Chuck Bartowski was a computer geek at a Buy More who opened an email and got the entire United States spy apparatus stuck in his head. That is the premise of Chuck, which NBC put on the air on September 24, 2007, and kept there for five seasons and 91 episodes. The show ended on January 27, 2012, with a two-hour finale.
Josh Schwartz created Chuck with Chris Fedak. Zachary Levi played Chuck. Yvonne Strahovski played Sarah Walker, Adam Baldwin played John Casey. The pitch is a joke told straight: the country’s greatest secrets live in a guy who fixes laptops for a living.
Trailer, via TJ DW.
The Email That Started It
The encoded message came from an old college friend who worked for the CIA. It embedded the only remaining copy of a program holding the country’s spy secrets into Chuck’s brain. The CIA and the NSA then assigned him handlers and put him on top-secret missions.
That is the whole engine. Chuck does not train his way into the job. The job is installed. The database also carries deadly fighting skills, which is how a man with no field experience ends up in rooms he has no business entering.
Levi was cast in February 2007, one of the first two hires. Baldwin was the other, as Major John Casey. Fedak had Baldwin in mind for Casey from the start, and the producers called him a perfect fit after the first casting session. Strahovski, a relative newcomer, landed the female lead that same month — then named CIA officer Sarah Kent.
Casting ran through March. Sarah Lancaster became Dr. Ellie Bartowski, Chuck’s older sister. Joshua Gomez became Morgan Pace, the best friend. Natalie Martinez was cast as Kayla Hart, the neighbor and love interest.
Kayla never made it to film. Fedak and Schwartz cut her, deciding it strained belief — and the storyline — to have two women pining over Chuck at once. Morgan’s surname changed to Grimes. Sarah’s changed to Walker. Those two edits shaped the show more than the character they dropped.
A Fan Campaign That Went Through Subway
The ratings sagged as season two wrapped, and Chuck went into the usual danger. Fans mounted a campaign to encourage NBC to renew the show, and it targeted a sponsor — the Subway restaurant chain. The chain then struck a major sponsorship deal with NBC to help cover costs of the third season. The renewal was uncertain in each subsequent season.
That is the strangest fact in Chuck’s history, and the most instructive. A sandwich chain helped cover the cost of a spy show’s third season. Renewal stayed uncertain in each subsequent season.
The fifth season began on October 28, 2011, and moved to Friday nights at 8 p.m. Eastern, 7 Central. Monday at 8 had been the show’s home from the premiere. Friday is where networks send things to finish. Chuck finished there on January 27, 2012, with a two-hour finale.
| Season | Start | Night |
|---|---|---|
| First | September 24, 2007 | Monday, 8 p.m. ET |
| Fifth | October 28, 2011 | Friday, 8 p.m. ET |
Producers: Fake Empire, called College Hill Pictures, Inc. for the first three seasons before folding, plus Wonderland Sound and Vision and Warner Bros. Television.
What the Cast Carried
The supporting bench is where Chuck spent its goodwill. Joshua Gomez’s Morgan Grimes, Sarah Lancaster’s Ellie, Vik Sahay’s Lester Patel, Scott Krinsky’s Jeff Barnes, Mark Christopher Lawrence’s Big Mike, Ryan McPartlin’s Devon Woodcomb — a full second family inside the Buy More.
Adam Baldwin is the show’s best piece of casting and the source of its driest humor. Casey is a veteran NSA agent assigned to watch a civilian, and Baldwin plays the assignment as a sentence he is serving. Strahovski’s Sarah has the harder job: handler, love interest, and the one person who has to keep saying no to a man she is protecting. Levi has to be likable enough to hold a premise this silly, and he is.
The show’s problem is that the premise never grows. The database in Chuck’s head is a fixed joke. Missions rotate, the Buy More rotates, the will-they between Chuck and Sarah rotates, and the series asks the audience to stay for the rotation. Five seasons is a long time to watch a man remain a walking hard drive.
The Numbers and the Verdict
Key facts
- Premiered: September 24, 2007, NBC
- Finale: January 27, 2012, two hours
- Seasons: 5
- Episodes: 91
- Original slot: Monday, 8 p.m. ET
- Final slot: Friday, 8 p.m. ET
- Cast: Zachary Levi, Yvonne Strahovski, Adam Baldwin, Joshua Gomez, Sarah Lancaster, Vik Sahay, Scott Krinsky, Mark Christopher Lawrence, Ryan McPartlin
- TMDB audience score: 6.1/10, 2,597 votes
A 6.1 is the right number, and it is not a knock on the cast. It is a verdict on a show that found its one good idea early and then protected it for 91 episodes instead of testing it. The Subway campaign is the most interesting thing that ever happened to Chuck, because it is the only time the show’s fate drew anyone outside the network into the fight.
The Buy More is the part worth defending. A spy drama that keeps cutting back to a retail floor full of people who will never know what their coworker does — that is a real idea about ordinary life sitting next to extraordinary work. Chuck never quite committed to it. It treated the store as a punchline and the spy plot as the point, when the reverse would have been braver.
Five seasons of renewal uncertainty tell you the network never settled on the show. The fans organized anyway, and the sponsorship deal they helped bring about is a better story than most of what aired.
Watch the first two seasons. The premise lands, the cast is set, and the show still feels like it might go somewhere. After that, Chuck is a machine running on the same fuel, and the finale is a farewell to a show that never risked its own best asset.
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