I’ve slowly been making my way through my Office Season 5 DVD set, having watched all the deleted scenes, the blooper reel and two of the commentaries so far. But it was the “100 episodes, 100 moments” montage, eight and a half minutes of highlights from the show’s every episode, that reminded my why I still care.

Yeah, the first 28 outshined the final 72, but there were stellar moments throughout. (Nothing to see here, by the way.)

And since then I’ve been pretty pumped up for tonight’s Season 6 premiere. Set your DVRs for 8:57 p.m.

Gossip — Michael feels left out as the rest of the office gossips about the summer interns. While Michael searches for the next juicy rumor to share, Andy struggles with heterosexuality.

I’ve given up on expecting the episode summaries to accurately reflect the episodes. Random predictions are as likely to be accurate.

Anyway, for some thoughts on how things might play out, check out NPR’s blog item on the premiere. If nothing else, the writer picked the perfect clip to show how good the show can be in portraying a storyline not everyone will embrace right off the bat.

Check out the reader poll to the right of your screen for more on that.

That’s pretty unbelievable, when you think about it.

OK, the vote totals are pretty low. Still, as unscientific (read: meaningless) as it is, it’s still an embarassment in black-and-white to fans of other great shows coming back this fall and promising new ones making their debuts. (Glee, anyone?)  I won’t let factual accuracy keep me from making a big deal about it.

So come on. Cast your vote, write in your favorite show, then clear your cache and vote again if you want.

Tell us what new or returning show are you looking forward to most?

So this morning, as I found myself pushing a wonky-wheeled cart through the Mount Kisco Target where I was  picking up a few things, I gave in to inevitability.

I bought The Office Season 5 DVD set.

As I rambled on about the other day, my love affair with the show has cooled off considerably in recent season. And while Season 5 had fewer plot missteps than Season 3 and was more consistent than Season 4, it wasn’t without warts. Losing Amy Ryan, making Charles Minor both uninteresting and jerky, allowing Moroccan Christmas to air, dropping the Pam-goes-to-New-York storyline like a moldy beet and finishing the season with a pregnancy—A pregnancy!—come to mind.

But adding Amy Ryan in the first place, executing the brilliant Michael Scott Paper Company arc, allowing “Broke” to air and scenes like Dwight, Andy and Erin performing “Country Roads” and everyone walking out with Michael at the end of “Blood Drive” went a long way toward redeeming those missteps for me.

So, considering that my Chuck Season 2 pre-order won’t be available until March (another epic fail, NBC), I figured I could justify the purchase. I didn’t spring for the nifty gifty set with the script and bonus DVD writers interview because I know me, and I know I’m never going to look at those things. So right there I saved $7.

At least that’s how I’ll try explaining this extravagance to my wife.

Now let’s hope Season 6, which debuts a week from tomorrow with “Gossip” is even better so I don’t have to have this debate a year from now.

In the meantime, check out OfficeTally’s Season 5 DVD buying guide. And feel free to chime in below if you hesitated or were at all undecided about buying the DVDs.

(Photo of me by, well, me.)

I really, really, really, really like it, but the obsession I once had for the show has waned in recent seasons. There’s still so much that’s great about it, and it’s probably the most consistently good show on television. It’s clearly the best sitcom on the air, and it’s one of NBC’s best offerings overall.

But the brilliant first two seasons have become distant memories, followed by some seriously misguided and strike-hampered story arcs in the next two seasons (though they weren’t without great moments). Season 5, though, marked, if not a return to form, at least an intermittently stretches of great storytelling.

(Check out my bullet-by-bullet take on Season 5 after the jump.)

Here’s how I recently summed it up…

Yeah, whatevs. Listen, they’re great characters portrayed by actors I really enjoy. But I stopped caring about Jim And Pam™ somewhere between “Then…it’s a date.” and “Are you kidding me?”

I no longer find myself scouring OfficeTally or LiveJournal for Office news every 20 minutes or rewatching old episodes a half-dozen at a time. I’m down to one hardcore Office fan site, and even then it’s because the folks there are a cool crew and the chatter is only somewhat Office-centered.

That said, I’ve been getting pumped for the new season all the same. No, I didn’t squee at the Twitter tip-offs about wedding photos and plot leaks began surfacing a month ago. (See here, here, here, here and here.)

But I did think it was cool to find out that Fonzi’s ex-girlfriend (look it up) would be portraying Pam’s mom. And I might even rethink my decision to blow off buying the Season 5 DVDs. I’m watching a lot of The Wire Season 1 lately, and it’ll depend whether I decide that Amy Ryan brought more to The Office than Idris Elba took away. I think she did. (I love Stringer Bell, mind you.)

But then I’ll be reminded that there are soon to be bobble heads available for the entire cast, and that the entire set can be yours for upwards of $300. And that’s when I withdraw a little more.

The remedy? An official plot summary. Here’s what NBC put out about the Sept. 17 premiere.

MICHAEL GETS CAUGHT UP IN OFFICE GOSSIP – Michael feels left out as the rest of the office gossips about the summer interns. While Michael searches for the next juicy rumor to share, Andy struggles with heterosexuality.

So check out the following preview clips. The first one, from Zap2it, is lengthy, ringing in at 5:45. The next two are half-minute NBC promos.

Zap2it: Behind the scenes look at Season 6 (5:45)

We Heart Chuck, the fan effort that last May tied support for Chuck’s renewal to donations to the American Heart Association, has rebooted. After raising more than $17,000 in 17 days from loyal fans, the show was given its delayed renewal, and the fundraising leveled off at over $18,000.

But fan enthusiasm never waned, as the summer-long “Chuck Me Mondays” events attest.

Now, with an eye to series star Zachary Levy’s Sept. 29 birthday, organizers are offering fans a chance to send him a personalized birthday card simply by making a donation to the AHA. For every donation, AHA will send Levi a card. And word is, he reads his mail. All of it.

The renewed campaign reflects the ongoing partnership between the AHA and the fan volunteers at We Heart Chuck.

Check this out from their latest media release…

A standard solid defibrillator costs approximately $1500.  In 2008, emergency defibrillators saved over 650 lives.  You, “Chuck” fans, are making a tremendous difference in the lives of sons and daughters, mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers and other friends and family members.

Here’s my blog post on the subject last May, when the campaign launched.

By the way, Chuck Me Mondays continue. If you’re on Twitter, join in every Monday evening and use the hashtag #freechuck to help implore NBC and the rest of the powers that be to free the early Season 2 episodes for online streaming.

And while I have your attention, check this out. It’s a great argument for why everyone should be a fan of Chuck.

He has interesting guests, but I find King himself pretty tough to take.

That said, I plan to check out his show tonight at 9 p.m. on CNN.

LoHud.com is reporting that King will have Daniel Schuler, husband of wrong-way crash mom Diane Schuler, on as a guest.

Diane Schuler was the woman who drove north in the southbound lane of the Taconic Parkway July 26, striking an oncoming SUV in a collision that killed her, her 2-year-old daugther and three young nieces, as well as three Yonkers men on their way to a family dinner.

In a bizarre press conference soon after with attorney Dominic Barbara, of Howard Stern Show fame, Daniel Schuler and family members said medical ailments such as diabetes, an untreated abscess in her mouth, a “bump” on her leg that could have been an embolism or a stroke might have been to blame for the crash.

Diane Schuler was later found to have a blood-alcohol level the equivalent to 10 drinks and high levels of THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, in her blood. State police said she smoked marijuana as recently as 15 minutes before the crash.

I cannot imagine what Daniel Schuler will have to say tonight. He lost so much himself in that crash—his wife, a daughter, three nieces—and his son Brian, 5, was badly injured.

I hope this won’t be a repeat of that press conference, but I’ll tune in because, as cut and dried as the toxicology results were, this is a case replete with questions and wanting for answers.

Well, not school so much as TV blogging, which I took an unexpected hiatus from doing about a month ago. But things seem to be settling down and I’m ready to get back into a rhythm of watching, recapping and generally rambling about the shows I like watching most.

At least that’s how it starts out. Why blog about shows you don’t like, right? Well, you don’t plan on a 30 Rock to turn stale in its third season after two spectacular ones, and you don’t expect a Parks and Recreation to be so uneven despite a solid pedigree. You sure don’t expect NBC to keep milking Heroes long after every viewer and half the cast seemed to stop caring.

No, no one makes me stick with shows that I no longer have the passion for, but it’s hard to give up on a show. That said, taking a few weeks off before a new season allows me to do a reset. And here’s how my blog-sponsibilities shape up for the immediate future.

Curb Your Enthusiasm returns for a seventh season on Sunday, Sept. 20. And since Larry David has never to my knowledge been involved with a bad episode of television, I’ll be right there for every Susie Essman F-bomb.

