chuck: i have seen all of it now

In continuing stay-at-home avoidance of watching anything new, I went to watch Chuck.

Full disclosure: I didn't get much past season one the first time around: I think early season two. So as it turns out, that's why all my memories were so positive and pleasant.

If you haven't watched, this may encompass the experience: I finally understand what it means to hatewatch.

I thought it was a voluntary process, like, you can stop if you don't like it. No, it's not; you can't stop, how quaint of anyone to think so. There's just some grim form of geas or some shit--I don't know, do I look like an evil witch who does this to people?--that drives you onward and downward into the bowels of hell.

The worst thing is: this was insane enough that it could have been my favorite show.



1.) The Intersect V2 As Inner Matrix.

The Intersect V2 now comes with downloadable physical abilities. Yeah.

That was such bullshit I wanted to scream. That the side effect was Chuck the Super Spy was just salt in the open, bleeding wound. I could have actually dealt with the inner Matrix bullshit (not well, but I could) if it hadn't resulted in the second.

2.) Chuck the Super Spy

Everything that made Chuck so interesting was just stripped away. He became very special in every way and therefore became very boring. And they hit every bad cliche in the making, including the "Will Never Kill Even Though You Sort of Fucking Should" bullshit (Casey did it for him????)

It would actually have been goddamn hilarious if Chuck couldn't actually use any of the physical skills or used them badly and inaccurately or weirdly most of the time because he wasn't a trained spy and continued grimly not to really want to be. No, he does want to, just not the parts that make him uncomfy.

3.) The Intersect Is Suddenly Everywhere

It went from cool and mysterious to stupid and mysterious to dumb and ridiculous when there were Intersects, Bad Intersects, Matrix Intersects, and Enemy Group Intersects like every fucking where. Everyone was doing it. Suddenly the way it worked changed with the needs of the plot and then it didn't make sense.

4.) Oop, Chuck Isn't Actually a Regular Smart Guy

Nope: his missing parents are Super Genius Dad Who Invented the Intersect (really) and Super Double Agent Spy Mom (sort of).

Also, everything's connected. Everything. Even though in a just world, this wouldn't happen, but no, this is part of a Plan. All of it.

5.) The Series Finale

I can't even deal with how much I hated, hated, hated it. Sarah loses her memory due to Bad Intersect upload (yeah, that's a thing), goes after Chuck because she believes teh random villain when he says Chuck is just a mission (WHY? YOU'RE A CIA AGENT SURELY YOU'RE MORE PARANOID THAN THIS), then has a second of almost memory so doens't kill Chuck, then can get it back with the last pair of intersect glasses? (they have been throwing around these glasses with upload capabilities but apparently they just--don't make them anymore for some reason?) uploaded with her memory????? (something?) but Chuck has to use them to save people again, so she can't remember any of her friends and family and in the end he's telling her about their lives together.

Five. Fucking. Years. Of Sarah development? GONE. All her relationships with people not Chuck? Gone. And there was so fucking much. Gone.

6.) And Here's Why I Hate Watched

There were so many ridiculous, outlandish, incredibly fun plots, and I would have adored all of them (except the series finale) except Chuck is a boring goddamn superspy and not fun. The entire charm was that Chuck was fairly ordinary, just super smart; first the Super Genius Intersect Creating Dad broke that down and superspy finished it (Superspy Mom was annoying as fuck but anticlimactic).

But some of the plots were ridic and fantastic and that just made it all so much worse.



This has been a vent.

Comments

[seperis]

Late reply buT THISSSS!

In SPN, their biggest problem was that the plotline could carry that kind of thing; like I said above, I'm all about epic shit like that! It's my crack!--but then they didn't ever stop doing it to up the ante. Dead mom being a hunter from a family of hunters? The real reason Sam got the demon blood was her deal? COOL: that deepened the plot and gave really good reasons for stuff that happened and FUCK YEAH WORLDBUILDING. Dad genealogy/Men of Letter? Uh, sure, okay, I can--wait, CUPID BECAUSE LONG TERM MAGICAL GENETIC ENGINEERING ARE YOU FUCKING WITH ME?

(That's only the part I can remember of the horror.)

I usually hate it, since it takes away from the main character by turning them from a driver of their story to a pawn.

Yes. There's a line between giving the character and plot reasons for happening or backstory and then just removing all agency for the characters. And it's not actually a narrow line here; there's a ton of wilderness to explore in the concept of backstory influencing the future or even mapping it with the present subverting or working beyond it or within it, but no; writers throw themselves into a Calvinist Predetermination Morality Play which even Calvin might have been like "uh, this is a little extreme, dudes, slow your roll".

Exception to this rule--Worf. If you're going to bring on his parents and they turn out to be that adorable, they can stay.

Well, of course. It's Worf.