I’ve finally broken up with Chuck.
No, not a fellow with whom I’ve had a romantic relationship, but rather that show on NBC.
It was likely bound to happen. The Buy More is a large part of this rift, it’s been a sore spot since the beginning, because I’ve always hated his non-spy coworkers. They were never funny; just awkward and pointless. Mostly, they made my flesh crawl every time they showed up on screen. I kept hoping the writers would get a clue and kill them or maim them or simply forget about them and stop writing reasons for them to show up, but, no. They just keep on appearing.
And, while Chuck’s best pal Morgan started off being as horribly annoying as those two schleps whose names will not sully my mind or my blog, he started to redeem himself somewhat when he started growing up and having something more interesting to do besides harass Chuck.
Except that, just about the time they’d given him a likeability makeover, they made him the new Chuck. I tied to give them a chance, I dutifully watched the season premier, to see how all the game-changing, season-ending developments were handled, and find out what their “new normal” would be for the last season, but, it turns out, I hated it. Morgan has never had the sweet vulnerability that made the title character compelling. He lacks Zachary Levi’s charm, and given that they started the character of Morgan as a selfish, childish, jerk, now that he has been given the MacGuffin-spy power mojo, he just feels like an unsympathetic guy who just got everything he ever wanted, but, he didn’t, in any way, earn it. Chuck the character was set up with some native talent, and was established from the pilot as being a kind guy, who’s worked hard, but hadn’t managed to do more than find a “pay the bills” job at the Buy More. Morgan always just looks like he’s a hair’s breath from an unseemly shout of “Yahoo! I’m finally a superhero! I so deserve this!”
And then there’s the ridiculous situation of having money, and then not, and then no longer being agents of the government, and all of them deciding to “stay together as a team and fight the bad guys.” Really? John Casey has been largely wishing he could get out of this assignment for the whole show. And now, he’s voluntarily staying with them, just because? Yeah. There’s really only so much disbelief I’m willing to suspend.
All of this adds up to a show I was no longer enjoying even a little. It had become a painful way to spend time, and a relief to just stop and pull the plug. So, I made a clean break of it, and I broke up with Chuck. I don’t even miss him. It is a weight from my conscience, and decent fodder for a blog post. Yahoo!