Top ten characters in Chuck
Now is the golden age of TV, I’m told on a daily basis. Yet I can never find anything good to watch. I watched all of Chuck when it came out in 2007, and it ran for five seasons until 2012. I watched all five seasons all over again recently. I loved every single one of the 91 episodes.
It’s a great combination of humour and action as we follow Chuck progress from computer geek working a dead end job at the Buy More store (something like a Currys in the UK) in Burbank to a secret agent with a gorgeous blonde babe at his side. The key to the show is the quirky characters who work in the Buy More, the fact that they don’t know Chuck is also a spy and the dichotomy between the mundane politics of the Buy More and the exciting world of working for the CIA killing baddies (though Chuck prefers to tranquilize). It’s a great formula that somehow sustains almost one hundred episodes, partly because the characters and relationships develop – often in unexpected ways – over time.
As well as juggling his day job at the Buy More with his nighttime CIA shenanigans and his relationship with Sarah, Chuck has several family issues, including being far too close to his sister, Ellie, and uncovering why both his parents left him and Ellie when they were children.
Some quirky, retro guest appearances, including Harry Dean Stanton, Chevy Chase, Timothy Dalton (James Bond), Ray Wise (Twin Peaks), Carrie-Anne Moss (The Matrix), Linda Hamilton (The Terminator) and Scott Bakula (Quantum Leap) lend the show some gravitas.
I do actually have a slight problem with its relentless veneration of capitalism (and hatred of socialism), Subway sandwiches (despite the chain sponsoring the show in the third season, the fact that the fattest man in the series is obsessed with its sandwiches perhaps implies they’re not exactly healthy) and CIA-sanctioned murder, but its heart is mostly in the right place, and the show is moving, funny, smart, sexy and exciting. And Lester and Jeff performing as Jeffster perhaps the funniest thing I’ve ever seen.
It may seem mean not to have Chuck in the top ten, but as I’ve said before: eponymous heroes [are] ‘largely dull’.
1. Morgan Grimes (Joshua Gomez)
2. Lester Patel (Vikram Sahay)
3. John Casey (Adam Baldwin)
4. Michael ‘Big Mike’ Tucker (Mark Christopher Lawrence)
5. Sarah Walker (Yvonne Strahovski)
6. Emmett Milbarge (Tony Hale), also hilarious in Arrested Development
7. Jeff Barnes (Scott Krinsky)
8. Devon ‘Captain Awesome’ Woodcomb (Ryan McPartlin)
9. Ellie Woodcomb (Sarah Lancaster)
10. Diane Beckman (Bonita Friedericy)