2ème partie de l'interview de Schedak :

'Chuck' vs. the Retrospective Interview, Part 2

The "Chuck" series finale — for real this time — airs Friday night at 8 on NBC, and we're spending this week preparing for the end with a 5-part interview I did with the show's creators, Chris Fedak and Josh Schwartz. Yesterday, we talked about the show's origins and the truncated first season. Today, it's time to discuss what everyone considers to be the show's creative peak: season two, when they had a full-season order practically from the start (though even that caused problems), when they had their full budget and full cast, and when they started to hit the jackpot with guest stars.

So now you go into season two and as you say that was when had the most money and you didn’t have to worry about how many episodes you were doing. Or did you know it would be 22 the whole time?

Josh Schwartz        The story is — which we probably shouldn’t tell, but what the hell? — we had 13. NBC really loved the episodes that they were seeing, so we got a call that we were getting an order for more before we ever aired, which is very unprecedented. We told the cast. It got out into the press and then we became aware of the fact that the people who had called us hadn’t called their higher ups at NBC yet, who were like, “You can’t do that.  You can’t just pick up the show.” By that point it was too late and we were off to the races, so we benefited from that.

So you were able to plot out all 22 of those.

Chris Fedak: We were probably halfway through. Yeah, but that was the most time we’ve ever had in advance.

Josh Schwartz        Except for this year, right? They gave us 13.

One of the things we talked about before season two was you figured out from season one in the episode where Kevin Weisman guest stars, "If we get familiar guest stars we don’t really have to do much writing for them because people already know who they are."

Josh Schwartz        I'm always trying to figure out shortcuts, where there is less layering and death required in writing.

Chris Fedak: Because we don’t do the bad guy scenes. That’s the problem. Most shows you can go and see the bad guys talking about stuff. I think there is a handful of those scenes on our show, maybe 5 in 91 episodes. So the faster you know kind of who this person is that’s always helped us.

Josh Schwartz        Yeah, it was and definitely when Kevin Weisman came by everyone is like, “It’s the guy from 'Alias'!" And like all of the sudden he was the poisoner. He was a gymnast…

The gymnast/poisoner was an interesting combo.

Josh Schwartz        I don’t know that he was the most inspired villain of all time, but people liked that actor and so we got the benefit of doubt. That was eye opening to us along with the fact that look, we were off the air for eight, nine months and we were going to have to do whatever it took to get promotion and get people back to the show and what excited NBC to promote was guest stars. So it actually creatively was good for us and it was good for us publicity-wise too. Nichole Richie was probably, in terms of the level of publicity that we had gotten for the show I think a high point and I think a lot of people were skeptical about her. Then they saw that episode and saw her and Sarah fighting in the shower and were like, "They pulled it off," and I think that was a moment for us. It was like either people were going to be onboard with this or they were going to think we were "The Love Boat" and I think they felt like we were doing it with integrity.

That was definitely one of the best fight scenes I can think of that was - that and Sarah in the car in "Best Friend."

Josh Schwartz        That’s a great one.

Who came up with those? What was the genesis in general of the fight scenes?

Chris Fedak: Well those are both actually...

Josh Schwartz        Wait, hold on. He is getting modest, but you should know that when the writers break stories they leave open act four on the board, but they did for awhile, where all the big cool action shit happens and it just says "TBF," which means “to be Fedaked”.

Chris Fedak: That’s very nice. I obsess over action, but I do love it quite a bit.

Okay.

Chris Fedak: Those are both Ali episodes.

Josh Schwartz        Yeah, Ali Adler.

Chris Fedak: Ali Adler episodes, but usually it’s a collaboration.

Josh Schwartz        Ali wanted those two women in a shower soaking wet.

Chris Fedak: She wanted that.That was going to be a part of that episode. I think the original iteration was a chocolate factory, but yeah, I think we dialed her back to a high school locker room.

Josh Schwartz        And again, our influences and stuff that we love are in those episodes too, like "Grosse Point Blank" obviously in that episode, "King of Kong" in the Jeff episode.

So one of the things that happened right at the beginning of the season is (CIA Director) Graham blows up. Tony Todd losses his gig. Was it just that two bosses was one too many?

Chris Fedak:             You don't need two people on the phone. And what happened was that…

Josh Schwartz        Fedak had developed a crush on Beckman.

Chris Fedak: I do have a little bit of a crush on Bonita, but what happened is that the more Casey and Sarah worked as a team, we didn’t need two sets of instructions coming in, so one part of it was is that it was confusing to have two people giving the mission. But Tony was so fantastic that killing him was such a surprise that it felt like season two was going to have this extra step, which is it's dangerous. And I think that the show kind of walked on that tonal line. It was important for us to do some dangerous stuff over the five seasons of the show to test the balance.

And the other notable change at least at the start is Wienerlicious goes away in favor of Orange Orange. Was it just that you didn’t want Sarah to have a boss anymore?

Josh Schwartz        No, I wouldn't say that boss was really a critical part of the storyline. I think we had it at one point where we thought we were going to have all this money, and every year she was going to have a different cover. So it would be the Wienerlicious one year and then the Orange Orange and some other funny store that would take advantage of whatever was going in the zeitgeist and that mini mall the following year and basically after the Orange Orange change we didn’t have enough dough to build another new set.

I just kept waiting for her to like wind up at the Buy More in some form, but she just doesn’t have a cover job anymore.

Chris Fedak: The idea that we kept talking about was she was going to become an HR person at the Buy More because I really liked her having to do sexual harassment instruction with Jeff and Lester, but we couldn’t. It was just one of those things that we never got around to.

She and Lester had that one good scene in the first season where he asks her out on a date.

Josh Schwartz        And again that was back in the days when we could go to that strip mall and shoot there.

Chris Fedak: That is one of the hardest things for us to shoot actually, is parking lots.

Really?

Chris Fedak:             Yeah, when it comes to going to Switzerland that’s fantastic, but doing the Buy More parking lot became more and more difficult over the years.

And Yvonne sometimes gets to be funny and sometimes not, and there are a lot of different moving parts on the show. It does feel like these last couple of seasons - basically since she and Chuck got together - there has been a little bit more of funny Sarah. I don’t know. Has that been your feeling?

Chris Fedak: Absolutely, absolutely, I think that starting off the show when we first got into it we looked at Yvonne to be the anchor for the spy side of the show, funny, romantic-

Josh Schwartz        Soulful.

Chris Fedak: -soulful, able to do the action scenes, to carry a gun, sit on a roof with wind blowing in a miniskirt and still be amazing. She can do all that. I think the discovery over—like Gomez in season three learning about Chuck’s spy life and finding another gear, the fact that Sarah and Chuck are really good together and also that Sarah is very funny - like her doing that Texas accent in "the Honeymooners" episode. For the life of me I tried to get that into the show, into the finale, but just didn’t have time for it, but she is so funny.

So season two, in addition to standalone guest stars like Larroquette who were terrific, you’ve got a bunch of notable recurring people. You have Tony Hale as Milbarge. You’ve got Chevy, Bakula. Jordana Brewster did a few episodes. Tell me first about Chevy, because the "Spies Like Us" thing was so huge for you.

Josh Schwartz        It was a huge get for us and he hadn’t really done TV and he hadn’t done an arc like that on a show. And we were delighted and terrified of him. He was coming to play this Steve Jobs type, but as an uber villain, and I think we were so excited we didn’t know what to expect, and he turned out to be great. And then once he started to get comfortable with the rhythms of the show a be a little bit he found us little funny moments for himself and I think off of the show he got "Community." I think it was kind of like a dry run for him about he liked television.

And why Bakula specifically as Chuck’s dad and as the founder of the Intersect and all that?

Josh Schwartz        Well we’re both hugely obsessed with "Quantum Leap." We were as kids and he was on a short list of guys who could play Chuck’s dad, who you would believe as a brilliant, eccentric scientist, but also could make that turn into the kick ass action guy and that you really liked him. You know this is a guy who has turned his back on his family and deserted his kids, but you had to like him and there are very few people who are as likable as Scott Bakula.

And was Milbarge basically that you lost Harry and you needed a new antagonist in the Buy More?

Josh Schwartz        That’s where it started from and then obviously you get a guy like Tony Hale and it takes on a whole life of its own. One of the moments I'm most proud of on the show is Tony Hale getting shot in the eye with "Hold On" playing on the soundtrack. We were on the Wilson Phillips thing well before this whole "Bridesmaids" phenomenon.

