Chuck 4.0

[Pearl@32]

The Walking Dead won't be real funny, but it looks to be satisfying.

There has been talk of a Zombieland sequel. squee! No Bill Fuckin' Murray, though. 

Just for posterity of the thread:

[TinkTanker]

The Walking Dead won't be real funny, but it looks to be satisfying.

I was kinda shocked at the amount of gore in it.

[Spooky]

Go behind the scenes of Chuck's Halloween episode with 'Jeffster'

Get ready for the indomitable spirit of Jeff and Lester (aka Scott Krinsky and Vic Sehay) on tonight's Halloween-themed Chuck, which gives us Robert Englund as a nightmarish scientist, Linda Hamilton returning as Chuck's mom and a Halloween Buy More blast that just might, if we're lucky, include a Jeffster performance.

While Krinsky and Sehay won't say whether we'll hear Jeffster or even when we'll hear them again, "suffice it to say that we're asked to take care of a certain aspect of Halloween for the store," said Sehay.

"We've been given the task of decorating the Buy More for Halloween. Jeff and Lester ... another little mission for them," said Krinsky. "And so we'll have to wait and see what they've come up with. We can't give too much away, obviously."

"And there is—maybe this is too much already—there is yet again an instance where their worlds cross over into the Chuck world. So it's not a purely a separate venture that this task takes on," added Sehay.

Beyond tonight's episode, Krinsky and Sehay aren't about to give away many specifics about what happens with their characters this season. However, they did have some thoughts on the upcoming appearance by Summer Glau, who plays one of the Gretas.

"She was awesome," said Krinsky. "It's good to see her kick some butt. ... It was just, again, really great to have her as a guest star and to work with her."

With Chuck's fabulous array of guest stars, Sehay admits that "to have guest stars that you can feel have acting chops, that's just always exciting."

While they say they don't really know what's around the bend for Jeff and Lester, they are thrilled that the series has been picked up for an extra 11 episodes, which brings their fourth season to a bigger-than-normal episode order at 24.

"Eleven more episodes have been added, so it's going to be real interesting to see where they take our characters," said Krinsky.

"It's, obviously, it's been an absolute thrill ride," said Sehay. "I mean, and it's been an interesting exploration of these two characters for me personally."

"I love when Jeff gets to be involved in the spy storyline without obviously knowing that he's part of that world, [such as] with the couch lock trip in the last episode," added Krinsky. "I find it fun to be in those kinds of storylines ... And it's fun exploring a little bit of our personal life outside of the Buy More."

"Exploration and depth," said Sehay. "I hope if there is an emergence into the spy world, it'll be nice for Lester if it wasn't just him being the eighth person that finds out and then kind of joins the team in the same capacity. ... There's more interest for me in if there's perhaps an emergence in a different, I guess the word is side, a different side for him there in terms of where we go in terms of the spy world." It kind of seems like he's hinting that he wouldn't mind it if Lester became one of the bad guys.

And then, of course there's Jeffster.

"I think that what one of the things that Scott and I talk about once in a while is the exploration of the development of the band and to see more of the backstage shenanigans. Where that might go. That might be an interesting element," said Sehay.

"Certainly more Jeffster is great. And I think that there's a lot of great stories to be mined with Lester and Jeff as we continue on. And hopefully there's a little bit more Jeffster down the road for everyone," added Krinsky.

"Maybe, Scotty, it would be like The Odd Couple, but on the road doing gigs as Jeffster. ... The Odd Couple in the van."

"We would we just live in our van across the country. Have an RV or something," said Krinksy.

"That's what I'm saying. The Odd Couple in the van doing these tours. But I ... I don't know, who would be Felix? Neither of us particularly that organized. I don't know. We have to find different opposites, of which there are many," said Sehay.

And what songs would they like to see Jeffster play, either in the future of Chuck or on Jeffster, the Odd Couple in a Van?

According to Krinsky, "I think some Journey would be great. We haven't done Journey, or maybe some Aerosmith. ... It be fun to let the fans vote or see if what they came up with, and maybe we could rally our producers to go with the fan choice."

"I would like to tackle Susan Boyle's version of I Dreamed a Dream. That's the first thing." He admits that even though he's not a "trained singer, there's a part of me that deep down really loves the challenge of singing a brutally tough song," said Sehay. Or perhaps, "in terms of the spirit of how Lester sings, to take on some kind of crazy rock-opera song like Tommy, or from like a beautiful heartbreaking musical like Next to Normal or Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Something that's like storytelling at its most raw, grand, operatic. So that's kind of the world I want to go into."

Here's Jeffster doing "Blaze of Glory":

Chuck Finale - Jeffster Music Video - Blaze Of Glory

[Spooky]

Photos of Summer on Chuck.

http://zacharylevifan.com/gallery/displayimage.php?album=518&pos=4

[TinkTanker]

Knees too sharp.

[Spooky]

Fine by me. 

[Phyll33]

  She looks more like River there then in more recent roles and pictures. Hmmm, knees are a little strange.
I wonder if it's from the dancing.

[Spooky]

'Chuck' - 'Chuck vs. the First Fight': The name is Dalton. Timothy Dalton

A review of tonight's "Chuck" - the strongest episode of season four - coming up just as soon as I parachute out of a plane on a wild horse...

