TV is the New Reading

‘Chuck’ third season comes back strong

I think one of the things that just disturbs me about “Chuck” is the suggested amount of espionage that is going on all the time.

Our nation has security priorities, we have information that’s best not released on the World Wide Web, there are threats and we need to be vigilant.

However. I don’t imagine any significant aspect of our nation’s security could likely be based on one guy wandering around seeing things completely by accident.

See, a couple years ago, Zachary Levi as Chuck, a talented sales representative at a big box consumer electronics retailer called the Buy More, received an e-mail from his college roommate, now a spy.

The e-mail contained a billion tiny images associated with national security called the Intersect. Chuck’s superior memory absorbed them. So when Chuck sees an enemy agent, his brain retrieves the images associated with that agent and suggests what he or she is up to.

He also absorbed images of his CIA handler, Yvonne Strahovsky as Agent Sarah Walker, which probably made him predisposed to trusting her, and perhaps falling in love with her. Although she’s so lovely how could he fail to do so on his own?

And of course Agent Walker’s never been hit with the Intersect and she seems to be falling for Chuck, too. Although she does try to maintain professionalism and emotional distance, their cover as boyfriend-girlfriend did lead to a few messy emotional areas.

This culminated in a situation at the end of last season where Chuck got an upgrade at the same time Sarah thought maybe it was time to get out of the spy biz. Chuck wanted to use his upgraded abilities to help people, but Sarah was worried he’d get hurt. Now they’re trying to just be friends.

Naturally all of this is terribly irritating to Adam Baldwin as National Security Administration agent John Casey, who is also assigned by the military to watch over the Intersect, who he finds annoying.

Chuck in fact spent the first part of this past weekend’s third season premiere failing his spy training. Despite his superior kung-fu fighting powers, he still didn’t want to kill anyone, even in a simulated situation -- even in a simulated situation he knew was a simulated situation -- and the government cut him loose.

But he still had all of that information in his head. So when he sees Sarah in trouble, he is motivated to go save her. This ends in his needing to be saved -- but not before it is demonstrated that his upgrade has given him all sorts of superior spy abilities like, oh, being able to dance, and to play mariachi music, and to escape a situation using a zip line. It has not given him the ability to break down a door despite his hilarious attempt. He does have the muscle-memory implanted to beat up a bad guy if he needs to.

See, if Chuck is able to do all of this -- and maintain his cover as an electronics retailer -- why wouldn’t they have him in a room with a thousand video monitors from all over the country, looking for bad guys and figuring out what they’re up to?

Ah, but who would tune in to watch that?

No, Chuck needs to bumble about as a good-natured semi-spy, pining after Agent Walker, always in some danger from Agent Casey (whose cover as a Buy More subordinate they’ve never really explored very well) -- that is, Casey would just as soon shoot him as save him. But for your average-guy spy, even one with new and improved kung-fu grip, Chuck is a fun character, and his adventures are just getting better.

“Chuck” airs Mondays at 7 p.m. on NBC.

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