Was that just that Tony had other opportunities or Milbarge had run his course?

Josh Schwartz        I think it was they took away our money.

Chris Fedak: They took our money and they took away our time you know and that we had to look at how we were going to do this and that was the most definitely evocative way to do it.

Josh Schwartz        Tony deserved it, if he was going, he was so good on the show. He was so much fun and so funny and we felt like if we’re going to have to lose this guy, let's just go for it. Harry Tang met a more kind of vague fate. He could still be alive, but Tony was different. Although there was talk for a long time - one of the favorite stories I ever heard that was being discussed in the writer’s room in later season - was that Emmitt Milbarge’s twin brother was going to come back searching for Emmitt, but he was going to have one eye.

Chris Fedak: He was going to have one eye.

Josh Schwartz        And wear an eyepatch, so you wouldn’t know if it was actually Emmitt or not.

Nice. So season two builds to "Chuck Vs. the Colonel" and "Chuck Vs. the Ring." Those are two of the best episodes you ever did. It may be the two best. What was it about those two that had all the pieces clicking as far as you’re concerned?

Josh Schwartz        Money!

Chris Fedak: Yeah, money and time.

Josh Schwartz        We could blow a lot of shit up. That wedding sequence, my God, there are paratroopers coming down. Driving away the fighters are blowing up the base behind them in "Colonel." But I think I agree with your assessment and I think that was probably Chris should speak to that, but I felt like that was just what the show was building towards.

Chris Fedak: Yeah, we spent two years building to this point of Chuck making the decision, sitting there at the computer and we just had so many great things heading into it and we had a season of Jeffster! We had—

Josh Schwartz        Chuck, Sarah, will they or won’t they.

Chris Fedak: Yeah, the hotel scene in "Colonel" and there were just so many great things that we were building to. Those were definitely also the two hardest episodes to make. It was we had lots of money, lots of time, but it was still an incredible challenge.

If I want to sum up what the show is with a clip I always grab the "Mr. Roboto" sequence. Whose idea was that? How did that all come together?

Josh Schwartz        It was probably Chris’. I think it was your idea.

Chris Fedak: I think that was my idea because we had started with the fact that we had wanted do—we had to go to the big place where we had the spy ending, so midway through the episode we were going to do what would be usually your finale moment, the wedding, so we had the wedding. We also we knew that Casey was going to be getting on a plane to go back to Afghanistan. He was there with his team kind of football buddies getting ready to go back to war and at some point Chuck would be able to call him and they would come in through the skylight of the wedding and then with Jeffster! performing it was we just had to find a song. So that was just like we had—we know it’s-

Josh Schwartz        There is always a huge discussion every year of what is the Jeffster! song. Like the Bon Jovi song (in "Ring Part Two"), that went round and round for us.

Chris Fedak:             But that is always the fun in the show though. One of my favorite things is sitting in Josh’s office and we just go through iTunes.

Josh Schwartz        We’ll think, "What would Jeffster!’s cover of this song be?" There have been a lot of discussions.

Who came up with Jeffster!? I remember you announced that at that Comic Con and you were all excited about it, but who actually said, "These two are going to do a band and they’re going to be called Jeffster!?"

Chris Fedak: It was Ali’s episode. I have to say-

Chris Fedak: There is a lot of parents. There is a lot of people who were involved.

Josh Schwartz        Success has a thousand fathers. Only two people are going to take credit for "Chuck vs. the Helicopter," but Jeffster!, a million people are going to line up for it.

Chris Fedak: Yeah, Jeffster!, a lot of people are going to line up for it, but the fact is it did occur in Ali’s episode.

Josh Schwartz        At the end of season two we did something that we debated long and hard about and then we’re like we have to do this and we put “to be continued” at the end of the episode.

Chris Fedak: That’s right.

Josh Schwartz        And for us we were like, "We could look like two of the biggest assholes in the history of television." We didn’t know if it was going to be continued, but we just felt like there was so much feeling from everybody making the show of, "The show is too good, we love it so much and it’s just getting started. It can’t die." It just can’t die and we can’t even put that out in the universe that it could possibly not happen. It was after those episode aired when NBC announced their fall schedule. Chuck wasn’t on it initially and the sandwiches began. The sandwich revolution began.

Like the man said, "To be continued…"

Partie 3 de l'interview de Schwartz et de Fedak par Alan Sepinwall :

ATTENTION, SPOILERS SAISON 4 !

'Chuck' vs. the Retrospective Interview, Part 3

Chuck gets a nemesis, Sarah and Chuck get other love interests, and the series gets two different finales

"Chuck" comes to the end of its run on Friday night at 8 on NBC, and we're continuing our five-part retrospective interview with creators Chris Fedak and Josh Schwartz by discussing the unlikely Subway sandwich fan campaign (the brainchild of Wendy Farrington) that helped the show get a renewal for the third season, and then the various ups and downs of season three itself.

(And it occurs to me in looking over this transcript that, while Fedak and Schwartz talked in an earlier part about how Chuck might have gotten the Chuck-fu powers at the end of season 1, I never specifically asked them about that decision and the ways it changed the show in the third season. Fortunately, Fedak and I talked about that at length after the season 2 finale, and that interview is still up on the old blog.)

I forget. What episode is the initial sandwich scene in, where Big Mike is listing the ingredients?

Chris Fedak: That a Scott Rosenbaum special.

It’s all his fault, okay.

Chris Fedak: No, Rosenbaum will take credit for the show coming back, but it’s the—I forget which. I think it was 19 or something like that. He goes into Big Mike’s office with the sandwich and Morgan-

Josh Schwartz        20, "First Kill."

Chris Fedak: "First Kill," he goes in there and he gives the sandwich speech and Rosenbaum wrote that and when you do one of those things that means you have to really get into it with all the executives because you have to give—the language has to be worked out. If there is a joke they have to sign off on it, and Scott went through that process and we have him to thank.

What was that period like: that weird gap in between when you’re not alive and then you are and the fans are doing the sandwich thing and everything is happening?

Josh Schwartz        Well I remember that time very, very distinctly because I remember many conversations with Peter Roth, who was the head of Warner Bros. TV at the time. I remember this very clearly because we were also doing a "Gossip Girl" spinoff at the time and I was told, “Look, sorry about 'Chuck.' It’s not happening, but the good news is the 'Gossip Girl' spinoff is.” And then like 40 hours later the opposite was true, so I very clearly remember. But I remember Peter Roth making me do the Mourner's Kaddish over the phone. He was so certain that it was dead and then I was like, "How much do I tell Chris? I don’t want to depress him."

Chris Fedak: Because I was in the hospital delivering baby Clara.

Josh Schwartz        Right. Chris had had his baby and I wasn't going to call and be like, "Congrats on your kid. I don’t know how she’s going to eat."

He totally could have written for "Gossip Girl."

Josh Schwartz        Yeah, totally. He could have. He can write anything. But I remember being like, "Peter is telling me all these terrible things about the show and I can’t share them with Chris because he’s in the hospital and his wife will kill me," and yeah, the sandwich revolution began. There was also because the other big problem we were facing was that Jay Leno was coming on the air five nights a week. I remember we went in and made our pitch for season three and we sat with then the second of the four presidents that "Chuck" would have at NBC and we were told, "We have Jay Leno at 10, all we need to bring back are hit shows," shows that were doing a 3 (demo) rating or above.

NBC used to have shows that did a 3 rating or above.

Josh Schwartz        So then we didn’t know if we were going to come back now, but the sandwich revolution began. The fans took to the Subways, made sandwiches. It actually got on CNN. Like all the sudden people were talking about the show and the show had an air with it that it never had before and kind of broke through a little bit and got an identity amid the larger kind of pop cultural landscape that it never had before. And then we were going to potentially be on Fridays and then we were told, "Okay, we’re saving you until January," and then by the time we aired in January, to skip forward to season three, the Jay Leno experiment had not panned out. They didn’t have a lot of shows in inventory because of that. Suddenly we got the premiere two hour Sunday night. There was like a four hour "Chuck" two day premiere that got launched out of the Olympics and the show opened and did great and that was the best we had ever done for a long period of time. We were like, "Yeah, we’re a hit now," and then invariably we weren’t by the end, but you know.

Was it season two or season three where you did the 3D episode?

