Chuck Vs. The Series Finale

I’m a few weeks late to the punch, but I can’t let Chuck fade without a few final words.

With a series finale, you expect a parade of clichés. Revisiting and tying up old plot threads slow-mo sendoffs. Amnesia is often deployed as an excuse to rehash the preceding seasons with flashbacks. We get it all from the Chuck team, and yet it’s all blended into a highly satisfying grand finale.

To recap, Sarah Walker is infected with a corrupted Intersect which wipes out her memory of the last five years. Behind this mastervillainy is one Nicholas Quinn, a sinisterly rotund Angus MacFadyen (of Braveheart fame). He convinces Sarah that for the past five years she’s been undercover, handling a rogue spy—Chuck, of course—who killed her partner, Bryce. Quinn then turns her loose. Gone is the sweet, devoted Sarah whom Chuck adored, replaced by a ruthless killing machine bent on revenge.

Along the way we’re treated to some magnificent Chuck staples: red meat quotes from tough guy John Casey (“You shot down my helicopter with my own damn gun?”), shameless Subway plugs from Big Mike (“Tonight, I’m eating fresh.”), Morgan arguing that Sarah’s memory can be restored by true love’s kiss, and Jeffster, debuting some eighties-tribute karaoke in order to stall a sonic bomb in a setup awfully reminiscent of the orchestra assassination scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much—right down to the cymbal crash.

With any series finale, a lot of writers assume the audience wants closure. But tying up every plotline with a big red bow feels contrived. What audiences crave is momentum, the sense that we know where the characters will be five, ten years down the road. This is where J. K. Rowling got it pitch-perfect in her Deathly Hallows epilogue. This is where the Chuck writers show off their chops, giving Chuck one last mission to go out on.

A Shout-Out To Dirty Matt

So my old college chum "Dirty" Matt started a blog years ago. He's mentioned it in passing, and then he linked it on our Pedestrian site. I skimmed it (Sorry for not leaving comments, Matt. I have the same problem with answering machines: I never know what to say! I vow to do better, though.) and particularly enjoyed his quick reviews of movies, TV series, and books. Naturally, I thought, "Hey, I want to do that, too!" I mean, isn't that what the Internet is for? So we can spend hours typing out our views so that billions of people can utterly ignore them?

Hence, here's my contribution.