Chuck is my Monday night mainstay, but it’s slated for a March debut because NBC is stupid has other plans for that night. Still, I have about five more episodes in my Season 1 Look-Back to recap thanks to my recent hiatus, so I may begin filling the gap with that. Might not have enough weeks to plow through Season 2 before the show returns, but who knows?

Thursday night means The Office, and season 6, which debuts Sept. 17, means a Jim-Pam wedding and a smirky-faced bambino on the way. The Office is why I watch TV at all — until 2005, practically all I watched was the news and the Mets — and it’s why I blog. The show has drifted further and further from Season 2, chronologically and in spirit. But I’m a Dunder-Mifflinite for the long haul. Why? It’s nebulose.

Thursday also means Community, the new Joel McHale comedy that looks pretty hilarious. It also starts Sept. 17. I plan to give that a gander. If it’s as good as its pilot, I’ll stick with it.

But Thursdays have been a pretty hectic night for me. Actually, Fridays were really hectic as I tried to recap three shows from the night before. I don’t plan on doing that anymore. Which leads me to: Shows I No Longer Plan to Blog About.

Heroes — Seriously, was I the only one watching last season? It is so far off the rails I don’t believe it can recover, no matter how many mid-season corretions. Kristen Bell was a great addition, for example, so naturally they killed her off. The new Nathan is the old Sylar? No thanks.

Parks and Recreation — I’ll keep watching Amy Poehler’s show about a misfit municipal official, and I’ll comment on it occasionally. But I can’t dedicate time and blog space to it anymore. The funniest characters were minor ones: Chris Pratt as Rashida Jones’s boyfriend and Nick Offerman’s parks department boss. I don’t expect Jones to be funny, but when Aziz Ansari isn’t making me laugh, something is very wrong.

30 Rock — Jack’s daddy issues and Liz’s boyfriend/baby issues sucked the life out of me. If not for Tracy Morgan, Jack McBrayer, Jane Krakowski and all the minor characters who get too little screen time, I’d have given up sooner. Again, I’ll keep watching, because this show is still the funniest on TV. But in trying to make it a show worth caring about, they’ve made me stop caring about it.

(Photo Derek Davis/The Journal News)

More people tuned in to hear Obama’s pitch for a health care overhaul, but he had a 10-channel advantage. In all, 24.7 million people caught the press conference. But as any network ad buyer will tell you, it’s all about the demographic.

Viewers flocked to Cat Deeley and guest host Ellen Degeneres in droves, particularly the highly sought viewers aged 18-49. Broadcasting & Cable breaks down the hard numbers…

Dance averaged a 2.8/10 and 7.3 million viewers. The presser averaged a 1.3/4 across the three networks in the 8 p.m. hour, with ABC leading the way at 1.5/5, followed by NBC (1.4/5) and CBS (0.9/3). NBC’s coverage drew the most viewers with 6.4 million.

But Fox only cares about what its network rivals are drawing, and it came away the clear winner by going with its own reality show in lieu of the President’s. What’s more, parent company News Corp. aired the press conference on Fox News Channel and Fox Business Channel, bumping up the President’s numbers and possibly helping those outlet’s ratings cause.

Now that it’s all played out, feel free to vote at Remote Access’s Readers Poll to your right, where we ask, “Did Fox make the right call?”

More Remote Access readers than not felt the coverage of Michael Jackson’s death and funeral was overkill or at least a bit over the top. A sizeable minority felt it was well warranted for such an American icon.

It’s a tough thing to weigh in on because it’s so emotional. No one should speak ill of the dead, but then there are so many aspects to the story that leave us feeling uncomfortable and missing that bright eyed kid who outshined his siblings in the Jackson 5.

It’s not a story with a happy ending, and that’s all I can say about that.

Not me, though. I always felt like the writers justified the distance between them, even if they have tantalized us with a few uncomfortable near misses. I never felt like they resorted to cheap plot devices to keep them apart (ahem like Jim and Pam on The Office). Then again, one person’s plausible story development might be another’s plot device.

Still, “Chuck Versus the Truth” marked the first time I found myself somewhat exasperated at the way events transpired to prevent Chuck and Sarah from connecting on a deeper level. And even then, it’s a bit of a nitpick in that I can—and intend to—list several reasons why this was a great episode for them as individuals and as a possible couple.

The nitpick in question comes almost at the very end, where Sarah has already told Chuck they have no realistic chance of ever being together just before she takes the antidote to the truth serum/poison. It’s the moment, a few scenes later, when Casey calls her that irked me

Casey: I meant to ask you, when you were affected did you compromise yourself?

Sarah: No. If I hadn’t been trained to withstand pentathol, I might have.

I didn’t hate the eventual turnabout, because it left us with a glimmer of hope that she held real feelings for Chuck. But I didn’t love it, either. What did I love? Every other thing about this episode.

As with the prior week’s “Chuck Versus the Alma Mater,” the bad guy in this one doesn’t get a lot of background. He’s an expert with poisons and antidotes who makes a living selling secrets to even bigger bad guys. Oh, and he’s a former gymnast who may or may not have height issues. And he’s on the trail of a chip containing nuclear access codes.

The theme of the episode is Chuck’s grappling with his ever-colliding worlds, but in this case the collision was not Intersect-related. One of Poison Guy’s victims stumbles outside the sushi joint where the Bartowski siblings are on a double date. Ellie, being a doctor, rushes to his aid and before long Chuck flashes on his ID and realizes his sis is in harm’s way.

Throw in his relationship confusion as he contends with an obviously jealous Sarah and an obviously cutie-licious sandwich girl named Lu (Rachel Bilson in one of the show’s best guest stints), and Chuck’s a guy with problems.

With Ellie at the ER, Chuck, Sarah and Awesome return home where Awesome reassures him that Ellie is a doctor and it’s what she does. He doesn’t know the danger she’s in, but he makes a great point we might otherwise forget at times: He and Ellie are pretty awesome in their own non-spy ways.

Then Awesome, who aready turned up the sexual tension with seven degrees of inappropriateness over dinner, gives Chuck a sexual pep talk. Yeah, it’s quotable.

Awesome: Listen, I know it’s been a while since you’ve taken you’re uh, your bike out for a ride, you know? But it is time you oil up that rusty chain, hop on that seat and start pedaling away bro. You never forget how to ride, you know. Lock it out. Come on.

And of course Chuck misreads it and preps his bedroom for some happy fun time. First Sarah pours cold water on his plans by reminding him it’s only a cover. Then she heats things back up with her bedroom attire. Chuck’s right to be confused.

Chuck: What? You give me crap about lighting some candles, and you come in wearing that?

Sarah: What? This? This is part of my cover.

Chuck: Well it doesn’t cover a thing.

Sarah: And what if Ellie or Awesome were too walk in. This is exactly what a girlfriend would wear to seduce her boyfriend. I am just being professional.

Chuck: Yeah, the world’s oldest profession.

Anyway, a lot of detail was packed into a little bit of time in the scenes just before that one as we cut back and forth from Chuck, Casey and Sarah at the morgue, to Ellie being questioned by Poison Guy in a cop’s uniform. Just as Sarah removes the tracking device/poison patch from the victim, Poison Guy plants the same behind Ellie’s ear.

Uh, Ellie, cops don’t usually ask witnesses to mug for the camera.

The poison has some side effects, and for Ellie that means an utter transformation of character. She becomes kind of a witch, but a funny one. She makes great points about bike shorts and the mediocrity of everything always being awesome. Still, it was weird that Chuck would say he and Sarah are starting to sound the same, since he and Sarah are not in a real relationship and the Awesomes never really fight.

Still, it’s a moment for him to learn the ground rules, and the ground rules with Sarah don’t include dating.

Luckily, Casey is actually working, unlike everyone else, and he picks up on the signal interference from the bad guy, who’s lurking in the bushes outside.

By the time Casey makes his way inside, we’ve seen the incredible awkwardness of Ellie crashing in on Chuck and Sarah. Just wow, particularly her gesture toward Sarah physical, uh, assets. And then she passes out and they realized she’d been poisoned. Talk about a mood-killer.

What can they do? They can’t trade nuclear codes just to save Ellie, right? Sure they can. Even Casey has to tip his hat to Chuck’s gambit of luring Poison Guy into the open. I call this a milestone moment for Chuck. He’s not just struggling with colliding worlds, he’s stepping up and taking action.

But just as it works, and Poison Guy arrives, Chuck finds the sought-after chip in the pocket of Ellie’s lucky sweater. And in classic klutz fashion, he crashes in on a standoff between Poison Guy and Casey and Sarah, resulting in them all being hit with the poison.

The ensuing chase had the brilliant moment of Casey stealing a guy’s crutch to throw at the bad guy, saving just one dose of antidote. Chuck can’t even lie about his intention to give it to Ellie, and Casey can only threaten to shoot him if he does.

If Chuck had a blog, this was a pretty good day for it.

