The only substitute for true love is … love? Maybe it was the spirit of Valentine’s Day looming, or a desire to leave us on a happy note while Chuck takes an Olympic-sized hiatus, but love was in the air all through last night’s episode.

Brandon Routh and Kristin Kreuk continued their respective runs on the show, and right smack in the middle of the Chuck/Sarah romance. As I said last week, I’m actually glad to see Chuck with a chance at a relationship outside the spy world. What I didn’t fully realize was how damned near impossible that is turning out to be.

First, he had the constant interruptions from Casey for “yogurt time” last week, and this week it was yet another emergency, though this time at least someone’s life was on the line. Read the rest of this entry »

American Idol has become such a ratings juggernaut that it’s always a little surprising when something actually tops it. The Grammy Awards were able to do just that last week, thanks to the best ratings for the show since 2004. The other big event for the week was the return of Lost on ABC. It didn’t approach the Idol or Grammy numbers, but it did finish the week as the number one scripted show in the adult demo. Granted, it was the season premiere, but knocking off Grey’s, House, 2 ½ Men, and Big Bang Theory is always worth noting. On cable, the big surprise was probably the performance from USA’s White Collar and Psych. Both were well down from last week. Read the rest of this entry »

Chuck’s evolution into a full spy continued aggressively this week as he was given an asset of his own to manage. Manoosh is an ivy league dropout who’s lonely and directionless, squandering his life away. Sound familiar?

The episode made no illusions about the many parallels between when Sarah first went in to “handle” Chuck, and Chuck’s new case to “handle” Manoosh. It created a lot of unspoken tension within the team; and I appreciated that they didn’t pander to us by having Chuck and Sarah talk about it.

In fact, Chuck’s been getting better about needing to talk about his feelings all the time. He is becoming a better and more competent spy, which I’ve said I wanted for the past year or so. Should I have?

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There’s something scary going on in television that we haven’t seen in a very long time, if ever. I can define it in one word: stability. After years where viewers waited on their couch edges waiting to hear if their favorite shows have been renewed, we’re now getting a number of very early seasonal pickups for some popular shows.

Part of this, most likely, is to enable the networks to keep or grow the audience they already have for these programs. The other part — and this is purely speculation —  is they want to show their viewers that they aren’t the train wreck that NBC has become. Either way, the early renewals show us a partial picture of the 2010-11 season. And, so far, it looks pretty good.

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It was a bit of a slow week of television. Football on FOX sent all the other networks scrambling on Sunday. Then Obama took over all the channels on Wednesday. Add in an oddly quiet Thursday and we had three pretty weak nights of numbers. Not to worry though, there was still the occasional cause for celebration. To call the NFC Championship a success would be a terrible understatement. How terrible? How about it more than doubled the Idol numbers? In non-gridiron results, FOX took advantage of the quiet Thursday, garnering some very good results for Bones and Fringe. Castle managed to grow their numbers again. And Vampire Diaries tied for second in the demo! Read the rest of this entry »

When I mused on this season’s new iteration of Chuck, I hadn’t really considered needing to follow the subject up. At least not so soon. But I wrote about my displeasure with the change before this week’s episode, “Chuck vs. First Class” aired, and as many of you promised, I definitely saw something different this time out.

First of all, the return to the Buy More was fantastically done, and I greatly appreciate the considerable effort made to bring us, and the staff at the store, back into the swing of things. I’m with Jason in imagining/hoping for some really odd friendship between Morgan and Casey, mostly because I’d love to see Casey’s brilliance utilized beyond just scowling at his co-workers. I’m disappointed in Lester’s spin over to the dark side, because I used to really enjoy his comedy, but maybe now that the mutiny has been quelled he’ll get back to his old self. Read the rest of this entry »

Oh Chuck, this is the kind of show I think you should be. Well played. Well played, indeed. Even the use of high profile guest actors didn’t detract from the perfect blend of emotional tension, humor and action — shaken, not stirred.

“Stone Cold” Steve Austin and Kristin Kreuk were on hand, and I was more than thrilled to see that they weren’t both playing the types of roles you expect guest stars to play on this series. Brandon Routh was back as well, in the role of Shaw. I’m still not sure about that guy, but I think that’s because Chuck has trained me to never trust anyone. Read the rest of this entry »