Every week I catch Chuck on TiVo and can’t help but laugh at the absurdity of some of the scenes. But it’s that exact absurdity that keeps me tuning in again and again. Take this week’s episode, Chuck vesus the Wookie. There are no shortage of absurd moments to quench the thirst for absurdity this week, so let me take a few minutes out of my day to list them in hopes of forming some sort of archive of the absurdity that keeps me tuning in for more. Once you get past the premise of the show and realize the whole thing is an absurd premise, the rest of these moments just add to the likability that keeps me tuning in.
Without further adieu, here is the list of moments that I remember making me laugh.
- When doing re conn at the “Wookie’s” party, Karina is wearing some skin tight dress (and doesn’t appear be carrying a very large purse, if she’s caryying one at all) yet she manages to pull out a rather bulky contraption that breaks the code for entering the room where the diamond is stored. Where was it being stored? Hard to tell.
- After being gagged and handcuffed to the bed, Major John Casey somehow manages to snap a piece of the headboard off. What was that headboard made of? Probably Styrofoam.
- As if breaking the “Styrofoam” wasn’t enough, he somehow managed to take the gag off, put his pants and shoes on and make it to the elevator all while being handcuffed with a huge piece of headboard protruding from between his wrists. I guess those are the types of skills you learn when becoming a “secret agent” that works at the fictional Best Buy.
- And lastly, the greatest absurd moment of the week: From the same compartment that Karina found the door code breaker, she was hiding a remote control to a jet ski tucked neatly away in the beach they just happened to run onto during their daring escape. This moment was made even better by the fact that Chuck himself was mesmerized at the absurdity of it all, by rhetorically asking (and I’m paraphrasing) , “How was I supposed to know she had a remote control jet ski on the beach?”
I’m sure there were more, but those are the only ones I remember right now. Until next week’s absurd moment, peace out.
Listening to the Sports radio meat heads and reading the papers around LA, you’d think some snow just fell in sports hell. Consider the following:
- Stanford (my alma matter!!!) pulls off arguably one of the biggest upsets in College football history over ‘SC
- Notre Dame gets its first win of the season against UCLA at the Rose Bowl
- 2 NL West teams will battle it out in the NLCS this year and neither one is the Dodgers
- The California Angels of Anaheim were swept out of the playoffs.
- The Kings lost to St. Louis
- The Ducks lost to the Penguins.
All of the above may be true, but you know what? This has been one of the better sports weekends for me personally because 3 teams that I actually root for played and won this weekend:
So forgive me if I’m not as depressed as the rest of the fair weather LA fans.
This could very well be the biggest upset win in Stanford football that I can remember. Carroll wanted to talk some smack to Harbaugh this week, well Harbaugh gets the last laugh. Bye-bye national championship for USC and their over confident Trojans. The win was so big Stanford’s supposed to have a news conference today to relive the win and has already started a web page dedicated to the win. Crazy stuff.
Just in case you don’t what this is a picture of, here are the credits:
Cardinal receiver Mark Bradford pulls down the catch that tied the score, 23-23, despite the defense by USC’s Mozique McCurtis in the final minute of the game Saturday. The Cardinal won, 24-23, after the conversion kick.
(Alex Gallardo / Los Angeles Times)
One night before the bevy of new fall shows hit the airwaves, my wife and I frequented the local Blockbuster. Once there, my wife noticed a disc that contained the pilot episode of the new Kevin McKid show “Journeyman“. Being such fanatics of his previous work on one of the greatest shows of all time, Rome, we decided to give Vorenus’ new show a preview before it aired for the masses.
The disc contained more than just the episode of Journeyman, it also contained the pilots for other NBC fall premieres, one of those being “Chuck.” I’d heard about the show before, and the thought of an $11 per hour “Nerd Herd” guy becoming a top secret spy intrigued me enough to watch the episode on the disc. After watching the pilot episode, I must say they’ve got me hooked. I just hope for Chuck’s sake that they don’t suffer the same fate as the new shows that I’ve gotten hooked on the past few years (Arrested Development, Rome) which barely managed 5 seasons combined.
As to why I liked the show, basing a show on a guy that got kicked out of my alma mater and winds up working for $11 / hour at some mega Electronics chain is a premise that I can’t pass up. Then to have him wind up being some super secret agent just because he sees some silly images that are now somehow implanted in his brain and cause him to regurgitate the most sensitive national secrets as some flashback that he doesn’t know the origin of is so silly that I can’t help but laugh at the premise and all of the inanity of the entire thing. I just find myself laughing repeatedly at the absurdity of everything and don’t mind at all that none of the show has 0 chance of every actually being true. To cap it all off, Chuck defusing a bomb by downloading a virus from an internet porn site had me laughing so hard I had to keep watching (never mind the fact that the laptop didn’t appear to have an internet connection to begin with which would’ve made the entire task of trying to get on the internet pointless and rendered everyone in the room a bloody mess).
For now, the season pass on the TiVo stays and I’ll keep tuning in as long as there is TV viewing time to dedicate. Until then, we don’t know what crazy secret will be triggered by Chuck’s new gift.