Chris Fedak: Yeah, season two.

Okay and you did the 3D episode and then Obama did the address and that took away all your momentum. So what was the thing in season three that messed you up? Where did the dip begin?

Josh Schwartz        Daylight Savings, I don’t know. Who knows?

I think it was actually an episode or two before the finale of the first half of that season. No, wait - I'm thinking of season four.

Chris Fedak: We’ve had so many finales.

Josh Schwartz        We’ve had so many near finales. I don’t know. Everyone made excuses for awhile and ratings were what they were, but all I remember is every week they were like, "Here is a number you've got to hit and you’ll be fine," and we'd always be like one tenth of a ratings point below that number," and they were like, "Well, we said to hit that number, I guess one tenth isn’t really that much off, but it sure would have been better if you had done one tenth better," and we’re like, "Come on."

Chris Fedak: It’s always hard because I was trying to figure it out too. You'll see weird dips in our numbers. Last year for the life of me I can’t figure out what about "Push Mix," why there should have been a dip like that right before it. The episode before was good with the cliffhanger ending and it’s kind of hard to figure out. With a show where the margin is so tight it seemed like it was always about a tenth of a rating point with us, that we felt we could maybe survive.

Josh Schwartz        Until this year. Until this year.

Chris Fedak: Yeah, there you go.

Josh Schwartz        This year we wanted to make no mistake about it.

If would have made sense if they had dipped after "Push Mix." People could have been, "All right, fine: he proposed, I’ve seen it all," but that was very weird.

Josh Schwartz        The show has always done very well when it was on iTunes. It has always done very well on iTunes. It’s always done very well in the Hulu sphere, so it’s hard to say. It’s always something, but we got that launch and then for much of last year we were over performing.

When we came here for the podcast a year ago Dan and I were saying, "Oh, you guys are coming back for sure."

Josh Schwartz        I know. And what did I say? "Don’t say that."

You pooh-poohed it.

Josh Schwartz        I did and for some reason, we were strong in the fall, but we just made it a nail-biter at the end of every season. But it worked out for us in season three because we did get a nice big launch and had a lot of momentum.

Right, so you come back for season three. The money is gone or a good chunk of the money is gone.

Josh Schwartz        No, the money is gone.

So Milbarge dies. Anna moves away. First of all, before we get into anything else, Fienberg wanted me to ask about  the origin of Anna Wu's martial arts skills that she used to kick Strahan's ass. We never got closure on that and he demands it.

Josh Schwartz        It’s kind of who Julia (Ling) was in real life.

Chris Fedak: Yeah, she has all these amazing—if you ever go to her website she does all these amazing sword fighting kind of Chinese martial arts and so we knew that she had these skills, so we were like when we had Strahan, we knew there was going to be a fight at the end and we thought it would be great if it was taken out by—if a 6’ 6” man was taken out by a 4’ 8” person and we gave her a tripod and she was fantastic.

Josh Schwartz        In one season, Morgan got beat up by Strahan and Jerome Bettis.

There was some speculation after that for a while that Anna was going to somehow find her way into Spy World and obviously that didn’t happen.

Josh Schwartz        No, we loved Julia. She was a great like flavor for the show in terms of just like she is so—such a quirky performer and her and Morgan had such a nice chemistry. It was just one of those things where—and she had her fans out there for sure, but there was just, you know...

So season three: Shaw, Hannah, Chuck and Sarah hooking up with other people.

Josh Schwartz        Thank you for reminding me of these things.

Well, I had forgotten certain people existed until I began prepping for this.

Chris Fedak: This is your show.

Some people had some issues with one or both of them —do you think it was just at that point people were getting impatient and they wanted Chuck and Sarah to get together or do you think it was something specific about either of them?

Josh Schwartz        Well I think Chris made that point early on that as soon as you saw Zach and Yvonne together and you saw Chuck and Sarah together onscreen it was sort of an undeniable chemistry. So it’s a hard chemistry to replicate, right. I think people were probably more open to the chemistry between Chuck and Hannah at the time and kind of got that a little bit more. I think people had a harder time because they loved Chuck so much they had a hard time understanding why Sarah would go for somebody who is so different from Chuck in Shaw. I think Bryce, people understood because there was history there and Bomer and Yvonne had this great chemistry. With Brandon, I think the character really found its footing in the second half of his arc. Again, you cast people. Brandon was great. He really brought a lot and brought a lot of profile to the character and strength and was kind of the anti-Chuck and that’s what we wanted, but sometimes it takes a minute to figure out how to write for somebody.

Chris Fedak: And I think that once we found out he played a great villain, we found him. That that was why seeing him again this year was such a thrilling and exciting thing and felt like really good energy. But, like, we did "First Class" with Hannah and Chuck, it was a fun episode. People really enjoyed it. Then episode six where Sarah got a back rub - a back rub! -from Shaw and all of a sudden, God forbid - God forbid - she get a back rub.

Josh Schwartz        But that was insane because it meant people were really invested. We were at Wonder Con I think when "Other Guy" aired and Chuck and Sarah finally got together and he shot Shaw and the place erupted. So it wasn’t people turning on the show. It was people who were wanting to see their two leads get together and when it did happen there was a really nice catharsis and that was the end of the show.

That’s my next point. With "Chuck vs. the Ring," had you not come back, it would have worked in a weird way as a finale, but it was not in any way designed as one.

Josh Schwartz        It wouldn’t have been super satisfying.

But I like to think of it like the Doc Brown "Marty, we’ve got to take care of your kids!" ending. There didn’t need to be "Back to the Future" sequels.

Josh Schwartz        That’s true. That’s true.

But "Other Guy" was clearly designed like you went into that saying, "All right, this is the end of the show."

Josh Schwartz        Yeah. Yeah, that was the end of the show. As far as we were told, "All right, somehow you assholes have made it to season three, there is no way there'll be a fourth."

Chris Fedak: "Are you still on the air?"
           
Josh Schwartz        "There is no way it’s going beyond this first 13" - and it did.

So you decided Chuck and Sarah need to get together. What other sort of boxes did you feel you need to tick?

Josh Schwartz        Chuck had to kill someone.

Chris Fedak: Yeah, especially for that season we knew that Chuck had to take a life, and that would be Shaw. The Shaw arc was tied into the season. That was another part of it. It was like as we built the season out of tangling Shaw’s back story with Sarah’s back story and Chuck’s relationship with Shaw as teacher and then the one who would rise up and destroy him was all tied into very much that season. So 13 was the culmination of all that.

Josh Schwartz        We were also nerdy excited about it having Superman and Lana Lang in the show together. Having Superman and Lana Lang at the same time was exciting for us.

Did they actually have any scenes together?

Josh Schwartz        Yeah, they did, right, in "the Mask."

Chris Fedak: I think so, yeah.

She may have been unconscious at the time.

Chris Fedak: She was unconscious I think in that, yeah.

Okay, so you’re planning all along. You’re building towards this where the series ends, Chuck finally kills somebody…

Chris Fedak: Morgan also had to find out. That was another thing we wanted to do.

Morgan finds out, Chuck and Sarah are rolling around in the hotel. It’s the James Bond ending in the hotel suite. At what point do you get the call saying "Oh, wait we need six more"?

Josh Schwartz        After those episodes were broken for sure. One of our writers was like. “I quit.”

Chris Fedak: He just didn’t want to come into work anymore.

Josh Schwartz        Like, "Great, news, we got more episodes!" And he goes, "This is terrible!"

Chris Fedak:             "NOOOO!!!!"

Josh Schwartz        "This is not what I signed up for!" Like, be happy!

Chris Fedak: It was only 6 episodes, not 11.

Josh Schwartz        Yeah, but it was tricky because it was even more so than where everybody was at that point in season two. Season three was like pretty definitively wrapped up, but it led into "Honeymooners"and the end of season three I think it super satisfying.

But how much scrambling did you have to do? Was there ever any temptation to say, "Wait a minute, let’s just push 'Other Guy' back five episodes and we can do some filler until then"?

Chris Fedak: If it had been a smaller order you could have done something like that where you just re-jigger the number of episodes and you find some standalones with a bit of mythology that can fold into it. But when you do six you have to tell more story, and then when they order 11 (for season 4) that meant that you know we had to tell a lot more story.

But among other things that means that Chuck has actually not killed anybody because Shaw comes back to life.

