The Evolution of Chuck

I watched Chuck’s season ender with mixed feelings of happiness and regret. And while the wedding of Chuck and Sarah is considered by many as a culmination of their tumultuous relationship and a validation that nice guys do get the good girls (eventually), I still felt like it is the beginning of the end.



In tv series, they call it jumping the shark. As defined by Wikipedia:

Jumping the shark is an idiom, first employed to describe a moment in the evolution of a television show when it begins a decline in quality that is beyond recovery.

In its initial usage, it referred to the point in a television program's history where it has "outlived its freshness" where viewers feel "the writers have run out of ideas" and that "the series has [lost] what made it attractive." These changes were often the result of efforts to revive interest in a show whose audience had begun to decline.



Jon Hein, creator of the now defunct website 'jumptheshark.com' explained the concept as follows: "It's a moment. A defining moment when you know that your favorite television program has reached its peak. That instant that you know from now on...it's all downhill. Some call it the climax. We call it 'Jumping the Shark.' From that moment on, the program will simply never be the same."


Seasons 1 and 2 are simply brilliant. The evolution of Chuck’s character from an unknown Buy More Supervisor to being the unfortunate Intersect holding the world’s greatest secrets in his head is a promising if not an ambitious plot.


To protect the new intersect, the government sends their best undercover agents as his handlers while he keeps this secret from everyone in his family. Then Chuck goes on spy missions with these agents and that’s when the show becomes a hilarious series of mishaps.


But when Chuck became a superspy in Seasons 3 and 4, it somehow lost its appeal.


This is something I don't get.


In telenovelas, we can’t wait for the heroine to turn beautiful and get her well deserved revenge. But for Chuck, it’s hard to say goodbye to a character so well loved. His lack of confidence, his insecurity, his too trusting and gullible qualities and his clumsiness all made us fall in love with his Chuck Bartowski character. It’s just to sad to see it all go and turn into a suave and dangerous spy named Charles Carmichael.


And while I will still continue to have a crush on my favorite nerd Zachary Levi, I feel so sad that I do not feel as excited to see Chuck’s next season (which incidentally will also be their final one) as I used too.


The giddyness, the excitement and the sense of anticipation are all gone. Hope I get over this feeling before September.


Let me end this piece by quoting one of the scenes that made me cry (yes, people I get emotional too):


Chucks’s Wedding Vows to Sarah:

How do i express the depth of my love for you…

or my dreams for our future...

or the fact that I will fight for you everyday...

or that our kids will be like superheroes with little capes and stuff like that.

Words can't express that.

They don't do justice.

They just don't cut it.

So no vows.

I'll just prove it to you..everyday

Sweet...