Things really slow down when he, Sarah and Casey become contemplative. Not too contemplative for Chuck to miss the bad guy’s tracking device, which prompts a flash that leads them right to his lair. (He’s a bad guy; gotta call it a lair, right?)

In the end, they get the antidote and catch the bad guy. What’s really important, though, is how things shake out with Sandwich Girl.

Chuck saved the day with her broken phone, sparking a love connection even Morgan can’t miss. Not sure I agree her hair is like licorice, but mmmkay.

Lu loves her nana, has a mouth like a trucker and makes the world’s best sandwiches, possibly making her the perfect woman. This is hardly lost on Sarah who is visibly jealous throughout the episode. It’s not a likable trait.

Lu really likes Chuck, but she can’t be bothered with a big fat stupid jackass who would cheat on his girlfriend. Can’t really blame her for that.

So in the end, having had his hopes of a future with Sarah stomped on, he shows up at the Wienerlicious and you’re just sure he’s going to make his move. Sarah does too. But his move is to “break up” and go for sandwich girl. If he’s stepping up as a spy, he’s stepping up more as a man. Go Chuck!

The “C” story in this episode is that of Harry and the Lady Tang. I’d swear it could have carried an episode by itself. OK, maybe not, but it was epic in its own right. The Tang’s anniversary approaches and Big Mike puts Morgan, a very busy man-boy, to work helping the Lady buy Harry a gift.

But through some strange confluence of circumstances not to be questioned, Jeff and Lester capture video footage of the Lady and Morgan in a compromising embrace. This is hardly a hit with Harry.

In a fit of bloodlust, he barges into the home theater room and is greeted by Casey and Sarah, guns drawn.

In an awesome twist, Casey convinces him that his country needs him. In Hawaii. As a, well, I can’t give it a name. And just when you think good things happen to bad people, Big Mike drops the biggest bombshell, to the son of his future paramour, no less. He and Mrs. T. have been diddling for six months.

He will forever dream about the Lady Tang. Seriously, how’d the writers get away with that?

Odds and ends…

I love the Weinerlicious dude’s commentary on discovering Chuck and Sarah in the closet: “Hmm, girl on top.”

Why did Chuck shout out Ellie’s full name when she rushes to the guy’s aid on the sidewalk? No, he didn’t know Poison Guy was lurking nearby. Still, what a spy.

At the morgue, why are Chuck and Sarah such apparently good forensic investigators?

Chuck’s truthful ramblings on the way to Poison Guy’s lair: “God you’re pretty. Casey, your jaw was chiseled by Michelangelo himself.” Awesome.

Was the scene where Poison Guy nearly convinces Sarah, Casey and Chuck to take the phony antidote some kind of “Princess Bride” reference? It’s what it brought to mind for me, anyway.

Sarah’s shoot-the-bad-guy-in-the-knee moment was emotionally magnificent.

That shouldn’t be a surprising realization at this point, but it’s the kind of thing that crosses my mind as I watch episodes like “Chuck Versus the Alma Mater.”

All of us have moments or periods in our past that we’d rather not revisit. I think that’s why I felt so much sympathy for Chuck on his return to Stanford, to the scene of his most ignominious moments. His reluctance and discomfort was so palpable.

And the way they weaved in those almost sepia-toned flashbacks was extremely effective. From Bryce callously shooting pool while Chuck is making his green mile walk to the door to Chuck’s meeting with Prof. Fleming where he was accused of cheating, they filled in some big gaps in our background knowledge to that point.

Sarah is still surprisingly withdrawn from Chuck’s emotional distress, offering occasional words of support but mainly still leaving it to Ellie to offer the proverbial crying shoulder. I loved the brother-sister interaction in this one, which really seemed to find a groove by this point.

And of course, Awesome regressing to his frat-boy days was, well, awesome, as was Morgan’s quest for the One Remote. Sauron had nothing on Harry Tang.

Jumping right in, it seems Chuck still had no clue to that point that the CIA’s involvement in his life dated all the way back to college. So when an old professor turns up missing, half the shock is that Stanford would resurface to play any kind of role in his life again.

A little too coincidentally, Ellie and Awesome were roadtripping up there anyway to cheer on UCLA (where we learn they both attended). Chuck actually balks at making the trip initially, both to the General and to Ellie.

Ellie: Listen, I know that Stanford doesn’t hold a lot of good memories for you…

Chuck: Look Ellie. They kicked me out for something I didn’t do. So that’s it. Me and Stanford, we’re officially done.

It was Chuck’s intellect, specifically his innate ability to decode embedded images, that put him in the CIA’s sights. What’s weird is when Chuck decides to junk his box of old UCLA mementos, he flashes on his own ID card.

Seriously, how does that work? He has all this information in his brain, but he doesn’t really “know” it unless something triggers a flash. OK, but it’s still strange that he could flash on an item so he knows so personally and trigger a flash of knowledge he wouldn’t otherwise “know”? Yeah, I’m overthinking it. But still, weird.

Anyway, Sarah and Casey are tracking Fleming without Chuck’s help and they recruit them to at least reel in the professor. That puts Chuck in the sites of a crossbow-wielding, freelance Icelandic spy of few words. (Really, did he say anything at all?)

In the process, Chuck picks up a handy spy code phrase and a cryptic message for Bryce, who the professor still believes is alive.

So Ellie eventually puts the squeeze on Chuck to join along for “five hours in a car with Awesome and his brahs.” Along the way, she found Chuck’s old copy of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, five years overdue from the Stanford library. That could get him expelled.

The book triggers a memory of him and Bryce playing Assassin in the library. Soon enough, he normal-flashes on—i.e. just kind of realizes the significance of—the Dewey Decimal code on the book, which is the same as the note Fleming gave him. That’s where the professor hid the data. So it’s off to Stanford.

The Stanford scenes look like Hollywood’s image of a typical college campus—on steroids, maybe. This is not Casey’s crowd.

Casey: You want to save the environment, huh? Take a shower, hippie.

It’s tougher on Chuck than he’d expected. This was one of those scenes where Sarah was sympathetic but didn’t say much. Hindsight makes it obvious that she’s got a past of her own she’s dealing with.

I loved that Chuck’s ID badge triggered the library’s late fee alert system. That’s a high-tech library. Anyway, the book is gone, but Chuck apparently has a photographic memory for subtle hand motions and immediately checks for the secret compartment Bryce accessed during that game of Assassin. Voila! The disc.

Soon enough, the Icelanics (Icelandians? Icers?) give chase, but not before Chuck snoops into the disc and sees his own name among the lists of CIA recruitment videos. He has to make a fast exit, and I almost thought Ellie and Awesome would get pulled into the melee, but he goes right back to snooping around on the disc the first chance he gets.

This time at least he’s got a plan and calls in the cavalry in the form of recruited students, who respond perfectly to Prof. Fleming’s code phrase: “Are you coming to the Toga party?” Very Animal House.

Back home Chuck all but opened up to Ellie, leaving out a few details but thanking her for pushing him to go back to Stanford. I liked that scene a lot.

His first order of business is to fully explore that disc, but Sarah has other plans for it. She does let him get a glimpse of his own entry on it. And that’s the big reveal of the episode. Bryce didn’t ruin his life after all; he saved it. Chuck was being recruited, and Bryce knew that would kill him.

Of course, it was Bryce who ultimately wouldn’t survive. Still, he saved his friend. He just couldn’t tell him how or why.

There’s a reference on there to the “Omaha project,” which I’m guessing is the Intersect because “Omaha” is what Bryce says to Sarah in “Chuck Versus the Nemesis.”

And now we know why Bryce chose to send him the Intersect in the first place. When things got hot, Bryce had to bring Chuck into the life he’d worked so hard to keep him out of.

In the end, Chuck is left to remember the friend he met that day on a park bench at Stanford, the one who shared his interest in Everquest and Zork and who knew a girl named Jill on his floor who thought such things were pretty cool too. And Bryce drops the prescient line: “The next millennium belongs to the geek.”

Some people don’t love the Buy More storylines the show employs to break up the drama/suspense. Those people are crazy, and this episode is a good argument why.

Morgan’s valiant efforts to lead the crew out from under the oppressive reign of Harry Tang is inspiring. The Lord of the Rings parallels are stellar. Tang’s minions? The Quest for the One Remote? Frodo? Awesome.

Seriously, though, no fornicating in the breakroom? No Red Bull? I’d rather live in Mordor.

Anna had a couple of great scenes, too. She uses her feminine wiles well to charm Harry’s keys away, and she knows a guy who could give Harry Tang an accident.

Harry, for his part, is typically insufferable, with his repulsive belly pudding gesture and lines like this:

Harry: “I’m sorry, fellas. Is this the Talk More?”

Couldn’t he have just gotten another remote?

The question, “What summer show are you REALLY looking forward to most?” doesn’t really apply now that the summer season is well under way. But the jockeying back and forth for the top spot made me think it was worth leaving up there a while.