Josh Schwartz        Sure, but you didn’t know that at the time. As far as you knew he had. And at the end of season, three was also some of the most dramatic stuff that the show had done.

Chris Fedak: And the darkest stuff too. The death of Scott Bakula’s character was an amazing moment on the show. It’s like one of those things that just as we worked on it we knew that we were testing the outer limits of the show and I think that’s one of the biggest ones we’ve done.

Josh Schwartz        And I loved the tease of mom at the end of season three.

De ChuckTV.net :

I Watched the Last Two Episodes of Chuck Tonight…

…and now I’m a giant blob of emotion.

This isn’t a spoiler post. I’m not going to reveal anything that happens in the finale. Instead, you’re going to get the personal post that’s been waiting to come out since we were told this was the final season of Chuck.

The last two episodes of the series were made available on the NBC press site late tonight, just as I was about to try to sleep. I debated whether to watch them early or wait until Friday to watch with everyone else. In the end, I knew that the insomnia already needling me would just get worse knowing that the episodes were there, so I decided to at least watch “Chuck vs. Sarah”.

It’s good, you guys. So much better than any of the speculation I’ve seen. I am very glad that NBC opted to air the episodes back-to-back, though, because I think the emotional impact is stronger. Yes, I decided to go ahead and watch “Chuck vs. the Goodbye,” and I’ll tell you why.

Most of you know that I’ve been a fan and supporter of Chuck since before it premiered. Before NBC even picked up, really. Back in April 2007, Liz and I read about a show about a nerd who downloads a computer into his brain and becomes a spy. It starred two actors we liked from previous projects – Zachary Levi and Adam Baldwin – and looked like the kind of show we’d enjoy. So we decided that if NBC picked up the pilot, we’d launch a fansite for the show as a joint hobby. ChuckTV.net launched the day after NBC announced Chuck would be on the 2007-2008 schedule. It’s been quite a journey to this point, and I felt like I wanted to give the finale its due. Rather than watch it for the first time while hosting the live chat and friends & family at my house, I had the opportunity to watch it alone, without distractions. So I did. And I’m glad. If only so no one saw me laughing hysterically while tears were still streaming down my face.

I cried, sometimes at things that shouldn’t have made me cry, but because it’s the end, I cried. And I laughed. Out loud. And I clapped in delight. And I gasped in surprise. And I may have shouted “woohoo!” at one point. I’m sure there will be endless debate and “I wish they would’ve…” comments because, let’s face it, when have all the Chuck fans ever liked everything on screen? You know what I’m talking about.

But for this fan, it’s a beautiful ending to a show that has touched me more than any other in my life. I hope you all feel as blessed to have been a part of it as I do.

Partie 4 de la rétrospective par Alan Sepinwall :

ATTENTION SPOILERS SAISON 4 !

'Chuck' vs. the Retrospective Interview, Part 4

Timothy Dalton and Linda Hamilton join in the fun, and Chuck and Sarah get hitched and

"Chuck" airs its series finale Friday night at 8 on NBC, and it's time for the penultimate installment of our 5-part retrospective interview with creators Chris Fedak and Josh Schwartz, to discuss the show's fourth season.

Schwartz actually only cameos at the beginning of this one, as he had to leave early to attend a meeting for another show he works on. After he left, Fedak and I took a ride to the empty stage on the Warner Bros. lot that used to house the Buy More set, to get one last look at a place where so many crazy things (including shootouts, sexy entrances and the inaugural Jeffster! performance) had happened over the life of the series.

Now, season three ends. Chuck has told Ellie he is going to quit the CIA and he’s going to work out of his dad’s basement and all of that, and then you walk that back pretty quickly at the start of season four.

Josh Schwartz        Yeah, we were kind of made to.

Chris Fedak: Yeah.

Really?

Chris Fedak: The one thing you brought up —  what would we have done earlier? —  and keeping Ellie out of the loop for so long, if we could do it all over again, that would have been something (to do sooner).

Well, in both the season three finale and then the season four finale, there were big changes, but then reverted back to other things quickly.

Chris Fedak: How so?

Like, Morgan is only the Intersect for about four or five episodes.

Chris Fedak: Yeah, but it’s still four or five episodes.

Josh Schwartz        It’s half the season.

Chris Fedak: It’s a third of the season and we kind of built it that way, but when we talk about the money on the show, Carmichael Industries uses Castle. That’s a dynamic where you make the show make sense, but it is a different type of entity. It’s much more of a freelance operation, especially in that first half of the season.

If the budget had been different, and you're not married to the sets as the ones you had to keep using, would they still be operating out of the Buy More and all of that or might you have done something else?

Josh Schwartz        Well we flirted with it. Look, we blew up the Buy More. We were prepared to walk away from the Buy More and find new jobs and reasons for keeping Big Mike, Jeff and Lester in the show and I think there was a lot of concern about the Buy More an iconic element of the show. "It’s fine if you want to blow it up, but it better get rebuilt," and that led to a lot of fun of like the new kind of-

Chris Fedak: Spy version of it.

Josh Schwartz        Yeah, high end and version of Buy More. It was basically, we vacuumed the carpets.

(Schwartz's assistant tells him he has to go to a meeting.)

All right, I will continue with Fedak.

Josh Schwartz        Yeah, I don’t get to be part of anything else after the end of season three? Linda Hamilton? Timothy Dalton? Can I tell the Timothy Dalton story?

Chris Fedak: Please.

Tell the Timothy Dalton story.

Josh Schwartz        So we’re obsessed with Timothy, with James Bond obviously and Timothy Dalton being one of the only—what—four guys, five guys and we wanted him forever. We’ve always wanted Timothy Dalton on the show. So we finally get him in the room and we’re told one thing: "Don’t mention Bond." So I have to scrub my office because I literally have James Bond trading cards and the mug Chris gave me. A lot of James Bond paraphernalia in the room and so we’re sitting there. We’re not talking about James Bond and talking about Volkoff and the character and all that and there is this rack of books, which was over here before and this is from my old office. I haven’t looked at it in forever and we’re like almost done with the meeting. We’re like five minutes from closing and this book (a James Bond coffee table book with a "007" on the spine) is literally in the back. And all of the sudden he just looks over from across the room and he sees it in the tiniest font and he goes, “Well there it is: 007.” Fedak and I are like, "He just said 007 in front of us! It was amazing!" And then he started talking about it. I don't know who said it was his issue because he was very upfront. It was thrilling for us.

Chris Fedak: But we thought we had been found out. We were trying to be so cool: "He’s not going to be anything like James Bond. We don’t even know what that is."

Josh Schwartz        Yeah. "We’re fairly familiar with James, but you were James Bond? That’s so weird!" And we were terrified afterwards that we had blown it, but he signed on. And he was the most fun.

(Schwartz exits, and we go to the empty stage, where a crewmember asks Fedak to pose — in front of where the Nerd Herd desk used to be — for a time-lapse video they're doing of the set's deconstruction. I stand off to the side and snap this picture, and then we go to Fedak's office to continue the discussion.)
 
We'll take a break from the chronology for a minute to talk about what just happened there. How did that feel?

Chris Fedak: It feels—it’s amazing. Five years ago, we started working on the show and when people are building stuff it’s kind of like you can’t believe that it’s stuff that you’ve just written on paper. It’s not a blueprint. It’s not like you’ve done any like structural work, but someone is actually taking those words and turning them into a store and the Buy More set, just from a production perspective was always an amazing set. You could shoot it. Anybody could shoot it and it always looked great and I think early on in season one we realized that the Buy More was a fun place to be and so much of it had to do with that set . To say good bye to it is an incredible thing.

I should have touched on this back when we were talking about Subway before, but it feels like the way the show survived after season two gave you guys license to be incredibly shameless with the product placement after that, especially for Subway. The fans have sort of accepted it because it was part of the story of the show at that point.

Chris Fedak: When we were looking at the new budget for the show, we knew that product placement was going to be integral to how we made the show work. So there was certain points where we were kind of in the tradition of the Texaco Theater. You know, if we're going to do a mini-commercial, it should also be funny. So when we did the peace treaty scene between Big Mike, Casey and Jeff and Lester in the Subway we always felt like it had to be somewhere and like it was a usual show. You could just put it in the Orange Orange, but instead it fits into a Subway and it’s a fun place to be. Of course the laundry list of ingredients was always the tricky part, but there is nothing more fun than having our writers try to figure out you know like how do we make banana peppers fun.