"Frost here is a master of deception." -Volkoff

So why was "Chuck vs. the First Fight" the best episode of the season so far? Let's run it down:

Timothy Dalton. We're starting here, and we could just as easily end here. Getting Dalton to guest star on this show was a coup, both because he's a great actor, and because he was James freakin' Bond. (And a much better Bond than he gets credit for, since the two movies he was in were awful.)

For a while, it seemed like Dalton was just there for an elaborate in-joke: a former 007 plays a cowardly handler who knows nothing about field work, loves to watch "Alias" and folds at the slightest hint of torture. ("I had my first sexual experience watching 'Lawrence of Arabia'!") And that would have been fine, because Dalton was really funny doing it, embracing the gag beyond the meta level, so that it would be amusing whether or not the man had "The Living Daylights" and "Licence to Kill" on his resume.

(In contrast, all due respect to Brandon Routh, but there were definitely times last season where Shaw scenes were only interesting if you viewed them through the prism of Superman stealing Chuck's special lady friend.)

But in the end, Gregory Tuttle turns out to be Alexei Volkoff. It's one of those twists that you can't really call shocking - I would have understood if Dalton was just there for a one-off gag appearance, but it's also not the least bit surprising that the "Chuck" producers would want their biggest guest star get ever to be this season's big bad - but it was still effectively played by Dalton, and by the stunned Zachary Levi, and I look forward to seeing more Dalton/Volkoff as the season goes along.

Good action. The Chuck-Fu hasn't been very useful to Chuck this season, but that's led to some more interesting fight scenes. "Chuck" fights are usually best when there's a mix of action and comedy, and I enjoyed Chuck and the Ana Gasteyer character having a tweezers vs. dental mirror tiny weapon standoff for a few moments, and then Chuck and Sarah bickering throughout their fight with Gasteyer and her goons at the bank. And speaking of which...

Good comedy. I started off worrying about the whole "first fight" aspect of the title, since not only was Chuck coming off a real emotional roller coaster from last week, but it seemed like it was going to be another one of those storylines where Sarah's being a professional during a mission while Chuck acts like a nincompoop. But then Sarah let herself get agitated by Chuck to the point where she was being just as ridiculous, and the fight at the bank really clicked. The writers have also gotten much better over the years at finding funny Sarah moments, whether it's pairing her with Morgan ("Morgan, please don't touch my chest") or playing off of how out of touch she is with popular culture ("You might as well have posted about our fight on Friendster!").

And, as mentioned above, Timothy Dalton was damn funny.

Real emotional stakes. The "Alias" joke does underline just how much the "Is Chuck's mom a hero or a traitor?" thing evokes the Irina Derevko story, and my patience with all the reversals is definitely growing thin. But at the same time, the Ellie/Mary scene just killed. So well played by Sarah Lancaster and Linda Hamilton, and you understand in that scene - and then again as Chuck is preparing to die in his father's secret basement - how much the Bartowski sibs need for their mom to be a secret good guy whose behavior for the past 20 years has a good explanation. (Because being undercover in an evil organization for 20 years without accomplishing much suggests Frost isn't a very good spy.)

The final moments in the Orion room offers more ambiguity. Mary gives Sarah a tool to cut herself and Chuck free, but she also zaps Chuck with some kind of PSP-sized Intersect that, for now at least, seems to have taken away his ability to flash. He could just be in shock, or need of a reboot, or she could be trying to do what Steven did at the end of season two, and forcing her son out of the spy game before he gets hurt - or before he stops her and Volkoff, because she really is evil (but not a bad mom). I hope we don't get seven more flip-flops between now and the end of the arc, but I do like seeing how much this is hurting Chuck and Ellie, and look forward to seeing what comes next.

Some other thoughts:

• This week in "Chuck" music: "Snake" by Frightened Rabbit (Chuck practices what he's going to say to Sarah, "Ghosts N Stuff" by Deadmau5 (Chuck wakes up on the plane with Tuttle), "We Don't Eat" by James Vince McMorrow (Mary and Ellie talk), "One October Song" by Nico Stai (Volkoff blows up Orion's lab) and Florence and the Machine's "Kiss with a Fist" over the fight at the bank. (Though I should say that while it's an awesome song, and perfect for this kind of fight scene, but "Community" beat them to it by almost a year.)

• This week in "Chuck" pop culture references: beyond the "Alias" hat-tip, there were a whole bunch of little James Bond references. My two favorites were Ana Gasteyer basically playing Rosa Klebb from "From Russia, with Love," and the gag about a plane only having one parachute (which comes up in "Moonraker," among other 007 places).

• I hope that they chose to play music over the Mary/Ellie conversation because Mary was only telling her things that we in the audience already knew and/or weren't important to the larger arc, and not so they could withhold info from us that Ellie and Sarah would now have. "Chuck" isn't that kind of show, nor should it be.

• As mentioned above, Sarah/Morgan pairings are almost always funny, and the Casey/Morgan fight worked as an amusing funhouse mirror to the Chuck/Sarah argument. One question, though: what exactly took Casey and Morgan so long to get into the bank?

• Good to hear Scott Bakula's voice again, and hopefully that pimped-out Mustang will have some kind of awesome Volkoff-stopping power.

What did everybody else think?

http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/whats-alan-watching/posts/chuck-chuck-vs-the-first-fight-the-name-is-dalton-timothy-dalton

[Spooky]

What? No Chuck! 

[Phyll33]

What? No Chuck! 

  Nope. Off for a week. I noticed on my DVR schedule that Castle has a hiatus in a couple of weeks to.