Warner Bros. | 2009 | 817 mins. | NR
Chuck Bartowski (Zachary Levi) was your average lovable nerd. A brilliant student at Stanford, life as he knew it came to a crashing halt. It all happened when his roommate and best friend, Bryce (Matt Bomer), stole his girlfriend, Jill (Yvonne Strahovski), and then conspired to get him kicked out of the university. Now, five years later (as the series begins), Chuck is living with his sister, Ellie (Sarah Lancaster), a doctor, and her boyfriend, a mountain-climbing sky-diving doctor who Chuck refers to as Captain Awesome (Ryan McPartlin) He works at a local Buy More and spends his free time hanging out with fellow nerd, Morgan Grimes (Joshua Gomez).
One morning, Chuck receives an e-mail from Bryce. It turns out to be the Intersect, a program that downloads a CIA database into Chuck’s brain. Now whenever he sees someone or something that’s in the database he’ll ‘flash’ and instantly gain all the information that the CIA knows about that person or thing. After the original Intersect is destroyed, Chuck is the only source of that information. Since the information can’t be allowed to walk the streets freely, two agents are assigned to watch his every move: CIA agent Sarah Walker who poses as Chuck’s girlfriend, and psychopathic killer NSA agent John Casey (Adam Baldwin) who gets a job at the Buy More and moves into the apartment across from Chuck’s.
At the end of season two Chuck was implanted with the Intersect 2.0, which in addition to
raw data also allows him to become a martial arts expert (or whatever skill he may need) but only when he flashes, which is rather unpredictable.
The third season begins with a bit of a shock—Chuck bombs out of agent training and finds himself separated from Sarah. Sent back to his life at Buy More, Sarah and Casey now have the unfortunate task of making sure he doesn’t harm anyone (or endanger state secrets) with all the material crammed into his head, which tends to pop out at random or not at all, depending on Chuck’s emotional state. The CIA decides to send in Daniel Shaw (Brandon Routh), to lead the team against a group of rogue spies and traitor agents known as the Ring. As the team battles the Ring and Chuck gets closer to his dream of becoming a real agent, he discovers it might mean losing his friends, the woman he loves… and maybe even his life. Turns out the upgraded Intersect comes with a few flaws that are slowly shredding his mind.
Chuck certainty focused on more action based storylines in its 19 third season episodes. Though there is little doubt the main point is to have fun. A “very powerful episode” of this show involves Sarah in a bikini, Chuck getting to fight Ring agent “Stone Cold” Steve Austin in the cargo hold of a plane with a pair of nunchucks, or our hero finally getting to tell his best friend Morgan, that he’s been a spy-in-training for the past two years. Chuck never takes itself too seriously.
The anamorphic widescreen transfers aren’t as good as you would expect for a recent series, with an image that’s got an excessive amount of noise and compression artifacts, and a somewhat soft image. On the plus side, the color is appropriate.
The audio, presented via Dolby Digital 5.1 tracks, features solid separation between the center channel and the side and rear speakers, giving the surround speakers the music, and atmospheric effects.
Like the previous sets, there’s a featurette about the show, at almost 22-minute “Chuck-Fu and Dim Sum,” which starts as a series overview, before focusing on season three. Interviews with the cast and crew cover the characters, storylines and connection with the fans, along with the evolution of the show.
“The Jeffster Revolution” spends nearly 11 minutes profiling the unusual band from inside the world of Chuck
Like the previous sets, there’s a large dose of “Declassified Scenes,” 20 in all running just over 21 minutes. Also like the previous DVDs, there’s a gag reel, with six minutes of goof-ups and on-set silliness (and of course, dancing.)
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