‘Chuck,’ the little spy show that could, ended a pretty remarkable 5 season, 91 episode run last Friday night. The show, low-rated from the start and always on the cancellation bubble, managed to beat the odds and come back year after year thanks to strong critical praise, a small but devoted fanbase that campaigned to keep the show on the air by buying Subway sandwiches (Subway being one of the show’s sponsors), and the fact that those low ratings were actually quite constant and therefore worth keeping around when compared to the rest of NBC’s lineup.
I had been sort of putting off writing this, opting instead to read all the other reviews and retrospectives online (there’s a great 5-part interview with the show’s creators on Alan Sepinwall’s blog), to see if the critics loved this finale as much as I did. With a number of callbacks to the show’s past (particularly the pilot), and the same humor and heart that’s made it a favorite of mine for the past five years, these final two hours gave me everything I could possibly want in a finale, the most successful part of which is the fact that it didn’t simply resign itself to wrapping everything up in a tidy, happy little bow. Don’t get me wrong, there was still a happy ending (it wouldn’t be ‘Chuck’ if there wasn’t), but not in the way I expected.
When Sarah had her memories of the past five years erased last week by bad guy Quinn, I, like many others, assumed that Chuck and the rest of our gang would defeat Quinn and restore Sarah’s memory just in time for everyone to ride off into the sunset. Certainly no one would fault the writers for going that route – one last mission with something ‘real’ at stake that gets reversed and everything’s all good. But what they chose to do instead, and what they should be commended for, is going for real heartbreak before giving us a different kind of happy ending. It showed us that, despite the show’s mostly light-hearted tone, there were real consequences to living the spy life, made all the more tragic by the fact that Chuck and Sarah were so close to being done with it for good. During the wonderful climax to “Chuck Versus the Goodbye” (which busted out one last epic Jeffster! performance), Chuck is faced with using the last pair of Intersect glasses in existence to save his wife’s memories, or to save innocent people in harm’s way. I found myself shouting “No!” at my television as he chose the latter, but of course I knew he would, because Chuck is Chuck, and he would never sacrifice people’s lives for his own happiness.
And that’s one of the reasons I love Chuck, and love ‘Chuck.’ I’ve never identified the show with tightly constructed plotting (definitely not one of its strengths), or even its often hilarious pop culture references (one of the show’s greatest strengths), but with a cast of characters that I’ve gotten to know and found myself caring deeply about, because they care so deeply about each other. And at the center of this group of people (its heart, if you will) are Chuck and Sarah. To describe the show to someone unfamiliar with it, I’d call it an action spy comedy-drama hybrid, but as any fan of the show knows, ‘Chuck’ is and always has been, at its core, a love story. I was there when these two characters met, I watched them fall in love, I saw them get married, it killed me when everything fell apart, but I took comfort in knowing that everything wasn’t lost forever. Did their last kiss onscreen magically restore Sarah’s memory as Morgan believed it would? I’d like to think so, but even if I’m wrong, it’s clear that these two are meant to be together, and if it doesn’t get to be what it was, it’ll get to be something else. Something just as good.
I’m feeling kind of lazy at the moment, so I’m going to finish this in bullet form, saving myself the effort of forming the connective tissue between paragraphs:
- The penultimate episode, “Chuck Versus Sarah,” was mostly devoid of laughs, save for a few choice moments (“You’re a wizard, Harry!”). The hour was probably the most gripping and suspenseful the show has ever been—there’s something genuinely scary about a brainwashed Sarah threatening to shoot Ellie in the head—and also gave us some of the show’s most heartbreaking moments. Chuck’s tearful plea to Sarah to remember him and their life together has got to be the best work Zach Levi has ever done on the show. Both he and Yvonne Strahovski were fantastic in these final hours. Two highly underappreciated actors.
- Among the callbacks to the series pilot and other past moments include: Sarah’s parkour inspired run through DARPA HQ which mirrored Bryce’s escape in the pilot, El Compadre, the Russian Consulate and the Wienerlicious in Berlin, the Irene Demova virus, and the beach in Malibu.
- Speaking of which, anyone who’s been with the show from the beginning as I have, knew exactly where Chuck could find Sarah when Morgan asked him to think (using his heart, of course) about where she was in the second-to-last scene of “Goodbye.”
- “I love Chuck Bartowski and I don’t know what to do about it.”
- “You shot down my helicopter with my own damn gun!”
- In a number of short scenes we got to see the many different sides of Morgan Guillermo Grimes that have developed over the years, from the geeky (“A cloak of invisibility!”) to the sweet (“There was a time I was Chuck’s No. 1 go-to best friend, and then you came along and things changed. If I was to hand the title off to anyone, I was always really happy it was you.”) to the mature and brave (“Don’t you dare try to blame this on us because you’re afraid!”). A terrific showcase for Josh Gomez.
- Again, I was really okay with how the show ended. Between “Chuck Versus the Other Guy,” “Chuck Versus the Ring: Part II,” “Chuck Versus the Push Mix,” and “Chuck Versus the Cliffhanger,” we already had enough potential happily ever afters to last a lifetime. You’d think the writers would feel obligated to give us one more of those when they knew 100% that this was going to be the end, but instead they gave us a new beginning of sorts, and we can fill in the rest. A chance for Chuck and Sarah to fall in love all over again? Honestly, what could be better than that?
- I didn’t do any weekly reviews for this season except for the premiere, but I was pretty satisfied with the entire season overall. It didn’t reach the heights of season two, but it also didn’t feel as rushed as the first halves of seasons three and four (both of which were written as 13-episode seasons before they got more episode orders). And it felt like it began and ended with clear arcs with Morgan and the defective, brain-wiping Intersect (which Sarah is eventually forced to upload to save herself and Casey), and Chuck and Sarah’s desire to get out of the spy game and start a normal life together. In that house. With the red door. And the white picket fence. Man, I’m gonna miss this show…
- And that’s it. It wasn’t always the smoothest ride but damnit if this wasn’t one of the funnest and ultimately most heartfelt shows I’ve ever had the privilege of watching. Thanks to the cast and creators for a ton of great, memorable moments. Aces, guys. You’re aces.
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