The other part of it too though is there is product placement that people identify as product placement, which isn’t product placement.

So what is something on the show that people would have thought was product placement, but wasn’t?

Chris Fedak: The white wine that Chuck drinks in our hacking episode was not product placement. The Tide stain stick, not product placement. At certain points we just want to be able to say the product name as opposed to the made-up thing because people know what the product is. It makes sense. There is a funnier word to say, but it’s much funnier to say those words, to say the specific product. If it’s the white wine that Chuck is obsessed with then it might as well be the white wine I drink because I have gout.

You come back for season four. You guys alluded to it earlier: Why exactly did you have to walk back some of the "Chuck is retired, Chuck is now operating out of Stephen’s basement chasing down all the Agent X people" stuff?

Chris Fedak: There was a notion that people wouldn’t know what the show was if the Buy More was not a part of it. That component of the show was something that people understood. The powers that be understood the show and it was the show that was part spy show, part situation comedy and it was a fear that if you left that part of the show even if you kept the characters - which was always our intention - then it wouldn’t be the same show anymore. So that’s where the Buy More spy base came about. It was us adjusting to keep the Buy More still part of the show.

Now one of the things that happened at the end of season three especially was the Morgan/Casey duo was created. Baldwin and Gomez had done some stuff together before, but not to that extent. At what point did you realize, "Hey, wait a minute, this is a combination we can do a lot with"?

Chris Fedak: hat’s an interesting question. When we had them on the train episode ("Honeymooners") looking for Chuck, searching for him, those scenes were so fantastic, just simply those two guys on a plane going to Europe. I think any moment after that we just knew that they were gold together because they both Adam is a very, very funny actor and Gomez is an incredibly talented comic actor and they just played amazingly together.

This is dialing back even further: with Baldwin, it seemed to me like Casey certainly had a role on the show and was good, but Casey didn’t seem to become consistently funny until the second season. Would you say that’s fair?

Chris Fedak: Well I think what you had in the first season was the man was instructed to kill Chuck. There was this very heightened kind of relationship between Chuck and Casey and that’s funny. I can watch those episodes and go, "You know, I have no intention of actually having Casey kill Chuck," so I can enjoy those lines, but I think that there is definitely an intention there that is different people watching for the first time.

Josh told the Dalton story before. With Linda Hamilton, how did you land on her as Mrs. Bartowski?

Chris Fedak: Same way as we landed on Dalton in that there is a short list that we put together and Linda was always if not at the top, always in the world of the person that we were looking for. So we sat down with her as well and we had a great meeting and she was just lovely to work with and she was also interested in doing something on a lighter show. She wanted to do something that was a little more comic and a little warmer than some of the stuff that she had done, the kind of iconic Linda Hamilton stuff, almost like back to the "Beauty and the Beast" days. That was a great conversation and she was phenomenal for us.

Were you prepared for how funny Dalton was going to be?

Chris Fedak: Yeah, we knew, especially coming off of what he had done with "Hot Fuzz" the fun Dalton side of his characters that are outside of the Bond world, like "The Rocketeer." You could see that Timothy really enjoys having fun and likes the more comic tone. He also really savors a villain and he loved Volkoff. All the stuff that we came up for Volkoff was based very much around the conversation we had with him, because with Timothy what’s very different from any other actor is that Tim likes to come in and talk to the writer and perform the part with the writer before the show shoots. And it’s great because he comes in; he wants to talk about everything and then he’ll perform bits and pieces of it, so you’ve written the monologue and Tim is like, “I want to really run at it.” And then he’ll do it and it’s Timothy freaking Dalton doing a big performance here in your office and you’re just like, "Please, please, please deliver 50% of that," and he always did more. If you look at season four it’s definitely a love letter to villains. Dalton was a fantastic part of the show and it was a character that we more and more obsessed over.

Had you planned for "Ring: Part Two"? "Other Guy" was clearly, "The show is over, this is it." "Ring: Part Two "obviously leaves some things open, so when you did that, that was more of a "maybe we’ll come back, maybe we won’t" kind of finale.

Chris Fedak: For the end of season three?

When Chuck and Shaw fight in the Buy More and the Buy More blows up and all of that.

Chris Fedak: In truth, we built all them the same way, which is that we wanted to blow them out in such a way that we thought it was like this will be a great finale as well as a great episode. I think that we might have felt a little more confident with the mom reveal because we were also setting up essentially what we wanted to do in the next season of the show. And it was also something we were doing because we were in a place with the ratings that we had some confidence that the show would come back and then we wanted to definitely tee up a big next season of the show.

The reason I ask is because "Push Mix" is much more in the vein of "Other Guy" where, again, it’s you ending the show.

Chris Fedak: Yes, we’re ending the show.

So this time: baby born, Chuck proposes. How did you decide, "All right, if this is the fourth time we’re ending then we’re going to end it this way"?

Chris Fedak: I think there was a point when we were working on that episode where that was a big conversation that Josh and I had was whether (episode) 13 would be the wedding of Chuck and Sarah or would 13 be where he actually proposes to her. I think that the thing we were struggling with is we didn’t think we had enough time to get to the wedding for 13, so we built the first 13 episodes around Chuck kneeling down and asking Sarah to marry him, and that definitely the Chuck/Sarah through-line of that side of the season, where you get the false proposal in 11, Chuck searching for Sarah in 12 and then in 13 finally getting that chance to ask her in the most unromantic place in the world in a hallway in a hospital with a man cleaning the floors.

Whose idea exactly was it to background them and foreground the floor cleaner guy?

Chris Fedak: When we were sitting in the room I got excited about the idea of it, the idea that in episode 11 — which is one of my favorite episodes, the Paris, France episode — it’s ridiculous and there is this great romantic moment and then with a beautiful view of the moon and him going to propose to her and it’s interrupted, and then we knew the place that would be the truly perfect place would be in the hospital, and that was part of our pitch. Usually, when we pitch the season we pitch like these big pieces and that was always going to be a part of it is that there would be a proposal, one proposal would be the perfect beautiful one and one would be the real one, which would take place in a real place with real people, and I got excited by the guy cleaning in the background because this romantic moment is taking place and (writers) Rafe (Judkins) and Lauren (LeFranc) did a fantastic job scripting that episode. It was also directed by one of our directors Peter Lauer, who has an amazing eye and he just killed it with the scene. He really understood what we wanted to go with and it’s one of the great moments of the show.

Now I'm trying to remember. I know that there had been little bits and pieces after, but is "Push It" the last actual full-blown Jeffster performance so far? Do they perform at all in the back half of that season?

Chris Fedak: I don’t think they do. I don’t think they do.

There is the joke in the fifth season premier or the second episode where Big Mike is like, "I'm getting tired of the whole Jeffster thing" and Lester admits he is too. Did you feel after a certain point like everybody loves this, but maybe enough is enough?

Chris Fedak: I think that we wanted to go a different—what we did—first of all, I loved Jeffster. It’s fantastic and I think that we’re not done yet.

I wouldn’t expect that you would be.

Chris Fedak: No, but we wanted to take it in a different direction and I think that you see that very much this season. It started very small stuff in the first couple of episodes, but then the moment we realized that Jeff has been inhaling carbon monoxide every night of his life and that if he just gets clean he’s kind of a different person, that was the opening — we really wanted to tell that story this year and how their relationship changes and how Vik would try to kill him and then Vik would wind up in jail. That just made us very happy because much like Gomez and the thing that we talked about before is that you need to find new things for characters and for them I think Smart Jeff was the beginning of their next phase.

Now getting back to the back half of season four, again you get the unexpected pick up. You had already basically completely the Volkoff story. You have to start over from scratch. In hindsight how do you feel like Vivian worked out as the villain of that half of the season?

Chris Fedak: I think 11 episodes is a lot of TV. That was a lot of TV to kind of to build. It did allow us to do shows like the General Beckman/Roan Montgomery episode. I wanted to meet the C.A.T. Squad because I love that opening sequence, but I do think that if we had had more time we might have done a different villain to a certain extent. But we also felt like Vivian was a way to look at the Chuck story from a different perspective. But in truth, the dark side of the Chuck story was something that we had played with for many episodes, even going back to season one with the "Sandworm" episode, the idea that Chuck is very lucky. He has fallen into the right hands, and then with Vivian we wanted to tell a story of someone who had fallen into the wrong hands and I think that that was a lot of fun. It was definitely different from what we usually do, because usually we don’t spend that much time with the bad guys. And we had a lot of scenes with her —

Her and Ray Wise, yeah.