But it’s been five weeks, and I’m calling it a draw between True Blood and beaten-by-a-hair So You Think You Can Dance. The two shows traded the top spot, along with third place finisher Burn Notice, for most of the time the poll was up.

Full disclosure: I don’t watch any of these shows. For starters, summer is my time to take a break from TV, aside from the weekly Chuck recaps, The Office reruns I watch on DVR while I’m on the treadmill and the upcoming return of Entourage. OK, that’s probably more than a lot of people watch year-round, but it’s a far cry from the eight or so shows I watch weekly during the regular season.

I’m not surprised by the poll results. True Blood fans are diehard, and I’ve heard Burn Notice called the best show on TV by more than one source. And of course So You Think You Can Dance is your typical reality ratings runaway.

Surprisingly, Weeds, which I’m having a hard time keeping up with of late, and Entourage, finished middle of the pack. OK, it’s not so surprising. Both shows, while still entertaining, are a tad beyond their expiration dates. I’m not sure what to make of Heroes or Chuck making the list, but maybe they were added by Hulu devotees.

The final tally follows the break. Up next, what did you think of the coverage surrounding the death of Michael Jackson?

* True Blood
35 votes, 15%

• So You Think You Can Dance

34 votes, 15%
• Burn Notice

25 votes, 11%
• Mad Men

19 votes, 8%
• Weeds

16 votes, 7%
• Entourage

16 votes, 7%
• Psych

12 votes, 5%
• Dexter (added by readers)

12 votes, 5%
• Chuck1

12 votes, 5%
• Big Brother 11

11 votes, 5%
• Monk (added by readers)

10 votes, 4%
• Heroes (added by readers)

7 votes, 3%
• Project Runway (added by readers)

7 votes, 3%
• DEADLIEST CATCH (added by readers)

5 votes, 2%
• The Closer

4 votes, 2%
• Saving Grace (added by readers)

I used to consider it a fun ride, a half-season of cool action-comedy that didn’t quite have the depth of character development that the second season would bring. I’m deciding I was off-base in that assessment. After last night’s viewing of “Chuck Versus the Sandworm,” it struck me that the writers did a really great job of slowly and deliberately laying the foundation of the characters, their backgrounds and motivations, in such a way that perfectly set up the heavier dramatic depth of Season 2.

So while I was a little surprised by how little Chuck-Sarah interaction there was—a couple of slightly awkward bedroom scenes, really—I was really impressed by the lengths the show went to establish what Chuck and Morgan mean to each other. They’re more than just goofball buddies but more like brothers who rely on one another.

Jumping right to the end (as I’m wont to do), the way Chuck jetted back home in time to join a depressed Morgan for the sandworm dance was pretty cool. He knew he had let his friend down and had come down way too hard on him after Big Mike’s warning not to let Morgan bring him down. And he made things right.

OK, that’s the mushy stuff that I liked about this installment of Chuck Me Mondays. Less serious but equally notable were Harry Tang’s reference to the sandworm as a space penis and, of course, Sarah’s and Ellie’s respective costumes.

Princess Leia and Eve? Chuck me, indeed.

Near as I can tell, the purpose of this episode—and I think every episode had a purpose—was to show Chuck (and us viewers) what life could have been and still might be like for him if he’s ever taken into lockdown. It’s the ongoing threat he faces, that life on the outside with handlers could come to a halt and “the asset” would be taken into a higher level of protection.

Laszlo never got the chance to live life on the outside. Recruited at 11 for his Tetris skills, he grew up on the inside, developing gizmos for “the company” and never seeing much sunshine. Whether he became unbalanced as a result of this upbringing or whether he was always a little off-kilter isn’t clear.

What’s clear is that he’s a desperate soul, trusting no one and as dangerous as his handler suggests. In that way, he’s the anti-Chuck, who trusts implicitly and is as well-adjusted a brainy do-gooder as you’d ever hope to meet.

I didn’t get a strong sense of parallel storylines in this episode. Morgan’s and Chuck’s issues didn’t really seem to reflect the dilemma with Laszlo, which is actually impressive since they’re both hefty storylines to explore simultaneously without much connection.

We’re still at a stage where Chuck is pondering life at the Buy More. Big Mike wants him for the AssMan job (always going to love that abbreviation), but it’s corporate’s call. Last thing anyone wants is Harry Tang in their face every day barking orders. Tang, as Big Mike reminds us, has all the charm of a prostate exam. And a 5-year-old’s taste in Halloween costumes, apparently.

A lot of the B-story dialogue between Chuck and Ellie surrounds the big interview. She encourages him, I guess, because she’s still at a point where she just wants to see him get over his past and move forward, even if it means a career in retail.

But it’s his secret spy career that derails the interview and sets up Morgan to go to bat for him. I loved Morgan’s plea to the corporate interviewer, obviously inspired by Tang’s space penis comment and slap at Chuck.

Morgan: Chuck and I may have our differences, but I can tell you this about him: Chuck is brave. Chuck is loyal. Chuck can quote Wrath of Kahn word for word. And Chuck is courageous. Chuck’s got a wicked vinyl collection. And Chuck has the wisdom to not eat garbage from the break room crisper. If you want my open and honest and direct opinion, the best man for this job is a man named Chuck Bartowski.

He’s still the type to blow off a double shift for a day at the boardwalk arcade. He’s also the guy who’ll eat whatever’s in the breakroom crisper. That scene is still making me feel oogy.

Of course, Awesome deserves a lot of credit for getting Morgan to man up. Tucking, honesty and a little product is all it takes. That tidbit about hiding under Ellie’s bed and watching her change went over well, huh?

Morgan: I don’t know. I kind of feel like my junk’s out there for the whole world to see.

Awesome: Maybe that’s the point, Morgan. Maybe that’s the point.

So Chuck ignores Sarah’s and Casey’s calls and lets Lazslo smash his GPS watch—which Laszlo invented—and ends up botching the mission (for the second straight episode, mind you). Or as he put it, pooching the Laszlo situation and aiding and abetting the next Ted Kaczynski.

The episode climax left me scratching my head slightly. It was set up really well that Laszlo would eventually go off the deep end. And the way Chuck flashed on Laszlo’s napkin doodles, cluing him in to the fact that Laszlo would target the boardwalk where he was first recruited, was very cool.

But their final face-off was just a little puzzling. There was only a minute on the bomb clock. Laszlo clearly wanted it to go off. And he wanted to make some kind of point to Chuck in the process, but I’m not sure what that was. He had Chuck inadvertently arm the bomb, and he told him the wrong wires to cut to disarm it. But I had to give it some thought to reach my own conclusions as to why.

My take is that he was channeling the ethos of the typical James Bond villain, seeking to create mayhem without reason or justification. If so, mission accomplished. That’s some deep stuff.

As usual, here’s some random observations I cant’ leave out

• The opening scene was reminiscent of Bryce Larkin’s escape in the pilot.


• Something about the Sandworm costume reminded me of Ross from Friends showing up at a costume party as Spud-Nik.


• Great line, from Chuck to Awesome, “I don’t want to see your snake.”


• Arcade Fire’s first album is an auditory afrodisiac.


• We got another foreshadow/early reference to Casey feeling left out, like the fat kid picked last.


• Rerouting nuclear bombers from the home theater reminded me a little of the movie War Games for some reason. Or maybe Real Genius, to which the name Laszlo could be a reference.


• Sarah was already sporting the Leia hairdo well before the party.


• Jeffster’s costume: American Gothic. Lovery.


• Anna loved Morgan’s willingness to eat anything, and she was the one who made sure Chuck knew Morgan stood up for him. Some foreshadowing right there.


• The 36:30 mark is worth cueing up at Hulu. Just saying.


• Another great line: Laszlo turning to Chuck in the NerdMobile and saying, “Everything is not going to be cool.”

It’s also one that calls for a bit of a mea culpa on my part—just a tiny bit.

For Chuck and Ellie, Mother’s Day is about as significant a day for them as a family as there is on the calendar. And through much of this episode, we’re left to wonder why, especially as Chuck finds himself not finding time for Ellie (or Morgan, for that matter) because the government is taking all his time.

So, jumping right to the end, the Mother’s Day dinner finally comes together. And defying tradition, Ellie has invited Morgan and Sarah along.

This sets up a useful bit of exposition in which Chuck explains to Sarah about Mother’s Day, Bartowski-style. For them it’s the anniversary of the day their mom left. Sure, their dad was there (as we’d later learn), but he was never really there. So that was the day they learned to rely on themselves.

That’s so much more than we ever usually learn about any character in one shot, isn’t it? The writers subtly summed up everything you need to know about who Chuck and Ellie are as people and why they’re so close.

Now, about that mea culpa. I’ve complained about the weird vibe I used to get early on between Chuck and Ellie, that there was a kind of sexual-type tension. No, I didn’t think it was actually sexual (or that it was egregious or constant). It was just that it seemed like the writers didn’t always do a great job differentiating their relationship from your typical troubled romantic TV relationship.

