Chuck is Back

Chuck is back, and now everything feels right in the world.

Josh Schwartz, crafter of guilty pleasure of guilty pleasures The O.C., created this show the same year he created Gossip Girl, yet Chuck never received the same level of attention. However, since its inception it has steadily grown from a promising if not uneven show at first into what is quite possibly my favorite show on TV now that Battlestar Galactica is over. Tonight's two hour premiere does nothing to change that, as we're given all of the hijinks and awesome we can handle.

If you're not watching this show, you're really missing out on the single most consistently enjoyable show on TV. Really. How can you resist a show that stars a dork who doubles as a spy and features the insanely gorgeous Yvonne Strahovski and the intensely hilarious (emphasis on the intense part) Adam Baldwin as his spy handlers? You can't, trust me.

Welcome back Chuck! You were missed.

Chuck versus the Cancellation

The awesome episode "Chuck versus Tom Sawyer"

It's official - Chuck is coming back for season 3 for at least 13 episodes. After looking like a surefire lock for cancellation, massive fan support carried it onto NBC's schedule for next year. Great decision by NBC, as it is the best thing they have going for them right now and probably my favorite show on TV (with possible exceptions of Lost and How I Met Your Mother).

Starting the week off with Chuck and HIMYM always started the week right, and while I know it likely won't be the same next year (Chuck is probably switching days) I'm just glad I will have a new day of awesomeness to help me work through the doldrums of Alaskan winter. Hell yes to romantic comedies featuring dorky spies!

Top TV Shows of 2008

Traditionally, I'd write a top five or a top 10 list for whatever. Actually, really it would just have to be an interval of five, that's all that really matters. However, this year in television six shows stood out above the rest in my book, so I'm going to stick with six. No more, no less. Below are my six favorite TV shows of 2008.


1. How I Met Your Mother

This combined with the number two show makes me say a euphoric "thank god it's monday!" every week, as it is the perfect way to start the week. It's part Seinfeld, part Arrested Development, but take out the cold, emotionless centers and replace them with heart and realistic relationships. This really feels like a sitcom designed specifically for me.

Kudos to my boy NPH for this as well. He may get all the publicity, but he deserves it. No one on television is funnier than Barney Stinson. No one.


2. Chuck

I love the rest of the shows on the list, but the character of Chuck (brilliantly played by Zachary Levi) is the guy that every nerd wants to be, meaning I relate to him and envy him while watching his antics on television. That's a unique and alluring combination. I find myself grinning uncontrollably while watching this show, as Chuck, Casey (Adam Baldwin), and Sarah (Yvonne Strahovski) go off on another wild mission, from saving the world from a satellite by beating the old arcade game Missile Command while listening to Rush's "Tom Sawyer," to defeating rogue CIA entities embodied by ex-girlfriend and Michael Rooker, to surviving the average day in the Buy More.

In terms of hour long shows, this has the most consistency and one of the most balanced and diverse casts on television. It's the best thing that Josh Schwartz has ever done, yet no one realizes it.


3. Battlestar Galactica

Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

Well, not really. Battlestar is still the best show on TV, it's just this year was the year of the comedy and Bstar Glac only provided me with 10 new episodes this year due to the writers strike and other ridiculousness. It did provide the single best episode of the season (the action packed and gut wrenching finale) and some of the best performances (when did Saul Tigh become the most dynamic character on television?), but it just didn't provide the product necessary to take number one.

However, there's a fairly decent chance I'll fall apart as a human being when the series finale airs some time in 2009. January 16th, 2009, you're too far away!


4. Dexter

Dexter and friends threw down another incredible season full of pitch black humor, tense drama, and buckets of blood, and they didn't lose a step from the first two remarkably great seasons. While the structure changed somewhat, losing the season long killer mystery for the most part, the show did not lack in awesomeness.

Why?

The cat and mouse awesomeness between Jimmy Smits' character Miguel Prado and Michael C. Hall's Dexter Morgan. You never really knew who was the cat and who was the mouse, but for the first time in the series, you never really knew for a fact that Dexter was going to make it through unscathed. He met his match, and he met it in his first real friend. Perhaps the two best performances on TV this year were featured here with Smits and Hall absolutely bringing down the house every episode. Incredible work.


5. Lost

Lost was freaking awesome this year. A huge return to prominence, featuring a change in structure from time to time, answers, and significant forward movement. Everything has been said about this show already, so I don't need to say much here. However, I do want to say the number five ranking here isn't to say it wasn't a great season (it was), it just means the other shows were truly exceptional.

Although, I did not like the season finale (I know, I'm the one).


6. Entourage

In the year of televisions most unlikely comeback, after two abysmal seasons (sad but true), Entourage got back to basics and provided us with its single best season. It was back to the hijinks with the crew, the wheeling and dealing by Ari (and his put upon assistant Lloyd), and the mix between the good life and the bad that comes with it that this show should be all about.

More shows need to realize that when they go astray, just get back to basics. Entourage did, and it's better than ever.

Surviving Black Monday

Not the best day ever today, not by any means. I mean, come on. The Dow Jones dropped 777 points today, the Asian markets are going down as well, and all because the proposed economic bailout was rejected by the House. People are calling it Black Monday, and that it could be a precursor to another depression. What's my take on it?

Well, to be honest, I was never that into wallowing. Why go into it when everyone else is going to be sharing their opinion on it. I choose to sink my thoughts into something diverting. Something fun. Something...like Chuck.

Chuck (Zachary Levi) and John Casey (Adam Baldwin)

Chuck is the forgotten child of Josh Schwartz of the OC fame. Sure, it isn't a tawdry prime time soap like Gossip Girl or the OC, but it may be the single most entertaining hour on television on a week to week basis. People say last years broken season (due to the writer's strike) was one with no great rookie programs, but those people must have missed this show.

It's a strange premise that somehow feels very natural - Chuck (Zachary Levi) is a twenty something who is wasting his life away at a Best Buy style workplace until he gets an email containing an intelligence document called "the Intersect." The flash of images contained in this document is witnessed by Chuck and burned into his memory, and when the CIA and NSA (the creators of this Intersect) find out, they assign two agents to cover him as they try to redevelop the original.

On a week to week basis, Chuck and the two agents that cover him - John Casey (my boy Jayne - Firefly's Adam Baldwin) and Sarah Walker ( the unfathomably gorgeous Yvonne Strahovski) - get involved with ridiculous secret agent plots that are often action packed, intense, and always entertaining. Plus, there is the ongoing romance between Chuck and Sarah, Casey's continuous development of actual human emotions, the cast of characters and hijinks related to them at Chuck's day job, plus Chuck's roommates - his sister and her fiance (fiance's name = Captain Awesome - best. name. ever) - helping him figure out his life.

Really, it all works because Zachary Levi is such an engaging lead star. He pulls off the secret agent stuff with a mix of believable suaveness and goofy energy, comes across as he is hardly acting when he discusses video games and computers with coworkers, and pulls off the romance stuff as well. He seems like a guy everyone would want to hang out with, even if he is really dorky at times. I relate to parts of his character I'd say.

Plus, what other show could you possibly get the Thermals best song, Flight of the Conchords, Cake, and Phantom Planet played in one episode? I mean come on. That's musical gold right there.

When the times are dark and full of all kinds of questions, why go with something depressing or massively dramatic? You could go with Chuck and get a ray of sunshine injected straight into your brain. It's an hour of pure entertainment, and while it may not be the best show on television, I'd be hard pressed to find something that is more fun.

Oh yeah, and the fact that they somehow always find a way to put Yvonne Strahovski in her underwear every episode isn't so bad either.