Chuck’s sci-fi dilemma: Does being a bit of everything mean being too little of any one thing?
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- April
- 29
So I was reading about the Chuck season finale over at Time magazine’s TV blog, and a thought struck me.
Time has blogs? About TV? No, not just that. The writer mentioned a catch-22 that may have confronted the show from the start in its bid to attract new viewers.
The oddball brilliance of Chuck, as dozens of tributes recently have said, is that it marries action and comedy, heart and geek appeal, in a way few shows do. But to people who never got into Chuck, that may be a liability. My guess is that people look at it and see a spy show that’s not hardcore enough to be impressive, a drama that’s too frothy to seem high-stakes, and a comedy that’s too dramatic to be a sitcom. Maybe it’s heresy, but I don’t think our hope is to convert these people, God bless them. It’s for Chuck to be able to survive without them.
That’s rough stuff for a fan to digest, mainly because it rings true. I’ve often struggled to find the shorthand to categorize Chuck. It’s easily the funniest hour-long on TV and the drama resonates. It’s a bit like The Office that way. Still, I doubt comedy and drama fans are steering away from Chuck, though, mainly because other hour-longs — Grey’s Anatomy or Desperate Housewives , for example — meld the two successfully, not that I’d compare either to Chuck.
I think it may be the sci-fi. Chuck is at the far end of the genre’s spectrum from, say, Star Trek, which always went to pains to offer a scientifically plausible explanation for its fictional science. Chuck doesn’t do that. Chuck just tells viewers Chuck uploaded the Intersect into his head and then asks us to go with it. And we do.
(An expert’s take follows after the jump. Don’t forget to check out PleaseSaveChuck.com for the lastest news on efforts convince NBC to save the show. Also check out Chuck editor Matt Barber’s excellent update site.)
I’m in a little over my head discussing the vagaries of sci-fi, so I turned to an expert, Michael Hinman, the founder and site coordinator of sci-fi bastion Airlock Alpha. Hinman says the genre has become muddled with traditional dramas in recent years.
“When we were all younger, science-fiction and fantasy shows were easy to spot because they had aliens, were in space, took place in medieval times with wizards, or used lasers and robots,” Hinman said today via e-mail. “But it is becoming harder and harder to determine what exactly is science-fiction and what isn’t.”
The site took some flack but was eventually vindicated for deciding to cover Lost when it launched in 2004. A quasi-mystical show like Eli Stone, meanwhile, took some discernment to rule out covering.
Still, it was the onslaught of genre programming that kept AirlockAlpha from covering Chuck (though the site did track its ratings and mention it in that coverage), and not any question of the show’s sci-fi credentials. In fact, if NBC renews the show, the site might just make room for it, given the number of shows that were cut for 2009-10, according to Hinman.
“Sadly, sci-fi still attracts mostly older viewers,” Hinman said, “and while Chuck might be strong with the younger crowd, it’s not yet a big enough crowd to make too much of a dent into the overall sci-fi audience.”
Another show, by the way, that is unquestionably sci-fi garnered widespread coverage, pulled abysmal ratings anyway and yet was picked up by NBC for the fall regardless, Hinman points out. That show? Heroes.
This entry was posted
on Wednesday, April 29th, 2009 at 1:30 pm by Brian Howard.
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