I’ve had people agree with me on this, and I’ve been challenged on it too. Recently, in fact.

And in all fairness, I just want to say it totally worked for me by the end of this episode. I was totally feeling the familial tension between them and really feeling for all they’d lost and all that had made them so close.

That Ellie would come to accept Chuck’s new girl and his best friend into their private family celebration was pretty decent and showed what we now know so well—that she only wants the best for him even if it means them growing a little bit apart.

Also, they did a good job showing how torn he is between competing obligations and his innate desire to do what’s right by those he cares about. In the end, Chuck saved the day, and we saw that his family and friends don’t give up on him so easily.

This exchange in particular relieved my earlier trepidation…

Chuck: Ellie, you know you’ll always be my best girl.

Ellie: Don’t take this the wrong way Chuck. I hope not.

That actual conflict surrounding the Triads and the renegade Chinese agent was almost the least interesting thing about this episode. However, it did set up some fun stuff.

You had Chuck and Morgan doing corny Kung Fu impressions to Sarah’s horror delight. There was Chuck getting tips on how to tail someone. (Normal tail rules apply to the double tail.) And there was Casey’s priceless appraisal of Mei-Ling: “Glocks and crotch rocket. My kind of gal.”

One serious bit of business I did appreciate was Chuck screwing up and rescuing the bad guy instead of Mei-Ling’s brother and feeling torn about the damage he’d done. Compounding it is the bit of realism that Sarah drops on him when she says they can’t save everyone.

His guilt spurs him to pitch the idea of coaxing Mei-Ling to defect, and it’s his justification for ditching Mother’s Day and joining the mission.

That had the added bonus of putting him in the van to coordinate the remote cameras. And when everything falls apart, he goes off script and engineers a fireworks rescue cleverly foreshadowed in the opening scene when you almost thought Morgan had some kind of drug addiction.

Speaking of Morgan, this is an episode I’ll show anyone who doesn’t fully appreciate what Josh Gomez’s character brings to this show. He was pitifully sympathetic in this one. The guy’s always had Chuck to bail him out, and he was lost without his friend. It was fitting that Ellie filled that role in the end, even if Big Mike’s sales contest was a sham.

Morgan sure couldn’t rely on Jeffster (who no longer have individual names for me). The Wounded Raccoon strategy decidedly does not work, by the way. I thought it was pretty clear, at least, that Morgan’s sales technique flaw is that he’s a decent guy who’d rather be honest and weird than phony.

Anyway, all that mattered was the sincere bonding Morgan and Ellie did, untinged by his deep-rooted and inappropriate affection for her. It was him who reminded her that she was the one who got Chuck through his worst times after Stanford. And he confides in her about his work dilemma.

It almost made up for the dashed Night Out With Morgan, aka Sarah’s big chance to show she’s bringing something to the relationship table.

By the way, if you listened closely in this early moments of the episode you caught possibly the first reference to Casey not being included. Loved that.

A few other observations I loved…

• The sizzle of the shrimp is like the sound of angels laughing.


• Sarah has a spastic colon. Huh.


• Star Wars shout-out: “Help me Chuck Bartowski. You’re my only hope.”


• Chuck’s four favorite words: Stay in the car. Morgan’s four favorite words: Chuck’s not here, Morgan. Ellie’s four favorite words: I’ll let myself out.


• Chuck, to the old guy: “Forget it, Ben. It’s Chinatown. You ever see that movie?”

I didn’t think I’d take to an entire season of Nancy looking over her shoulder all the time, but the fear and tension mixed with the occasional aloofness and ambivalence about her situation is turning out to be fun.

And I don’t see that tension lifting any time soon with warnings from Esteban that she’d better relax or there’ll be consequences. Andy’s right. He is going to be a great dad. Andy really lightened the heavy mood in this one, and I think the result was a great balance.

From his repartee with Esteban and Su-Su-Sucio—what a clown—to his fling with Jill, he brought the funny to otherwise dreary happenings. Jill did too, for that matter. You got the impression of her as the serious sister who made the sacrifices Nancy skipped out on.

She didn’t look so serious in bed with Andy when Nancy, uh, let them finish.

My favorite moment, though, came soon after when Nancy was trying to round everyone up into her car. Sucio was gone from the outdoor shower, leaving only traces of blood behind. That was a pretty good indication that Guillermo had some bad guys working on his behalf to at least scare Nancy if not make a move on her directly for putting him in jail.

Clearly she had time to make a deliberate and inefficient getaway, complete with a call to Esteban to give him a head’s up.

That moment I mentioned came when Jill watched Nancy reference to Esteban his indecision over whether to kill her or not. All that sisterly jealousy pent up from years of watching Nancy have all that wild fun with their middle school teachers and such simply dissipated. “Still wanna be me?” Nancy asks.

It’s not always such fun being Nancy, she quickly realized. What a coincidence. Nancy only recently realized that herself.

You know who’s having fun, though? Silas and Doug. They’re going into the weed business, legit. A little graft for the constabulary is all it took to set them on the road to small business ownership. That cop was pretty funny, so downhome hokey and yet distastefully corrupt in a matter-of-fact way. Medical marijuana is a sound business plan, anyway.

Silas: “Obama’s president! They’re not gonna bust them anymore!”

OK, got that out of the way.

NBC released its fall premiere schedule today, and there’s a few interesting items of note.

The Thursday comedy lineup debuts Sept. 17, with SNL Weekend Update Thursdays, Parks & Rec, The Office and newbie Community. I’m particularly interested in that last one, starring Joel Mchale. The preview looks hilarious.

30 Rock is out until Oct. 15, following mini-SNL’s run and bumping Community to an earlier time slot.

The Sept. 21 Heroes premiere will be a two-hour event. Debuts for Parenthood and Trauma follow on   Sept. 23 and 28, respectively. And the other Saturday Night Live is back Sept. 26.

And hey, Law & Order is back for a 20th season, albeit on Friday nights starting Sept. 25.

The premiere schedule appears after the jump, with new programs in all caps…

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 13
7-8:15 p.m. – “Football Night in America”
8:15-11 p.m. – “NBC Sunday Night Football”

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 14
10-11 p.m. – “THE JAY LENO SHOW” (Series Premiere)

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 15
8-10 p.m. – “The Biggest Loser”
10-11 p.m. – “THE JAY LENO SHOW”

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 17
8-8:30 p.m. – “Saturday Night Live Weekend Update Thursday”
8:30-9 p.m. – “Parks and Recreation”
9-9:30 p.m. – “The Office”
9:30-10 p.m. – “COMMUNITY” (series premiere – moves to Thursdays 8-8:30 p.m. on October 8; “30 Rock” returns October 15, 9:30-10 p.m.)
10-11 p.m. – “THE JAY LENO SHOW”

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 21
8-10 p.m. – “Heroes” (two hour premiere, then TRAUMA premieres 9-10 p.m. Monday, September 28)
10-11 p.m. – “THE JAY LENO SHOW”

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 23
8-9 p.m. – “PARENTHOOD” (Series Premiere)
9-10 p.m. – “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit”
10-11 p.m. – “THE JAY LENO SHOW”

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 25
8-9 p.m. – “Law & Order”
9-10 p.m. – “Southland”
10-11 p.m. – “THE JAY LENO SHOW”

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 26
8-9 p.m. – “Dateline NBC”
9-10 p.m. – “TRAUMA” (encore broadcast)
10-11 p.m. – “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” (encore broadcast)
11:30 p.m. – 1:00 a.m. – “Saturday Night Live”

Photo: NBC Universal

You had surprisingly little Casey for all the funny moments he had, and you had Morgan daring to aspire to a woman light years out of his league. You also had that moment, at the very end, when we learned one true thing about Sarah.

And that’s where I have to jump in, because I’d never realized that Chuck never heard her whisper “Lisa.” It’s really obvious that he’s out of earshot, so I don’t know why I thought he heard it. Anyway, the build-up to that scene came earlier in the episode in the two scenes where, while eating pizza, Chuck noticed Sarah picking the olives off.

I wondered who keeps ordering pizza with toppings they don’t like, but why question it? It was all he knew about her to that point, and the theme of the episode was the idea that she can never give him any more.

I’d even forgotten that Sarah Walker is a cover in itself, as we’re reminded from her reintroduction to Carina (guest star Mini Anden) after they gratuitously (i.e. awesomely) fought in Sarah’s apartment. The theme of this season is that Chuck has to learn to trust Sarah, and that becomes really difficult for him in this episode, mainly by Carina’s manipulation.

The episode all but starts with Sarah lying to Chuck about her past relationship with Bryce Larkin, and Carina blows the lid off that when she summons Chuck for a late-night rendezvous via the Nerd Herd hotline.

