Fifteen Days of Chuck by Robert Seidman

[Pearl@32]

Cause it's our Yvonne.

[Pearl@32]

Fifteen Days of Chuck: Day Five
http://tvbythenumbers.com/2009/05/08/fifteen-days-of-chuck-day-five/18333
Posted on 08 May 2009 by Robert Seidman

Mood: still upbeat for a Chuck renewal!

Well, it's day five and there's some news on the periphery that kind of, maybe, has a little bit to do with Chuck.  Nikki Finke reported that she heard that CW decided not to pick up the Gossip Girl spinoff, Lilly, before the backdoor pilot airs  next Monday.

Some of you might be thinking, "WTF!?  Gossip Girl?!  Lilly!?? What does that have to do with Chuck!?"   Gossip Girl showrunner Josh Schwartz also happens to be the showrunner and co-creator of...Chuck.   Jennifer Godwin over at Watch With Kristin reports the Gossip Girl spinoff might not be dead yet, though it still sounded kind of dead.

Chuck fans probably don't want Schwartz stretched too thin anyway.

Here's a CNN.com interview with Chuck's Zac Levi and Josh Gomez (thanks to reader Wendy for the link):
http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/.element/js/2.0/video/evp/module.js?loc=dom&vid=/video/showbiz/2009/05/07/dcl.intv.chuck.levi.gomez.cnn

[Saxon]

I'm tellin' ya, Chuck HAS to be picked up, and they HAVE to film part of an ep AT Comic Con! Chuck has Comic Con posters in his room, and even has his badges up on the wall too. Jessi was cracking up, cuz we have our badges all over the house, some in my room, some in travel bags we only use for CC, some in the CAR!

Anyhoo...the show HAS to keep running till I get them AT the con. I want an ep of Big Bang Theory done there too!

If they filmed stuff during the preview night, or did some night shooting, with maybe raffles to get 'extras' to be 'on set'. OMGOSH...seriously, how cool would that be?

They could even do the 'footage' from Morgan's video point of view...making it easier to use smaller cameras and such. Then do the 'real footage' elsewhere. *sigh* I just love it when my reality meets my fantasy worlds.

[Pearl@32]

Fifteen Days of Chuck: Day Six
http://tvbythenumbers.com/2009/05/09/fifteen-days-of-chuck-day-six/18377#more-18377
Posted on 09 May 2009 by Robert Seidman

There have been no changes since yesterday (or the day before, or the day before, etc).   There are more rumors. A couple of people left comments and sent e-mail that on some Warner Brothers site they are listing information of season three of Chuck.  That doesn't mean the show is renewed.  It doesn't mean anything at all.   If you ask NBC they will tell you no decision was made yet, and if you ask Warner Brothers they will tell you the same thing.  A graphic on a web site?  You mean, like this graphic?  Meaningless.  It is just web sites trying to generate traffic.

Sure, I'm doing the same thing with these posts, and I can't deny pandering to the Chuck fans or being fine with getting web traffic, but I wouldn't make up "Chuck Renewed!" or "Chuck Canceled!" posts just for the traffic.  I'm basing my renewal prediction almost exclusively on the numbers. If not for Jay Leno, I believe its renewal already would've been announced.  That it hasn't been announced yet seems primarily to be a function of two things:

    * 1. NBC hasn't gotten all its ducks in a row to figure out fall 2009 entirely just yet
    * 2. As long as #1 above is true, it gives some negotiation leverage to NBC

I am confident that NBC will indeed pick up Chuck.  It's still possible that it won't, and some graphic on a Warner Brothers website doesn't change that possibility.

I hear a lot of "@!^& Chuck!  You show soooo much love to Chuck, but, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles is a wayyyyyyy better show!!"

On the quality front, I've seen every episode of both of those shows.  I wound up enjoying Chuck quite a bit more.  But that's a subjective opinion.  Who cares about subjective opinions?  I mean subjectively, I've been catching up on NCIS, and I like it more than either Chuck or TSCC.  Blasphemy, I know, but what can I tell you, it's my subjective, personal opinion!   According to 30 Rock,  I like NCIS more because I am OLD.  I am old, so 30 Rock might have that right!

What's not at all subjective is this:  Chuck performed much better relative to NBC than TSCC performed relative to FOX .

That's an unbiased, objective assessment of actual results.  Completely unbiased, and completely objective. If you don't like those results, that is of course your choice, but not liking the results doesn't change the results any.  So I'm giving Chuck some love because:

    * 1.  It has an actual legitimate chance of being renewed (TSCC does not, at least not on FOX)
    * 2.  Unique circumstances about delaying announcements for several shows by NBC precipitating, well, Fifteen Days of Chuck!

I don't find it difficult to separate my subjective opinions from the objective results.  I give this example all the time, and I'll give it again: I really enjoyed NBC's Life, and said so.  But the numbers stunk and I always said it had no chance of being renewed.  If I absolutely LOVED Dollhouse and TSCC, I would still be predicting their imminent demise, because those predictions are results-based, not based on my opinion of the shows.

I enjoy Chuck, but I can reel off at least five shows off the top of my head that I enjoy more:

    * 1.       Lost
    * 2.       House
    * 3.       NCIS
    * 4.       Law & Order: SVU
    * 5.       Burn Notice

Don't throw stones at me, but I could probably reel off five more.  The prediction for Chuck's return is not based on my enjoyment of the show.  I do enjoy the show and hope it returns. But I enjoyed Life on Mars, too.  Enjoyment of a show is decidedly not a sound basis for making renewal predictions.

