Chuck, including thoughts on endings and audience reactions – Blue Towel Productions

I wrote about this in my last monthly round-up post, but I’ve been binge-watching my way through the series Chuck, which ended over ten years ago, and I finished just a few days ago. The whole process took less than two months, which I think might be the fastest I’ve ever watched through 91 episodes of anything.

As I wrote previously, the show is about nerdy underachiever Chuck Bartowski, who unwittingly gets downloaded into his brain the “Intersect”, a massive compilation of all data known to US espionage services, allowing Chuck to get instantaneous “flashes” of important spy-knowledge when he sees something significant. Later, the Intersect develops further and Chuck becomes able to “download” various abilities for a short time–like kung fu, acrobatics, or the Russian language, that sort of thing.

Chuck has to keep what is going on with him a secret from his family and friends, and is paired with agents from the CIA and the NSA that he must support with his abilities, and who are also tasked with protecting him. One of those agents, Sarah, pretends to be Chuck’s girlfriend as her cover story, and a lot of the series is about the development of their real relationship, both romantic and otherwise. There are lots of convoluted spy shenanigans that go on, including various questions about Chuck’s parents and the circumstances that led him to receiving the Intersect in the first place.

It’s all very silly, and certainly is not a show that is asking you to take it too seriously.

Chuck is one of those shows where the lead guy is endearing but also a little dopey, but he is surrounded by friends and workmates who are even bigger dopes so that Chuck can eventually smarten up but the show can continue to benefit from some awkward low-brow humor.

The show is s full to the brim with nerd-tastic references and call-backs. Chuck himself seems to be a huge DC Comics fan, and his apartment is decorated all over the place with comic book covers in picture frames, just hung like modern art. In one episode I noticed a whole shelf full of DC Comics Showcase Presents volumes, similar to what I used to own before I sold them. And I wrote before about some of the guest actors that showed up in the first three seasons, but the last two were also packed to the gills with lots of recognisable guest stars and recurring characters, including Linda Hamilton, Timothy Dalton, Lou Ferrigno, Ray Wise, Carrie-Anne Moss, Rebecca Romijn, Cheryl Ladd, and Bo Derek as herself, except she’s also a spy! Danny Pudi and Yvette Nicole Brown from Community both have brief cameos in one episode as well.

As ridiculous as it all is, there is also a heart-warming and endearing side to the show, and one grows to legitimately care about everybody.

Occasionally I had to work to keep pushing through the show–like anything from its time period, it wasn’t designed to be binged like I was watching it–but mostly I found it really fun to watch. It was incredibly pleasing comfort viewing with occasional bursts of brilliance. Zachary Levi is as good in it as anything I’ve seen him in, with his work in the last couple episodes being particularly impressive. The only other main cast member that I was familiar with is Adam Baldwin, who definitely makes his mark on the show as NSA agent John Casey. The rest of the cast are all good, but the biggest revelation is Yvonne Strahovski as Sarah, who suffers from a few too many eye-candy shots, but is otherwise very impressive as Sarah Walker, making the character both tough-as-nails and also believably vulnerable.

The ending of Chuck has apparently generated a bit of controversy.

Spoilers, if you care (I mean, the show ended over 10 years ago, but I only just watched it, so I can legitimately believe you might care).

In the last story arc of the series, Chuck and Sarah are now married and are actively working at getting themselves out of the “spy life” (that’s what they call it all the time) so they can raise a family in quieter circumstances. However, things go awry when Sarah loses her memory of the last five years (there are reasons for this that I won’t go into). She is tricked into believing that Chuck is her enemy and even actively tries to kill him. Eventually, they get all that sorted out but Sarah’s memory is still gone, and she does not remember falling in love with Chuck or being married, and finds it all too confusing and difficult to deal with, and just leaves. After they have gone through some ordeals, Chuck catches up with her and she finally asks him to tell her their story.

He does so (via a montage of flashbacks from the show) and then Chuck shares the idea that one of his friends had that if he were to kiss her, all her memories would return as if it was a Disney movie. Sarah tells him to kiss her and he does so, and the show fades away.

From what I can gather online, a lot of people find this ending really upsetting, claiming it did away with all of Sarah’s character development, and making everything feel pointless and empty. In some comments, the feelings push to another level, in which fans claim that the show’s producers “owed them” a better ending than that. Apparently Chuck was saved from cancellation on several occasions by concerted fan support, and this, says some of the comments, shows that show’s creators were obliged to do right by those fans and give them an ending they would have been happy with.

It’s a little bit like some of the frustrations that were stirred up by The Last Jedi a few years ago, and by the people who were clamouring for the entire sequel trilogy to be de-canonized and completely redone.

My comment on this is that I don’t know what the big deal is; I thought the ending of Chuck was fine. It’s not true that Sarah’s character development was undone–she lost her memories but was still the same person, and it’s evident by the ending that she is falling in love with Chuck again.

It’s also hinted at at various times that elements of her memory are even returning, so it really should be an easy thing for viewers to freely head-canon that she eventually got it all back, or at least all the important bits. In general I thought the conclusion was really satisfying–appropriately tense, a little bittersweet, but ultimately very uplifting.

However I was also thinking about this idea that the creators of the show “owed” the fans the ending that they wanted, and were somehow doing them dirty by not providing it. That I don’t agree with, even if the fans had done a lot of work to keep the show on the air. I mean, in some way, I help keep a show on the air every time I tune into it (or stream it, I guess, nowadays). Do the creators of the show “owe me” anything because I do that? No, not really. I mean, I think the producers of every show have the job of telling the story they want to tell in the best possible way and with the highest possible quality. But ultimately, it’s up to them to decide what that story is. If they tell a story that doesn’t interest me, then eventually I will stop watching. And if they tell a story that nobody is interested in, then they will eventually lose their audience, and with that, their platform to tell the story. That’s idea anyway.

It’s silly to think that the creators of Chuck were trying to tick off their audience with the story they wanted to tell, or they way they went about doing it. In general, I think most people who put all that effort into their shows are trying to do a good job. They want the audience care in some way, either by laughing, crying, being excited, being scared, or what have you. If I don’t like a story (or I think it’s told badly) than I am free to criticise it, point out its weaknesses, and even complain about it, but I think it’s misguided and completely fruitless to act like I am somehow the victim of an injustice.

I hated, for instance, The Last Jedi, as well as Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, most of Star Trek Picard, and the whole Timeless Child arc on Doctor Who. But I have no doubt that the creators of each were doing trying to make something that I’d enjoy. I do think they were all misguided and did terrible work somewhere along the process, and I will happily rant about it for 1000+ words on this blog. I will feel annoyed, irritated, and disappointed–but not cheated. I think that’s quite a different thing.

Anyway, back to Chuck. If you didn’t like the ending, I’m sorry. It sucks to invest heaving into a world and its characters for years only to have it so badly miss the mark at the end. But that’s being a member of the audience, any audience. If it all happened just the way we wanted to, that’d be disappointing on a whole different level, and would in my mind be a much bigger weakness. For me, I liked the ending of Chuck, more-or-less–it worked for me, and made me feel stuff (especially when Casey hugged Chuck when he was saying goodbye, the big galoot!). And it made me sad that I wasn’t going to see these characters any more, and it made me happy for where I could imagine their lives going in the future. All-in-all, a pretty successful wrap-up.