So in a goofy episode about a diamond heist and a shockingly hairy guy (who reminded me of Eugene Levy in Armed and Dangerous), you had some fairly significant emotional tension and deeper themes of trust and identity. Impressive stuff. Sarah’s Weinerlicious quick-change in the backseat was cool too.

What jumped out at me after it was over was how Sarah had told Chuck in the beginning that when you’re undercover you’re still yourself. It seemed like a throwaway line until later, when Carina talked about how your undercover identity is almost meaningless and how you can never get close to anyone.

Chuck: So you don’t let anyone know who you really are?

Carina: Can’t. Might have to leave them in five minutes or shoot them in the head. Trust me, the spy doesn’t want you to know anything about who they really are, no matter who you are.

There was fairly little Buy More action in this episode, and I wonder if it’s a good template for Season 3 if they do in fact plan to scale the scenes there back a bit. You got a little Lester and Jeff (funny stuff, too) and most of the Morgan action took place back at the Awesome’s apartment.

I did love Morgan’s appeal to Carina from the elevator right before she “dumps” him.

Morgan: “Do you want to talk about it, over coffee? One for each of us. I’ll treat.

Carina’s fairwell scene was a little to Love Boat-ish for me, the way she said her goodbyes to Casey, then Sarah, then Chuck, then Gopher, Isaac, Julie McCoy… But there was a method to it because it’s where she tells Chuck the reason she made a move on him is that she loves taking what Sarah wants.

He didn’t understand to that point the extent of Sarah’s feelings for him, but Carina picked up on it right away. That was a good tidbit to lead into the final scene in Sarah’s apartment, and of course it feeds the overarching storyline as the series progresses.

A few observations:

• The opening scene playing relationship trivia had to be fun for the cast to shoot. It had to be hard to keep from breaking every time Morgan displayed some creepy personal knowledge about Chuck.


• When Chuck flashes on Carina and goes to tell Sarah and Casey, that must be the first time he sees Graham and Beckman in a briefing. Graham said Chuck’s name like it’s a disease.


• Whatever happened to Casey in Prague, it had something to do with pantslessness.


• Did anyone ever eat at the Wienerlicious? And couldn’t Sarah have gotten out of her shift there after the Wookie’s party?


• Excellent line: Oh come on, this place is like if a yawn could yawn. How do you stand it?


• Another excellent line: “Eyes up front, soldier.”

That was a stab at being philosophical. Deep, huh? It’s full of truth too, because tonight we take a gander back at “Chuck Versus the Wookie,” an excellently titled episode that for some reason makes me chuckle (no pun intended) just thinking about.

It’s been more than a month since I last watched it, but if I remember right Sarah gets a little competition, Morgan gets a little lucky and a very hairy man hosts a pool party.

Chuck faces an unusual task, when Sarah’s hot colleague from the CIA shows up requesting help for a mission. Morgan tries to get Chuck to set him up with Sarah’s new friend. When Chuck finds out that a million dollar diamond hidden in a Malibu mansion is being used to help fund terrorists, he must help these two beautiful women steal it back. Chuck is finding out that Sarah’s job of living a double life, which she is all too good at, is really preventing him from getting to know who she really is.

There’s been some Chuck in the news of late.

For starters, Matt Roush of TVGuide.com took some Chuck Q’s in his recent Q&A. One reader was looking for insights into why the show hasn’t been more of a breakout hit. Roush doesn’t get it either, though he takes a stab that includes misguidedly suggesting the show might be better as a half-hour with less Buy More action. Bleah. He adds…

For me, part of what’s been holding Chuck back has to be NBC’s scheduling and the network’s overall misfortunes. Chuck has had to fight to get noticed in Monday’s most overcrowded hour, and being yoked to Heroes as it struggles season by season hasn’t helped. The writers’ strike cutting off the first season so abruptly also stalled whatever momentum it might have had early on. Otherwise, though, I’m as stymied as you. If we were still doing our “Best Shows You’re Not Watching” features, rest assured Chuck would be high on the list.

Meanwhile, Forbes.com lists Yvonne Strahovski among 10 lesser known stars who could have breakout moments ahead. They didn’t pick her best picture for the slideshow, though. Demetri Martin’s on there too, and he’s a funny guy.

Lastly, Michael Ausiellos of EW.com finally posted that Zachary Levi interview he teased for so long. There’s a ton of interesting stuff, and you can check it out here.

And anyone who saw it has asked themself a crucial question: How’d Joe Buck get his own show?

Then, after they pondered that for a while, they likely wondered what Lange’s problem was. I mean, he was a complete jerk from start to finish. He crossed the funny line about 10 seconds in and was just gratuitous and mean after that.

But yeah, I laughed, because it was pretty funny. And I don’t even dislike Buck like a lot of people do. I’m not sure this is his ideal format, though.

I won’t embed it, due to the “mature” nature of the dialogue, but HuffPo has it and Deadspin has the Overtime segment.

Apparently, HBO Sports is miffed—assuming they didn’t arrange the whole thing in advance—and has banned Lange from the network (along with most of their viewers, as a slew of online commenters have quipped).

That’ll teach him.

Former NY Jets quarterback Brett Favre chats with Buck during an earlier segment of Monday’s show. (AP Photo/HBO, Adriano Agundes)

And that’s a good thing, because you should miss a great show that had a great run and ended well. But you should realize you can’t recreate that awesomeness or overextend it. Hopefully SyFy keeps that in mind with Caprica and with The Plan, this fall’s cylon-centric prequel movie.

Mining scifiwire.com for related info about the Nov. 20 release, I found this teaser.

And that led me to this one, which most fans have probably seen by now.

To get a real BSG fix, check out these other Plan-related posts.

Edward James Olmost reveals his Plan

Battlestar’s Olmos reveals why The Plan will leave you gasping

Battlestar’s Grace Park reveals her part in The Plan

Battlestar’s Kate Vernon on Caprica, The Plan

Battlestar’s Michael Trucco Teases The Plan, Caprica

Usually that realization overshadows whatever revelation the interview reveals. In the case of Alec Baldwin’s chat with the mag, which appears in the July/August issue, it’s about a tie.

According to TVGuide.com—no, I’m not linking directly to Playboy’s Web site, sheesh—Baldwin pondered suicide in the aftermath of his voicemail tirade at his 11-year-old daughter being published online.

You remember that tirade, right? No? Well, here it is…

Alec Baldwin, unleashed

That was pretty bizarre, and I was inclined to give him something of a break on the grounds that moms and dads lose their cool from time to time. Then again, he’s a public figure not shy about saying what he thinks about other public figures, and it’s not like he sounded too remorseful about his words so much as he was about getting caught.

From what he told Playboy, it sounds like he still doesn’t quite get it. To him, it seems to be all about his battle with ex-wife Kim Basinger.

“I spoke to a lot of professionals, who helped me,” Baldwin said. “If I committed suicide, [ex-wife Kim Basinger’s side] would have considered that a victory. Destroying me was their avowed goal.”

I can’t imagine this does much for 30 Rock’s off-season buzz, especially on the heels of an off-kilter third season. But hey, it should be a boon for Playboy’s newsstand sales.

It’s not that the episodes haven’t been good so far. They’ve been alright. It’s just that the show has gotten pretty long in the tooth, and I’m having a hard time caring about the Botwin clan anymore.

Still, I enjoyed watching Nancy saddle up to the sushi bar, take a long drag on a cigarette and knock back a shot with the chef. Why’d I enjoy it? Hard to say. She’s never been much of a mom, and now she’s not much of a fanatic about pre-natal care.

But it was the level of reckless disregard that I found compelling, because really, she’s more likely to go down in a hail of bullets than she is to deliver a healthy bambino.

There was a decent insight there too when she talked about jumping off the Morristown Bridge (She’s a Jersey girl?) when she was 10, and the local paper wrote that she fell. She didn’t fall, she jumped. Big difference. And that difference is her whole life, as her sister—Jennifer Jason Leigh’s character—seemed to attest.

Still, this is all a bit much for her. The stress of a neighborhood pot operation is one thing; now she’s coping with a virtual death warrant that comes due in less than nine months. She’s not Esteban’s wife, as Guillermo gladly reminded her. She’s nothing but a dead mom walking until that baby comes arrives.

That was some jailhouse chat, by the way. She must be crazy taunting him like that with only a layer of plexiglass in between. That comment about the tattoos on his back for the guy behind him, well that’s just dangling a steak in front of an angry lion. That’s the other side of Nancy, though.

She was similarly brave in Esteban’s office, going for his gun but pointing it at her baby bump. That just resulted in his essentially raping her on the spot. Troubling stuff, that.

On a lighter note, Celia took to sprucing up the guerrilla lair, lending to the episode title. The sad realization that no one loves her and she has nowhere to go has her thinking about staying behind with her captor, particularly now that her daughter Quinn is gone. And why not? She’s got a highly manipulable guy to focus on and a roof over her head. He’s going to shoot her if she slaps him again, though.