Chris Fedak: And I think that that was a little bit different for the show and I think it was neat for us to do, but it was also different from our usual thing.

One thing I didn’t mention in the first half of season four is "Phase Three," which you two have listed among your favorite episodes. Everybody seems to love that. It feels like that was almost an accident because you just you needed a Zach-light episode since he was going to direct the next one. Talk about how that came together and what your reaction was both to it and then the fan reaction to it, because people went nuts for that one.

Chris Fedak: Oh yeah, absolutely. "Phase Three" was a lot of fun to do. It was incredible. We had a great young director on that episode, Anton Cropper, who is fantastic and it was an episode that we kind of knew that we needed to be Zach-light, but we also we had always wanted to do a "Sarah on fire" episode. We wanted to see that. We wanted to see what she would do when Chuck would be taken and she is all by herself, and that was something that we just really savored. And from the outline on, that episode had such energy, and every moment was driven toward Chuck and it also had like a great kind of like "Twilight Zone" story with Zach, and I think that that was really cool and we got the execution right throughout. And the writer on that episode, Kristin Newman, wrote just a great female action show. You know it’s like a great show in its right and I think that’s been the neat part of the show is to kind of be able to refocus on different people and just let them be the star of the show for an episode. And I think Yvonne of course is a person who is going to have many TV shows, if not movies in her future. 

Yeah. "Anyone else want to be my boyfriend?"

Chris Fedak: She is so good. It’s so funny and we spent so much time on that episode. We started working on it and it was just like, "This is so complicated, so big. Can we do it?" But the "Chuck" team has always been able to do it — like on other shows, you would say "No, we can’t do that," but the "Chuck" team is always, "Let’s figure out how we can do it."

So you get towards the end of the season. A number of really big things happen again: Obviously the wedding, but before that Sarah is poisoned, they’re kicked out of the CIA, Chuck loses his powers, Morgan gets the Intersect power. What was your confidence level going into that finale that there would be a fifth season?

Chris Fedak: The same as every year, which is like, what, 50%? I would say there was a 50% chance that we would come back.

It's funny, because a few times you’ve ended the show in what turned out to be the middle of the season, but when you get to the end of the season you set up the cliffhangers.

Chris Fedak: And we wanted to do the wedding. I remember the notion of beginning act five of that episode 24 last year with the funeral and the pan down to the notice of the Sarah and Chuck Bartowksi wedding. What a bummer to show up for your wedding and then still have the funeral announcement up there. We wanted to do that big emotional story, but we also wanted to tee up something exciting and the idea of Morgan getting the Intersect was something that made us giggle. And also we knew that Morgan was so much the heart of the show, but what if he turned into a giant douche when he had the Intersect? And that was the beginning of season five, and the more we talked about it that the Intersect became a little bit of a different thing for the show. It became a bit of a dangerous thing of what happens if it’s in somebody else.

So it was more about giving it to Morgan and less about "We’ve told as many stories with Chuck with the Intersect as we can."

Chris Fedak: Sure. Now there was more along the lines of like what happens when Morgan gets it and what does that mean. Because one of the funny parts of it is, is like the first episode of Morgan trying to be a super spy and him having some of those abilities and what does that fish out of water story look like. But the second part of it was what happens when it affects his personality and why does it affect his personality.

Partie 5 de la série d'articles de TV Guide :

On the Set Farewell to Chuck Part 5: Life After Chuck

Castle is closed. The Buy More has gone out of business. The time has come to think of life after Chuck.

For the cast of NBC's spy dramedy, the two-hour series finale Friday (8/7c, NBC) is the last vestige of the life they knew for five years. Denial will not be an option for long, and many of the cast have already started planning for a future that's alternately exciting and daunting because of the numerous possibilities.

Dastardly guest stars!Perilous missions! Relive five seasons of Chuck through photos

Check out which actors are going to take it easy (for now) and which have multiple plans:

Zachary Levi, "Chuck Bartowski"

"As an actor, creatively, you want to do films. Films are really cool because every couple months, or however many times you can get a job... you're playing a different character and that's fun, but it's also a cool piece and you begin and end. I started in theater, in my life, and I love to go back to theater, just to have the experience and to recharge my batteries creatively. There's nothing quite like a live audience and being able to entertain them. Would I do the West End? I'd love to. I'd love to live in London. I think that first step would be to try to go and do something on Broadway, because as far as the bucket list of things, I'm like, 'All right, do a show on Broadway... Check. Done. Now we'll go to Sheboygan and do some region things...'"

"I'd love to go and direct some fun comedy stuff with Josh [Gomez] and Vik [Sahay] or anybody in our cast. They're all very near and dear to my heart and they're all such fun, talented people...  I'd love to go and direct a pilot. On a pilot you really get that creative influence and I think you get the chance to put your vision into it."

"It'd be really fun to go over on Community or any number of shows. I like the idea, now that I feel like I've been able to kind of establish myself as having my own show, then you can kind of go back and have some fun on other people's shows and be like, 'Whatever! Give me a fun little cameo.'"

Yvonne Strahovski, "Sarah Walker"

"Sleep. Look, this has been a long run. I won't lie. The hours are very difficult on a show like this. I think we're all a bit worn-out. We're satisfied, beyond belief, with the hours. So, I think, right now, I need to take a deep breath and take a break and do something a little easier on the body. For me, [it's especially difficult] with the fight scenes and everything. When you get sick, you're sick for a long time. You just have to keep working through it 'cause you just can't rest up. I need to give my body a break, for a little bit."

Adam Baldwin, "John Casey"

"Go to the gun range. That's what everyone wants to hear."

Joshua Gomez, "Morgan Grimes"

"I'm going to enjoy, definitely... just not do anything but grow my beard out, and then eventually shave it."

"I'm gonna test [pilot season] out. We'll see. I'm going to see if there's something I really like. That's the cool thing, I don't really have to immediately go, 'I got me a job!' That's the beauty of doing five years on a show is that I get to kind of go, 'Oh, OK. Cool,' and play this out and see if there's anything that comes along. I'd like to do something different, obviously... But I have my own stuff that I've done that I went out and shot this summer. I did a pilot with my brother, so we'll kind of shop that around once it's finished. We're editing that right now."

From Chuck to Nikita: TV's sexiest crime fighters

Ryan McPartlin, "Devon 'Captain Awesome' Woodcomb"

"Just getting back to the gym right now. Trying to stay in shape now that we're done with Chuck. I try and keep things really balanced and simple... Any free time I have, it sounds corny, but I just try and be present as a husband and a father. It's really time dedicated to the family.

"I have to stay motivated somehow or other. I'm doing a handful of CSI: Miami episodes right now because I thought it was interesting to go and play a lawyer... Just trying to do something different from what I've done in the past. I'm more selective as an actor now because I've had the experience of working on such a great show. It set a bar really high. So I've already passed up on projects that I can't afford to at this point, but there's a certain integrity I want to keep because we worked at such a high level."

Chuck creators share some of their favorite episodes

And just before their last goodbyes, a few of the cast members had their eyes on certain set pieces or props. Did any of them score?

Scott Krinsky, "Jeff Barnes": "I stole a sign from the Buy More. It was an 'Employees Only Restricted Area.'"

Vik Sahay, "Lester Patel": "I've stolen things over the years that I can't talk about, but yeah, it will be just the visuals that I have in my brain of remembering."

Gomez: "Oh my God, there's a lot of things I'd love to steal. I really wanted the ginormous Wienerlicious sign too. But again, I don't know where I'd put it, but there's just something cool about it."

Baldwin:  "What should we take? Some of the weapons. Some of the Reagan paraphernalia. I would take the Bible that's sitting on the bookshelf."

Strahovski: "I would take my gun, if I could, but we can't do that. Not that I own guns, by the way. Just to clarify that."

La traduction de la partie 2 de l'interview retrospective est en ligne ! Merci à Javi et Spylie !

Lettre d'amour de Small Screen Scoop :

Thank You for 91 Hours of CHUCK – Zachary Levi, Yvonne Strahovski, et al

An open love letter dedicated to the NBC series Chuck on the eve of its’ finale. We had a feeling you could relate.