[Pearl@32]

little late in posting these days, sorry

[Pearl@32]

Fifteen Days of Chuck: Day Seven
http://tvbythenumbers.com/2009/05/10/fifteen-days-of-chuck-day-seven/18389#more-18389
Posted on 10 May 2009 by Robert Seidman



Soon, the fifteen days of Chuck will be over, but not soon enough by some.  And by some people,  I might be including myself as well.   nuthin' new to report today.  I'm as optimistic as I was on day one, which was pretty darn optimistic.  The illustrious Nick C said in the comments yesterday:

    CHUCK btw should be signed, sealed, and done by Tuesday. If Warner again doesn't screw it all up. I'm sure again the Media will be all over it then.

Though I love Nick,  throwing "if  Warner again doesn't screw it all up" in there is sort of like saying "If we pitch well, and hit well, and play our best, we'll win the game!"  The sports world constantly shows the problems with that approach in practice.  Sometimes you don't pitch and hit well, but moreover, even when you pitch and hit well, and play your best, sometime the other team just pitches and hits better.

I think once upon a thyme Nick sat in on some $50,000 crash course for a week on "how to talk like a politician."  And he aced the course.  Come Tuesday, if it's announced Nick can offer a big fat, "toldja!", but if it isn't, he can blame it all on Warner Bros screwing it up.  Well played, Nick.

Anyway, I'm not any more optimistic because of Nick's comments, but I'm certainly not more pessimistic because of them either.  I consider the comments, like these posts as entertainment to pass the thyme until we do hear something.  I'll be very happy if Nick is right because it will allow me to cram about six days of Chuck into one post! If I had to bet right now, I'd bet that we won't hear anything until the fifteenth day of Chuck.  But I wouldn't bet much, and fortunately, I don't have to bet on this at all.

/forgot to post the photo, good photo!

[Pearl@32]

Fifteen Days of Chuck: Day Eight
http://tvbythenumbers.com/2009/05/11/fifteen-days-of-chuck-day-eight/18460#more-18460
Posted on 11 May 2009 by Robert Seidman



We're over the hump!  It will all be over in a week, hopefully sooner.

The latest speculation revolves, not around Chuck, but more since it seems like Legally Mad didn't get picked up by NBC, what does that mean for Chuck?

What it means to me personally, is not much at all. I'm still optimistic for Chuck's renewal and waiting for the announcement in a week (but hopefully sooner!).   Though  I can understand from a falling dominos perspective how one might think the news impacts Chuck either favorably or negatively.   But since it hasn't changed my outlook (I'm still 95%), I'm not going to get into that. So how do we pass the time?

How about which Chuck character are you most like and why?

One of the dynamics of Chuck is that you have a fair bit of contrast.  You have Ellie and Awesome more or less pursuing perfect lives and then you have a lot of, how shall we say "unambitious losers", at the Buy More.  Casey and Sarah are "defenders against evil", and then you have Chuck himself.  Chuck isn't really an unambitious loser, he was just laid so low by his circumstances of being kicked out of Stanford and dumped by the woman he loved for his best friend that he had a hard time recovering.   He still hasn't quite recovered yet, though the Intersect and his fondness for Sarah has seemingly set him on the road to recovery.

It's hard for me to pick one character.  I'm probably somewhat a cross between Chuck and Jeff and perhaps Big Mike.  I had some academic issues, and certainly have been laid low by a woman a time or two.   I've had a pretty diverse career.  I worked at a public park and golf course for about 7 years in my youth,  and worked at Sprint, IBM and even somehow managed to wind up with a senior vice president title at Charles Schwab.  I've had to make decisions from "where to put the pin on hole #6 today"  (and OK, I admit it, sometimes I would pick extremely difficult pin placements on purpose!) to "what's the best way to handle the taxonomy for 5,000 topics," to creating e-mail products that hundreds of thousands of customers subscribed to and receive daily.

I was a very early adopter of personal computers, and using networked computers as communications tools, and my curiosity and interest about that, more than any real drive or ambition, wound up leading me down a fairly interesting path.  I never really managed to strike the proper balance between curiosity and drive, but perhaps out of being curious to somewhat of an extreme, it still worked out reasonably well on the career front.

But, a couple of twists and turns of fate and I could have been Jeff.  And only one or two twists and turns at that.  Socially unadjusted, semi-crazed loner, working retail in his 40s, who drinks excessively?  Ok, so I don't work retail  (though I did in my teens) or drink very much, but minus the customers, I could definitely see enjoying hanging out at Best Buy eight hours a day.  I love being around the gadgets and the big screen TVs.  It's very calming.  It could still happen and I feel I would be a fine addition to any Geek Squad staff!

Sadly, however, I lack Jeff's musical talent.  But on the basis of other attributes, including what my hair might look like if I let if grow out, I'm going with Jeff.

How about you?

[TinkTanker]

NBC opted not to pick up the David Kelley drama Legally Mad. Supposedly there was a deal that if NBC did not pick it up they would pay Warner Brothers $2 million; the word is that NBC was trying to cut a deal where if they picked up Chuck WB would waive the cancellation fee for Legally Mad. Hopefully that deal was made. I just hope that it doesn't get stuck on Friday nights.

[Pearl@32]

I just hope that it doesn't get stuck on Friday nights.

Me too.

[AdmiralDigby]

Just put Leno on Friday night 7:00 to 12:00