Speaking of people who deserve to be shot, Doug and Silas ran into a heavily fortified pot farm while scouting out their own plot of land in the national forest. I can’t take Doug anymore. He’s way too annoying. And Silas is just a brooding teenager who could use a beatdown from a druglord to put him back on the right track.

And how predictable was it for Jill and Andy to get it on? This storyline of him and Andy going to stay with her family seems like a throwaway plot tangent to me, which wouldn’t be a first.

So Nancy’s getting her finances in order and setting things up with Dean she she meet an early demise. Good move, except for the part about Dean. That guy’s a loser.

I can’t imagine how they’re going to milk this entire pregnancy, but this wasn’t a bad start.

Not a bad haul for the third episode of Chuck’s first season. This was where Chuck got his GPS watch and where the phrase “Chuck’s Stable o’ Ho’s” was coined. Casey trimmed a bonsai, Chuck ran into an old college chum and Harry Tang painted the word picture for Chuck with his most awesome name.

And this was the first of several episodes in this season that would leave me wondering about the awkward sexual tension that seemed to surround Chuck and, unfortunately, his sister.

Glad the writers righted that ship.

This was the first regular episode, too, in a way, following what I look back at as the two-part pilot. Pretty soon I’ll run out of firsts to talk about, but this third week of Chuck Me Mondays still had plenty. I wasn’t too active on the Twitter side myself, getting off only a handful of tweets. Still, it looked like a decent turnout.

This is turning out to be a great way to pass my summer Monday nights. Check out the rest of my recap after the jump

Art dealers are dying of lead poisoning at an alarming rate as a rather unattractive painting makes its way to L.A. for auction. What that means for Chuck is that he’s going to get to go on his very first mission.

Sarah and Casey are divided on whether that’s best for him. Ellie and Morgan are similarly divided as to what’s best for Chuck, but in a different way.

That’s one of my favorite things about this show, those parallels. Since they’ve become a staple of most episodes, it was cool to look back and see the first time it was tried. The way the two were interwoven, with lots of cuts back and forth, made it even more fun.

At issue, as it usually was back then, is Chuck’s future. Early on Big Mike asks him where he sees himself in five years. It’s a good question for a manager to ask a senior staffer. My thought was to wonder what Chuck would have made of the question five years earlier, figuring he sure didn’t see himself at the Buy More.

Well it isn’t long before Chuck and Sarah are talking over lunch about the same question. It’s when he comes up with the alias Charles Carmichael. Apparently that was his pseudonym for the successful software tycoon he saw himself one day becoming. Notwithstanding Bryce Larkin, that’s pretty much who he would have been.

A sympathetic Sarah lays out his part in the mission, since the General wants to see him in action.

Thanks to a little sarcastic mischief by Casey, Chuck believes learning to Tango on the fly would help. (I guess in Season 3 he’ll just flash on how to Tango.) Of course, Awesome spent a semester in Buenos Aires and does a mean tango, gladly teaching Chuck. Talk about bizarre scenes, made more so by the cutaways to Sarah getting her weapons on and Casey trimming his bonsai tree. Huh?

The mission goes slightly awry when Chuck flashes on an MI-6 agent he mistakes for the ruthless La Ciudad. Of course that leads Sarah and eventually Casey away while Chuck inadvertently makes nice with the real La Ciudad. The feminine article in the should have tipped them all off to the fact that it would be a woman.

So while an armed standoff takes shape up on the roof, Chuck tangoes with a killer.

La Ciudad: Uh, Mr. Carmichael.

Chuck: Please, Chuck.

La Ciudad: Chuck, I believe your hand is supposed to be on my hip.

Chuck: Yes, apparently I learned the girl’s part. Would you mind leading?

La Ciudad: Not at all.

Chuck figures out La Ciudad’s identity too, flashing on her neck scar. So it’s upstairs with the goons for him. Luckily he’s got his new GPS watch on so Sarah and Casey could track him.

One little wrinkle they threw in that bears dwelling on is Chuck’s old college pal Watterman. The guy’s a total schmuck, and he nearly blows Chuck’s cover until Chuck flashes on his business card. It was a cool moment for that time in the show, but we never see Chuck flash on random things like that anymore. They should do more with that, show viewers how he can’t fully control the Intersect as it affects his whole life.

But anyway, it was a hilarious setup for when La Ciudad jumps the balcony and busts into Watterman’s room below, only to have one of her goons fall past a few moments later. Bet they scared that guy straight.

It gave the episode an odd rhythm for La Ciudad to get away only to return to the Buy More to kill Chuck—not in a bad way, just a little weird. Of course it set up one of the best lines of the series when Chuck is discovered by Harry hiding from the goons beneath the counter.

Harry: Chuck, hiding from work again?

Chuck: I think I dropped something. Go away, Harry.

Harry: Oh you wish I would. I’m not going anywhere, Chuck. When you go to sleep at night, all you’re going to see is Harry Tang in your face.

(Hey Chuck, he could just shoot you through the gate if he wanted.)

Up on the roof, Sarah’s having a tougher time with La Ciudad, who she ID’d by her scar. (Cool parallel there, huh?) Such a great fight scene, though, right down to Sarah’s kick-ass tag line, “Hang here.” Nothing beats a beat down with handcuffs. Really playing to the demographic with the entire sequence.

Before I gloss past it, but Morgan really distinguished himself as the faithful friend in this one. He rallies the Nerd Herders to Chuck’s cause, at least until he locks himself into his own personal hell. The scene with the operar music was a cool shout-out to Shawshank’s Andy Dufresne locked inside the warden’s office with the guards beating down the door. Totally missed that hte first time despite seeing Shawshank Redemption about 12 times.

Did you notice that Anna brought Morgan coffee the next morning and seemed generally sympathetic to him the whole episode. Was that the seeds of their relationship right htere?

In the end, Chuck fixes all the broken computers, impressing Big Mike who knows there’s nothing wrong with a man wetting his whistle once in a while.

Back at the Awesomes, Chuck and Ellie have a heart to heart about the way he’s been avoiding her. There was one line from Ellie that reminded me a lot of the Season 2 finale when Sarah asks him how many times he has to be a hero before he’ll realize he is one.

Ellie: I just know what an incredible guy Chuck Bartowski is and sometimes I’m not so sure that he knows it.

True, Morgan, that dude is creepy. But so are you, my man.

The result is that I don’t watch a lot of Fox, unless there’s a Giants game being played. But just like last season, when I tuned in to the flawed by interesting Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, there’ll be at least one reason for me to give Rupert Murdoch’s network a glimpse.

That reason is Glee, the strangely awesome, Freaks & Geeks-esque take on a high school glee club and adolescence in general. I caught the pilot a few weeks ago, and like a lot of people I was really surprised at how entertaining and intriguing it was.

Yeah, it did feel a little like an American Pie spin-off based on Chris Klein’s jock-turned-crooner storyline. And it did call to mind the aforementioned Freaks vibe at times. But the perspective of main character Will (Matthew Morrison) was kind of dark and kind of compelling. It’s down for tha 9 p.m. Wednesday time slot, which is great for someone like me whose TV viewing is very Monday/Thursday-centric.

Here’s the official synopsis:

From Ryan Murphy, the creator of “Nip/Tuck” and “Popular,” comes GLEE, a one-hour musical comedy that follows an optimistic high school teacher as he tries to transform the Glee Club and inspire a group of ragtag performers to make it to the biggest competition of all: Nationals.

Will Schuester, a young optimistic teacher, has offered to take on the Herculean task of restoring McKinley’s Glee Club to its former glory. Everyone around him thinks he’s nuts. He’s out to prove them all wrong.

Saturday, Sept. 12
8 pm/ET COPS
9 pm America’s Most Wanted

Wednesday, Sept. 16
8 pm So You Think You Can Dance
9 pm Glee (series premiere)

Thursday, Sept. 17
8 pm Bones
9 pm Fringe

Friday, Sept. 18
8 pm Brothers (series premiere)
8:30 pm ‘Til Death
9 pm Dollhouse

Monday, Sept. 21
8 pm House (two-hour premiere)

Sunday, Sept. 27
8 pm The Simpsons
8:30 pm The Cleveland Show (series premiere)
9 pm Family Guy
9: 30 pm American Dad

Monday, Sept. 28
9 pm Lie to Me

Tuesday, Sept. 29
8 pm Hell’s Kitchen

Saturday, Nov. 7
11 pm The Wanda Sykes Show

(Source: Fox Broadcasting Co.)

And a word about Terminator, since I brought it up. Executive Producer James Middleton sheds a little light on the direction the show was set to take if it had been picked up.

“If we had gotten a third season, we definitely would have explored what it all meant,” says Middleton.

