second Season

He's the Secret; She's the Agent...
In its superb second season, NBC's "Chuck" offers a more fully developed and unique blend of comedy, action, and romance. Chuck Bartkowski continues his double life: slacker computer nerd at an LA big box electronics store by day and inept government agent by night, thanks to the secret government database called the Intersect emplanted in his brain. Beautiful CIA agent Sarah Walker is Chuck's handler and bodyguard, with a cover as his girlfriend. Hardnosed NSA assassin Major John Casey teams with Walker to track Chuck's safety 24 hours a day and to pursue the bad guys the Intersect enables Chuck to identify.

This second season advances several themes over the course of the year. The impromptu team of Walker, Casey, and Bartkowski get increasingly difficult assignments to stop various villains and foil their nefarious plots, in which the untrained Chuck begins to demonstrate, often hilariously, the potential to muddle through as an agent.

A second theme is...

Easily one of the most delightful shows on TV
For me watching CHUCK at the beginning of each week increasingly became one of the high points of my TV watching week. If you can get past the rather silly premise for the show (and if you can, you have a real treat in store), that someone was able to have the entire contents of the CIA mainframe downloaded in his brain, you will discover one of the most entertaining and likable casts on TV. If you don't know CHUCK but are familiar with Josh Schwartz's previous series THE O.C., CHUCK is what that show would have been if you had isolated the Seth/Summer part of the show and made Seth a spy (I've read that Adam Brody, who played Seth, was originally asked to play Chuck, and Summer herself made an appearance in Season One as a potential love interest for our hero). Schwartz saved the Ryan/Marissa/Taylor part for GOSSIP GIRL. If the latter is all about the cool and hip, CHUCK is all about nerds and their universe. If the girls on wear their Jimmy Choos, Chuck wears Chuck T's...

My Favorite Show on the Air
Chuck is easily my favorite show on the air right now (and I love my television). Every episode leaves me desperate for more, and the second season has been especially excellent. They haven't been afraid of breaking the formula and actually letting things develop and change. That's one of the things that annoys me most about other shows -- writers show you what they want you to want and then draw that out for seasons and seasons on end. Bleh. But the writers of Chuck haven't and as such it is superb.

So, check it out. If you like comedy, romance, action, spies, great writing, and great acting, then you'll love Chuck.

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