Chuck: Chuck versus the Balcony

“It’s time to come clean.”

A good TV show, just like a good public speech, a good book, a good poem, should create audience desire. We, as the audience, should be guided into knowing what to hope for—do we want the main character to be happy, or sad? Do we want the couple to stay a couple, or break up? Should the bad guy die, or be redeemed? A strong show creates these tensions for us by effectively creating characters we can actively love or hate, arcs that have pep, sub-plots that keep us interested.

(This is the great problem with the Lost finale, for many people: it manufactured the desire for “answers,” but the creators ultimately wanted us to desire character resolution.)

Does this mean that a good show will do exactly what I want it to? Absolutely not. To paraphrase Joss Whedon, a good show should give me what I need, not what I want. If Buffy had given me what I thought I wanted, it would have lasted 1.5 seasons and ended with a Bangel sex scene. Because it gave me what I needed, instead, it grew from a good show into a fabulous one. And as Joss masterfully shifted audience desire throughout the seasons, what I thought I’d wanted, at first, became something entirely different by the series end.

But Chuck has lost its sense of desire. Our Pinocchio has grown into a real boy with a real job and a real girlfriend. Along the way, he has revealed himself to be still funny, still befuddled, and insanely neurotic about his relationship. So neurotic, in fact, that it’s hard for me to sympathize, because Chuck—despite all his bluster about marriage—doesn’t seem to fully understand the give-and-take, mature, often-boring adult relationship. He still doesn’t seem fully comfortable as a boyfriend yet, let alone a husband.

Could be a character quirk, sure. But I don’t think it’s an intentional one. Chuck still has a fairy-tale vision of lifetime commitment that seems oddly related to a sense of having scored a fabulous girlfriend and very little to do with a life plan—is this a problem with Chuck the character, or with the way the relationship has been written? Would I feel differently if the show allowed us a few more glimpses into their non-spy life? If the show had allowed its format some deviation to develop the characters and their relationship to one another?

Because of outside pressures, Chuck, has been forced to negotiate character development with brand consistency, and the tension is starting to wear show. Chuck has new magical powers, but hasn’t changed much. Sarah continues to wiffle-waffle between commitment and the spy-life. They talk a big game about marriage, which is supposed to be (according to Vladimir Propp) the way all fairy tales end, but neither of them seems to actually be ready for it.

As for desire, Chuck doesn’t seem to want anything more than renewals. This isn’t the damning criticism that it could be: plenty of shows (Law and Order, for instance) desire nothing but the renewal of episodic satisfaction. Those just aren’t the shows that I particularly love to watch.

All of this is by way of introducing my main point: this episode of Chuck gave me everything I thought I wanted, and nothing that I needed. It was funny, peppy, lots of things happened, the clothes were pretty, Morgan was reasonably involved, Chuck finally got to propose, the spy mythos got more complex…

And I’m left feeling cold. So Chuck is just as neurotic about the proposal as he has been about every single other aspect of his relationship with Sarah? So there’s a new reason that Chuck and Sarah can’t be happy—only now it’s Sarah’s fault, but not really, because Chuck understands that she’s doing this for him, even though it was horribly ill-timed? It does all come back to Volkoff, sort of? Lester is still creepy? (Were we supposed to be rooting for him?) It was pleasant in the short term, but unsatisfying in the long view.

I’ve read quite a few reviews online this week, which I don’t usually do. But I was trying to figure out if it’s just me. Is it? My in-depth statistical analysis says no: it’s me and about half of the fandom. The other half really liked this episode, probably because it did have everything we want from a Chuck episode. For me they didn’t add up to a satisfying whole, but for others, it did.

I’m betting that many of you really liked this episode, because the chucktv.net community is one of the most enthusiastic and generally all-around-sweet fandoms I’ve experienced. I would love to hear alternate points of view, and I would especially love to be convinced that I’m wrong.

I would also like to ask, as a personal favor, that you don’t attack me personally. Frankly, I’ve had a really horrible week, and I don’t want my inbox (to which the comments get sent directly) to be as awful as everything else. Obviously, if you’re given to ad hominem attacks, this probably won’t deter you, especially if you enjoy kicking someone when they’re down. But I thought it worth a shot.

Bytes:

• Sarah: “Besides, I’ve got such a bad history of proposal.” That is now on my list of first-date must-says, along with “I’m not sure how many cats I have; they breed so quickly,” and “Alliance or Horde?”

• Lester: “It’s like they’re stuck in the old country. With their dated traditions and obsolete dietary restrictions. I keep telling them: ‘I live in the United States of America now. I’m not in Canada anymore.”
Big Mike: “You mean India, right?”
Lester: “What? No. I’m a Saskatchewan, a Hindu of Saskatchewan. Some believe that we were a cult. Of sorts.”

• Morgan: “Casey is your man servant. Let him man-serve you.”

• Morgan: “Tide to-go sticks. Left jacket pocket.”

And Pieces

• Lester singing was horribly uncomfortable. I couldn’t root for him to score the hot chick. I just couldn’t.
• Sarah’s blue dress was an interesting choice for a day at the office.
• I did enjoy Morgan’s pronunciation of the Lu-wah valley. It just rolls off the tongue, like a pinot with a stable on the label and a stork on the cork.

• Did anyone else expect Chuck to put the ring in his ear and the earbud in the box?

Where do you stand? How many Danny Kayes out of four?