Goodbye, Chuck Bartowski

I love television. (Obviously.) And while there are shows that I love for their brilliant writing, or their creative storytelling, or perhaps just the way they continually keep me on my toes, sometimes I love a show just for being, and stick with me here, fun to watch. Chuck has been one of those shows. Not that it hasn’t been brilliant and creative and all of that. But here’s the thing – I didn’t really care if it was. All I cared about was the show.

Chuck started several months after I had just said goodbye to another Josh Schwartz creation, The OC. The shows are obviously not anywhere close to the same type of series – for instance my husband loves Chuck, but runs out of the room whenever he hears the song California start, indicating I’m about to embark on a trip down memory lane with the Newpsies. Of course, there is one common denominator – that Josh Schwartz-esque lead character. If Seth Cohen (Adam Brody) had been a little more tech oriented he could be Chuck Bartowski. So it is no surprise that not even 5 minutes into the pilot I was in love with Chuck. And, of course, Zachary Levi. I won’t get into my reaction upon finding out that Zac is also a talented singer and dancer. Let’s just say there was a fairly decent amount of swooning.

And with that character, a love for a show was born. And it wasn’t just Chuck/Zac. Yvonne Strahovski made Sarah Walker more than just a pretty girl who can fight. She could be as delicate as she was badass. Watching her fall in love with the goofball Chuck was both engaging and frustrating every time they took one step forward and two steps back. But the writers didn’t let us down and not only did they get Chuck and Sarah together, but they let them get married and become one of the more solid married couples on television

Spoiler:

(minus that one little problem of Sarah losing all her memories last week…. but let’s not think of that.)

Adam Baldwin as John Casey and Joshua Gomez and Morgan Grimes are also perfection as two completely different characters who somehow fit together so well, the writers are probably sad they didn’t have them move in together the first season. For every long winded comment Morgan makes, Casey answers with a completely understandable grunt or on occasion a short, but somehow perfect, response. These two work not just as back-up to Chuck and Sarah but as solid characters on their own that provide insight into each episode and manage to bring more heart than any two, for all intents and purposes, sidekicks, have any right to do.

These characters are what made the show. Beyond these four are a myriad of people that have come and gone. And even the most infuriating have been worth it. I would totally watch a spin-off show called The Awesomes about Devon and Ellie (Ryan McPartlin and Sarah Lancaster). How easy would it have been for Devon to have been a worthless one-dimensional character? Or Ellie to be a whining sister? But they weren’t. They were a couple for Chuck and Sarah to aspire to, and rocks for Chuck to lean on in the worst of times.

I’m going to miss every single one of them more than I can say. I’ll miss their ridiculous missions. The Big Bads they worked together to take down. Everyone’s flash faces. The way Chuck always looks at Sarah like it is the first time he’s seen someone so pretty. The way Ellie and Chuck are more solid as a family unit than anyone with their familial history should be. I’ll even miss Jeffster. Yep…. I’m obviously very emotional.

I expect so much from these final two hours and I don’t think I’ll be disappointed. I expect something bittersweet, because that is what this show is. So much love with always just a twinge of sadness. And when it is done… well, I’ll just have to live it all over again on DVD. I can’t wait to see Sarah walk into the Buy More the first time. For Chuck to look up at Sarah and Casey and say “Guys, I know Kung Fu.” For Casey to say something completely brilliant for the first time, and everyone’s reactions to that. To watch Chuck propose to Sarah as we watch on, not hearing it, behind the guy cleaning the hospital floors. To see Papa and Mama Bartowski the first time. And, of course, whatever moment(s) inevitably bring me to tears during the finale.

Thank you to Josh Schwartz and Chris Fedak for giving us such a wonderful show. Thank you to Subway for selling so many $5 footlongs NBC kept this show on the air seasons after it would have been cancelled. Thank you to the fans for loving it as much as I do. And thank you to Zachary Levi (and the rest of the cast) for giving your all for 91 hours of amazing show. I can’t wait to see what you all do next. But whatever it is, I will always miss these characters. I had more fun with them than almost any show out there.

As Chuck would say…. I’ll miss you, buddy.

Et un autre hommage, par NPR.org :

Farewell To An Unlikely Hero: Why 'Chuck' Packed Such A Potent Punch

Tonight's double episode marks the end of Chuck, NBC's genial spy-nerd comedy that has existed on a perpetual cancellation bubble since its debut in 2007. Against overwhelming odds and in spite of eternally low ratings, Chuck's life and death speaks in surprisingly potent ways to how television is changing.

More than anything, Chuck is a story about the rise of the fan. Not only because the show has organized devotees — that's not new. (Forget that fact and feel the wrath of the indignant Star Trek fans who campaigned to save their show back in 1968 ) What makes Chuck fans different from most is that rather than just expressing the depth of their love, they tried to think pragmatically as well as passionately about keeping their show on the air.

It's a common internet truism that if you're not paying for ad-supported media, you're not the customer — you, as an eyeball to be advertised to, are the product. It's most commonly said about services like Facebook, but it's just as true of ad-supported television. And Chuck fans, in their businesslike enthusiasm, sold themselves as a product.

Specifically, rather than trying to prove how much they loved the show (which is what it demonstrates when you send a network nuts or Mars bars), they took their argument to a sponsor, Subway, when the third season was imperiled. Attacking sponsors who support shows to which you object is old news; enthusiastically presenting yourself as a potentially loyal customer was an approach that had never been deployed in a way that got so much attention. Even star Zachary Levi participated, marching a small army of fans to a Subway to participate in the campaign to buy a footlong sandwich on the night of the season finale, which fans called "Finale And A Footlong." In a five-part interview with Alan Sepinwall of Hitfix, Josh Schwartz, who co-created the show with Chris Fedak, calls it "the sandwich revolution."

Subway has remained a major sponsor of Chuck, and has been the beneficiary of winkingly obvious product placements that fans have basically promised to cheerfully tolerate. "They brought in Subway flatbread breakfast sandwiches!" says a character in this clip. "With Chipotle Southwest sauce!" When the show's most adoring, social-media-savvy fans see those Subway placements, they don't associate them merely with crude commercialism, but with a successful negotiation. The sponsor, who is normally seen as an intrusive, obnoxious presence in a television show, has managed to become part of the team that brings the show to the people who love it.
YouTube

It's entirely overstating the case to claim that the fans who happily offered themselves up to Subway — or that the extensive social media campaigns that accompanied the Subway push — saved the show. Network decision-making is far more complicated than that. But what's important about the Subway campaign is that the fans saw themselves differently, not as people who had to beg for kindness from the network, but as people whose most important job was to prove their value to the sponsor. In the crude "you are the product" calculus, it's the difference between offering value to the people you are asking to sell you (the network) and offering it to the people you are asking to buy you (the sponsor).

Of course, Chuck fans became examples of the bad, as well as the good, developments in organized fandom. In their passion, they could be the worst kind of impatient and entitled viewers when it came to plot developments, as I wrote about in February of 2010. Their ability and eagerness to engage could be charming or insufferable, respectful or disrespectful of the creative people who worked on the show.

Chuck became an example of trends in writing about television, too. It benefited from a number of well-publicized appeals from critics for its renewal, led by Sepinwall, then of the New Jersey Star-Ledger, who wrote a list of six reasons to renew the show in April 2009. Many internet-dwelling TV critics spend more and more time not merely reviewing shows in a detached way but tracking their episode-by-episode progress. When that happens, some become less interested in tracking bad shows and focus on advocating for the shows they think are most valuable and perhaps most imperiled. Open letters in support of a show — not merely spotlighting its quality, but also highlighting the business reasons why renewing it makes sense — are a hallmark of this kind of approach.

Another reason Chuck stayed on the air speaks not to the growth of new kinds of support, but to the troubles at NBC. Like other low-rated but critically celebrated NBC shows including Community, Parks & Recreation, and Friday Night Lights, it seems impossible to imagine Chuck and its small-time ratings hanging around at a place like CBS. Chuck can only have benefited, in particular, from the disastrous primetime Jay Leno experiment that left the network scrambling to backfill five hours of its schedule in the spring of 2010, as well as the fact that the network seemed incapable of finding a hit. The fact that the network was looking for a lot of material seemed to ease the way for low-rated shows to perk along, but so, frankly, did the fact that the network took a giant public relations bath (rightly or wrongly) over its treatment of Conan O'Brien. Saving Chuck and Friday Night Lights perhaps bought them a tiny, tiny measure of goodwill. If your old show is likely to be tiny, but your new show is also likely to be tiny, you might as well be briefly liked.

