Revisiting a TV Favorite

Summer is the time where you enjoy a vacation, traveling somewhere you’ve never been or perhaps revisiting your favorite place over and over again.

When you are a massive TV fan like those of us here at NiceGirlsTV, vacations are sometimes (or in my case all the time) more like revisiting a favorite TV show than actually going anywhere.

Such was the case for me for most of last month. I decided to go down the rabbit hole – for fun – and rewatch one of my favorite TV shows. A TV that ran in the late 2000’s into the early 2010’s. A TV show that may not have been a ratings winner, but was definitely a fan favorite, and one that broke the mold, to an extent, in fan support to keep it on the air.

As most of our readers are well aware, fan support of a TV show can go a long way. There have been countless fan efforts to keep a show on the air, to get it renewed or even help to save it at the 11th hour when it’s looking the most bleak.

That show was none other than…Chuck. The NBC comedy-drama, action series about a computer geek – who worked at the fictitious Buy More (that world’s version of Best Buy) as an employee in the Nerd Herd (of course, that show’s version of the Geek Squad). This particular geek was named Chuck Bartowski, played by Zachary Levi, who has gone on to appear in several of the Thor franchise movies and had the title role in the two Shazam! movies (and let’s not talk about how disappointed we all were with the sequel, as this is not the time or place to discuss that.)

Jumping back for a minute to the fan efforts…

The fans of Chuck are known for the Subway campaign; and for those of you who don’t recall that herculean effort, the series was in dire straits at the end of second season so the fans mounted a campaign that was thankfully successful. The campaign targeted Subway – which was a sponsor of the show – and which led to the sandwich chain striking a major sponsorship with NBC to help cover costs for the show’s third season. The Subway campaign really made a difference for this show.

Now, back to the show…

In the pilot episode [SPOILER ALERT for those of you who have never watched the show, and really, how have you never watched the show?] Chuck receives an email from his college best friend turned nemesis Bryce Larkin (played by White Collar and Doom Patrol hunk Matt Bomer) that contains all of the government’s secrets – critical government secrets that get inadvertently downloaded into Chuck’s brain. Crazy concept, yes, but it all worked because of the great cast, the great writing and the fact that the show was just so much fun to watch – even if the ratings were never that great. Although I have to admit, an average of 9 million people watched the show during its first season, and most shows nowadays would kill to get even half that amount of viewers.

Because of Chuck receiving all these secrets, both the CIA and the NSA assign an agent to not only protect Chuck but also exploit his newfound skills. Those agents were played by Yvonne Strahovski (best known now for her role in The Handmaid’s Tale), who played CIA agent Sarah Walker and well-known actor Adam Baldwin (who was a fan favorite in the short-lived series Firefly but went on to play a role in the apocalyptic cable series The Last Ship), who played NSA agent John Casey.

The series also included Chuck’s best friend and co-worker Morgan Grimes, played by Joshua Gomez; Sarah Lancaster (who TV viewers knew from her time on Everwood) as Chuck’s sister Ellie and hunky Ryan McPartlin as Ellie’s boyfriend, and later her husband Devon “Captain Awesome” Woodcomb. Yes, there were also the Buy More crew Lester Patel (played by Vik Sahay), Jeff Barnes (played by Scott Krinsky) and Big Mike (played by Mark Christopher Lawrence).

Getting to rewatch all 5 seasons of the show, which equated to 91 episodes in total, was a blast. It was like visiting with a family member that I hadn’t seen in years, remembering the ups and downs of that show, and especially having those moments where I remembered, “oh yeah, that person was in that episode.”

Getting to see Scott Bakula (from Quantum Leap and NCIS: New Orleans fame) utter, “Oh boy,” [his memorable dialogue from every single episode of Quantum Leap) in his first episode as Chuck’s dad and watching Linda Hamilton play Chuck’s mom, a character who was very similar to the tough version of Sarah Connor from her Terminator days. Then there was Bruce Boxleitner and Morgan Fairchild playing Captain Awesome’s parents; Smallville’s Kristin Kreuk, playing Chuck’s albeit short-lived girlfriend Hannah; former Superman Brandon Routh playing the villanous Daniel Shaw and even Lauren Cohen who played pseudo-villain Vivian Volkoff in the final season just before her career went into the stratosphere because of a little show called The Walking Dead.  Just to name a few…

To say the least, I really enjoyed rewatching all of those episodes, despite the fact that the series finale broke most of our hearts. If you want to rewatch Chuck, you can do so via Amazon’s Prime Video.

Do you have a favorite TV show that you plan on watching over the summer? Please share in our comments section below.