(Photo: Cast of Glee in New York May 18 – Fox)

That was one bit of advice Chuck could have used in this, the third episode of Season 1 and the latest focus of Chuck Me Mondays. All summer, the fans are keeping the heat on Chuck, making sure the buzz of the renewal campaign doesn’t fade when the dog days roll by.

Here’s the episode summary for “Chuck Versus the Tango.”

Chuck Bartowski is finding out that living two separate lives is not going to come easy. After being challenged by his boss at Buy More, Chuck needs the help of his best friend Morgan and the Nerd Herd to prove that he is up to the task and ready to become assistant manager. Meanwhile, Sarah and Casey force Chuck to go undercover for his first real spy mission. It seems that Chuck’s two different lives are learning to Tango, but which one will learn to take the lead?

• The link to free streaming episodes at WB.com, which is the best way to watch because NBC and the studio will have hard numbers on viewership.


• A primer on how Chuck Me Mondays came about and what it’s all about.


• A Twitter account. Don’t have one? Sign up. It’s free and easy. (And fun and a little bit addictive.)


• A ChuckTV.net forum account so you can chat with fellow Chuckies all week long.

Yeah, it hits home a little bit. OK, a lot. But like Tina Fey would say, it’s funny because it’s true! (Jayson Blair bit notwithstanding.)

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
End Times
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Newt Gingrich Unedited Interview

I don’t know what Bill Keller was thinking when he agreed to this, but I know what he’s thinking about now: the perfect comeback to that jab at the Times’s balance sheets.

After all, if I’m blogging about a show it’s because I really like it. Otherwise I wouldn’t bother. So I’m predisposed to root for “my” shows. When they falter, it bums me out. The early spring episodes of The Office’s third season were particularly rough on me.

Another rough go was with Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Now this was a show that seldom reached the heights it aspired to or that I believed it could. But I kept writing about it, rooting for it and pointing out its flaws where I saw them. Usually it was too much melodrama and too much muddling of the overarching plot.

By the time it righted the ship and started to become the awesome show it was meant to be, it was too late in a couple of ways. First off, I gave up on blogging about it about a month before the finale. Second, the entire known universe—excluding a few hundred (dozen?) delusional fans—had become aware that it was doomed to be canceled.

It was really hard to stick up for the show after the fact, when several of those fans deluged this site with angry comments and some impressive poll-rigging abilities—exactly 1,000 votes on a write-in ballot for Medium?—after I had the temerity to rally for another bubble show I love, Chuck, which actually stood a chance of renewal. (And eventually got it.)

I didn’t have much nice to say about Sarah Connor that day, but it was too late anyway. Now, though, I can look back and say that by the time the second season wound down, Sarah Connor had really hit its stride.

I don’t take back a word of my criticism along the way, but I do feel for creator Josh Friedman, who took to the Interwebs late last week to lament his baby’s demise. If I had to characterize his musings, I’d go with angry, maybe resigned. Not bitter, though, which is to his credit.

I guess there were signs that the show was in trouble (other than the 1.3 rating and the four share). First there was the day I was in my office and looked up to see Chuck Lorre and a Warner Bros. facilities manager standing in my doorway pointing to various features and using their hands to take “air measurements.” (Chuck tried to play it off like waving to me God Bless him, but I know an air measurement when I see it.)

I’d like to think the guy deserved better, but that’s a pretty naive take on the business of making TV shows. He had a great run for his first time at the helm and probably learned a lot about what to do and what not to do next time. For me that makes his next endeavor, whatever it is, worth checking out.

Maybe then he’ll win the only poll that counts: the poll of network programming executives.

For the record, and for the uninitiated, Weinerlicious is a fictional restaurant name, not an adjective in the above phrase. “Chuck Versus the Helicopter” could possibly be the most screencapped episode of Chuck in the entire series just for that singular costume Agent Walker dons to blend in on the outskirts of Buymoria.

But that’s not what’s great about this episode. (OK, it’s one thing that’s great about this episode.) Storywise, what sets this one apart is that it’s really a continuation of the pilot. It’s as though there was so much to establish, so much character motivation for which to lay a foundation that they needed another hour to put it all in place.

I’ll get into that and a whole lot more after the jump in this second Remote Access Chuck recap in conjunction with Chuck Me Mondays. The tweets were out of control again last night. Apologies to all my Twitter followers. I tried to be witty, at least. Or is that twitty?

If the pilot set us up with Chuck, “Versus the Helicopter” added crucial elements of what Sarah and Casey are all about. And what they’re all about, I’d quite forgotten, is trusting no one, especially not each other.

So I was a bit taken a back when Sarah tore into Chuck near the end.

“No, it is not OK. How could you think I was the double, huh? I am not Bryce. Bryce betrayed everything that I believe in, and if you ever accuse me of that again then I will walk away. Mission over. We all go back to Washington. And you do not want that to happen Chuck. That you should trust me on.”

Going back to Washington means going down the rabbit hole for Chuck, so to me it was wrong of her to throw that in his face. She didn’t like being distrusted, but I think it was her mixed emotions about Bryce that fed her fury most at that moment. The sight of her at Bryce’s funeral in the ensuing montage only confirmed that for me. And it just wasn’t right. Her apology the next day at the Weinerlicious was necessary.

And what she said to Chuck next really sets up the series.

You know, with Dr. Zarnow gone, Chuck, those Intersect secrets aren’t going anywhere. That means more missions, more danger, more secrets that you can’t tell your sister or your friends. Some people want to be heroes, and some people have to be asked. So, Chuck, are you ready?

Dr. Zarnow is also the first Intersect engineer Chuck would encounter, albeit anonymously. Zarnow’s testing of his Intersect abilities was hilarious for the pop culture references the writers dropped in.

There was a Lost reference to Oceanic Flight 815, a possible reference to Tom Clancy’s book “The Cardinal of the Kremlin” and a mention of “Northrop Davis voting computers,” which was meaningless to me until I found that defense contractor Northrop Grumman got into voting machines in 2002. There might even have been a Da Vinci Code reference in there.

Zarnow seems to get blown to bits by a cell phone bomb—though we don’t see the explosion. The Sarah-Casey distrust begins with her finding and consealing the shattered phone from Casey and later telling Chuck it’s proof Casey terminated the doctor. Who’s Chuck to argue, right? Well, Casey employs reverse logic to convince him that it’s Sarah who’s “cleaning” up all contacts to her and Chuck may be next.

For all her indignation later at being so accused, I don’t blame him for his suspicions.

The immediate result is a most excellent Weinerlicious fight scene in which Sarah kicks Casey’s butt and then shows up for dinner with the Awesomes. Ellie, of course, is blown away (figuratively) by her brother’s catch.

It’s a really minor point, but I loved this quick exchange after Chuck shows up. It’s kind of a comedic bass line that you feel more than hear.

Chuck: Everyone OK?

Morgan: Yeah, just a little hungry, dude. You’re late.

Awesome: And dirty for my tastes.

Convinced by Casey that Sarah’s souffle is laced, Chuck calls back to the cold open by pulling the tablecloth away. If Morgan had done it, Chuck’s plan would have worked. As it was he needed Casey’s help to torch the souffle before dancing on it in the tub. That is not the way to a woman’s heart.

When Zarnow’s plot clicks with Sarah, she runs out and is captured within seconds. I found that a little tough to believe. Those tranquilizer guns figure pretty prominently in this show. Luckily, the quiches Casey brought—wait, Casey brought quiches?—were laced with trackable microbots that lead them right to…Morgan.

This was the point in the episode where Chuck employs his non-Intersect abilities, deducing where to find Sarah in a way that impresses even Casey.

One thread throughout this episode is Bryce’s death, which we believe to be real at this point. In a way it gives the episode a kind of depth. It throws off Chuck when Ellie shows him the obituary, and it clearly affects Sarah at a few different points. It’s like a curveball that gives the episode a subtle emotional edge.

The fact that neither Chuck nor Sarah fully grasped the impact Bryce had on the other made this episode even more interesting to watch knowing how things would play out.

That’s a rare quality for a show to get better on second and third viewings, particularly with the knowledge of future events. That makes Beckman’s final orders to Casey to eliminate Chuck once the new Intersect comes online even more compelling. If she only knew, huh?

Loose ends worth noting:

• I loved Casey’s line, “No problems, only solutions.” Very military. I had a marine reservist for a college roommate who used to say stuff like that.


• Chuck gets the Code Zebra Linux call because Jeffster are Mac artists. Have we heard that since?


• I loved Zarnow divulging his motivations to Chuck with his back to Sarah as she picks her handcuff lock. And he doesn’t even shoot her before escaping with Chuck. So very Scooby Doo-esque.


• Chuck has a very lucky ID badge. He’s also lucky that helicopter’s can stay aloft indefinitely without a pilot. And he’s lucky that any flying machine can be flown and landed by a lay person with the right coaching.

And I’ll see you again on Chuck Me Monday.