The most painful Chuck lesson, though, is that renewal isn't always without strings. Some of the renewals have included substantial budget cuts and oddly-timed seasons that were longer or shorter than originally planned, which forced the writers to create a number of different episodes that could, if necessary, have been season (or series) finales, and that's not always good for storytelling. The budget cuts were visible to fans, both in a reduced presence for some of the supporting cast and in the scaling down of the action sequences. The show returned over and over, but it certainly took a few bumps along the way.

Ultimately, the story of Chuck is a happy one. It remained an upbeat, good-natured lark that could still pull off some effective drama, it bred a more strategic — or at least a more imaginative — kind of fan campaign, and while it's been creatively uneven at times, it's leaving at a time when its fans still love it, and you can get some will buy footlongs for this finale as well.

Photo prise postée par Robbie McNeil, prise lors de la projection privée :

Robert D. McNeill @RobbieMcDunc
@ChuckOnNBC Watched the Chuck finale on the big screen in Hollywood last night...amazing night!

Joli hommage à 'Chuck' par un guide assurant des tours touristiques aux studios de Warner Bros (comprenant des anecdotes avec Zac et Adam) :

Goodbye, Chuck Bartowski

On a crisp evening in early December, I was standing outside Stage 10 on the Warner Bros. lot with a few fellow tour guides. I was technically Dispatcher for the evening and should have been back at our base off the lot handling carts, but it was a particularly slow day and did not have any carts returning from tour for an hour or so. So, I justified my time away as being a special occasion, and I doubt any of my managers would have been surprised or reacted negatively considering the moment. As we few guides stood waiting, lit only by the sulfur lamps on top of the stages that special time of early evening, I looked behind me and saw none other than Adam Baldwin standing next to his trailer and golf cart, smiling and staring at us. When he noticed me glancing his way, he, without hesitation, walked our way, shook my hand, and said in a way much like only John Casey could say "Great working with you."

See, this "special occasion" was none other than the last day of filming for the series "Chuck." It was a series that quickly stood apart from the other shows on the lot, and became very popular among our growing tour center. After working around them, visiting their sets, talking with the cast, crew, and fans, it had created a certain type of reverence in my heart. And here we were, our little pack of four or so guides, waiting to give them one small farewell after a few gut- wrenching seasons. Upon first starting my training, I had honestly never even heard of the show. It was only after the hounding of my "classmates" that I began to watch and became instantly hooked. However, it was not just the show's qualities and traits that kept me talking about it throughout many future tours with people who probably had never watched an episode. Rather, they were one of the most gracious productions we had on our lot, always willing to say hi to our guests, give access to their sets, or watch filming when possible. I often say that they took lessons from their soundstage neighbors "ER," and they still both rank as the types of shows we still get excited about talking about years after the fact.

Even more so, the show made us excited to be working in Hollywood. Many of us were transplants from all over the country, and working at Warner Bros., even at the lowest rung of the corporate chain, was something that seemed almost out of the realm of possibility. But, we made it, and due the nature of the tours on the lot, we weren't just giving scripted content to hundreds of tourists at a time. No, we were right in the thick of things with our little groups of 12 trying to make sense of the industry like so many other newcomers. And, at every turn, there was "Chuck." There they were, blowing up cars or buildings or driving the Nerd Herd around the lot. Even when we had tourists that didn't care, that had no interest in any of our productions or would otherwise not talk for two hours, Zachary Levi was there with his "Hi, welcome to Warner Bros! Enjoy your tour!" It didn't matter if he was busy or talking on the phone with his agent; he would always wave and shout his little greeting. And, if anything, I hope he knows that it at least made our jobs as tour guides more enjoyable when everything else about the job or guests was dragging us down. The show reminded me of why I picked up everything and moved out here to the West Coast in the first place. It made me fall in love with the industry all over again.

And, of course there were hard times, which is partially what made the experience so special. Just as many people follow sports, I and many other fans had learned to follow Nielsen Ratings like the science it is. We writhed and squirmed each and every year around March, worried about that ominous phrase "On The Bubble." By all accounts, "Chuck" was not a show that should have made it. It was one of the very few shows (possibly the only show but I'll have to do research on it) that survived the Writer's Strike during its first season. We saw many other great shows on the lot become affected, including another darling with us in "Pushing Daisies." Somehow or another, though, the fans always came through. They ate Subway sandwiches. They wrote to the network. And the wave kept going as the sponsors professed their love right back. Even without great ratings, and with advertisers that knew the fanbase was not necessarily going to go out and buy a ton of Toyota Matixes, people in the industry could not let it go. They gave it 5 seasons because, when it came down to it, people just loved "Chuck." Whether it was the great personality of the cast and crew or the fun, nerdy void the show filled in for the internet generation, it was granted a couple extra lives. And, finally, it was granted a perfect ending.

It seemed like everything was leading to that night with our little group of guides and Adam Baldwin. You see, it was a special occasion. Our last tour of the day on Chuck's last day of filming had a 7-year-old girl on it. She was under our age limit, but she had come to the ticket counter with her parents holding one of the seasons of "Chuck" on DVD and a special note for the cast. Her favorite character was Sarah Walker, and she wanted to try and get an autograph or two on her DVDs from the cast. Normally, we would never even remotely consider hounding our cast members, and the girl would not have been allowed on tour due to her age, but our ticket counter knew that this was one last hurrah and let her on board.

So, our Field coordinator made some calls as best she could. Any other show, and we never would have even attempted. But, as I said, "Chuck" was always unique. And, sure enough, Zach Levi and Adam Baldwin were "conveniently" leaving from a scene rehearsal right as the girl and her tour were leaving one of the adjacent soundstages. I was standing next to Adam, both of us silent as we watched Zach make this little girl's dream come true. As they all took pictures together, it felt like the perfect moment, and a perfect example of their time here on the lot. Holding that girl on their shoulders for photos, Zach and Adam were just as they had always been: friendly, positive, and extremely fun to have on the lot. It was their last day, but they had been doing this for as long as I had been working with them on the lot. That's just how they were.

As if the moment couldn't even get any better, the tour was loading back on their tram and driving away from their stage. Right when the tram and the girl on it were next to the door, something we had not planned occurred: the rest of the cast started leaving from their rehearsals inside. Including Sarah Walker.

To all the fans who supported our studio's little show over the years, thank you. You were the best tours and some of the most genuinely friendly people I've had the chance to meet. The fanbase isn't just a collection of fans, it's a great community that has grown and connected in a way only yours could. But, of course, the most thanks to you, "Chuck," both as a fan and coworker of the studio. Thanks for so many great years and allowing us to follow you through your adventures. You've proven that it's not just ok to be a nerd sometimes but that it's actually pretty "awesome."

Audiences Serie Finale : Chuck s'en va sur un record

Réflexion de Chris Fedak, recueillie par DeadBolt :

Chuck Co-Creator Reflects on Seasons

Following the series finale of Chuck on Friday, co-creator Chris Fedak reflected on the show and what it was like to return each season.

Although fans of Chuck said goodbye to actors Zachary Levi, Yvonne Strahovski, Joshua Gomez and Adam Baldwin on Friday night, the NBC spy comedy won’t soon be forgotten. Despite lasting five seasons and going out on a high, Chuck always seemed to be on the bubble of renewal each season even though it had a loyal and devoted fan base.

So, how does Chuck co-creator Chris Fedak feel about the way the series evolved in terms of success? For Fedak, it was a positive for the show in unexpected ways.

“I think we would have loved a giant successful blockbuster show,” said Fedak to The Deadbolt. “I mean, if we had the opportunity, it could have been easier for us. If we had like a giant rating, there are benefits to that that we were never really allowed to enjoy in regard to how the show worked.”

For five seasons, the loyal Chuck fan base stuck with the show through thick and thin. Although Chuck had the weekly fans and found its audience, the television landscape is so competitive that series renewal often came down to the wire. As a result, Chris Fedak saw it as a benefit.

“I think the benefit of being on the bubble,” added Fedak, “was that we told a lot of story. We never held anything. We always were ready to throw the kitchen sink. The new kitchen sink was into the story because we didn’t know if we were going to be coming back for another season. But it does make things a little bit, you know, kind of traumatic for your ingestion when you’re always on the bubble.”