MY open letter to NBC regarding Chuck

Alan Sepinwall, Star-Ledger TV critic and blogger extraordinaire has written an open letter to NBC in support of Chuck. And he wrote it before last night’s episode, which he thought was awesome enough to give a Dayenu filled review. So awesome! Anyway, thanks to Sepinwall, I was inspired to write my own letter to NBC.

Dear smart people at NBC who were open-minded enough to air this show originally:

I used to merely like this show, but over the course of this season it has become my favorite program on tv! It’s funny, smart, full of things I inevitably want to buy (Awesome could have bought ME that television), and the characters exhibit genuine growth as a direct result of their experiences. I love that Chuck has these networks of peers, friends, and family who care about him, even if they don’t necessarily understand him, and who try to help him out, even if their idea of help doesn’t actually aid Chuck. I recommend this program to any friend of mine who is looking for a new program, and have successfully hooked at least 5 people that I know of this season. I could probably get more if Chuck wasn’t in such a competitive time slot. I know many people who would never dare cheat on Dr. House, Blair Waldorf, or Neil Patrick Harris, but would consider watching Chuck consistently if it was on at a different time. If Chuck was canceled, I would be more devastated than I was when Dead Like Me, Veronica Mars, and Joan of Arcadia were canceled. Combined.

Please don’t let Chuck be an addition to my “Gone too soon” dvd collection of shows that were taken off the air after their second or third season, before the writers had told all the stories they had to tell. This show gets better every episode and has a loyal fandom, bringing together sci-fi nerds, ‘shippers, young men, tech heads, espionage fans, and people who just plain like great programming. You’ve basically won demographic bingo here!

Please don’t break my heart,
Nicole

Holy crap

Whoever did Penelope’s eye makeup on Gossip Girl needs to become my best friend, stat. That girl looks amazing tonight! If I find a decent screen cap, I’ll append this post with the picture.

Found two pictures, thanks to the dedicated and slightly terrifying people over at Gossip Girl Gallery. I’m using larger images than I usually do in order to convey the cosmetic awesomeness.

Recap of Monday night tv

I didn’t watch as much television today as I thought I might. I watched yesterday’s Gossip Girl, Heroes, and Chuck, and read parts of several books. Heroes was better than it was last week but I’m convinced that it is essentially a really stupid show, so my praise falls into the category of “faint.” Gossip Girl was pretty good; there was a great catfight between Serena and the ever more deranged Blair, and pretty much every character came out looking interesting (except Dan Humphrey, because Dan Humphrey is the definition of boring). So that was fun. Hands down, though, Chuck was the winner of the night.

The plots of Chuck are pretty standard – spy stuff, stunt casting, more spy stuff, wacky hijinks!, meaningful character interaction, and the conclusion to the spy stuff; so it’s the non-spy stuff that really makes this program. This episode saw the return of Bryce Larkin, Chuck’s former college roommate and Sarah’s former partner who used to be dead but isn’t anymore, and who stuck the intersect in Chuck’s head in the first place. I like Bryce, because he’s kind of like a younger, hotter, American James Bond, and he’s so freaking sexy that I don’t actually mind his visits, even though they’re always bad news for Chuck.

So anyway, this episode was really well-acted, and managed to address one of the things about this show that has been bothering people since the fifth episode of last year: how useful can Chuck continue to be if the information in the Intersect is never updated? Did all of those bad guys stop doing bad things once the government compiled their information? Extremely doubtful. So thanks, Bryce, for leaving those shades for Chuck. And thanks, Chuck, for being dumb enough to take anything from Bryce Larkin. Bryce, who seemed to still have serious feelings for Sarah, watched the way she interacted with Chuck and realized that the two were totally in love, and not just acting out their cover. That love ended up getting in the way of the stated mission several times today, and directly led to Chuck getting fired from his cover job, Sarah ignoring the mission to rescue him, and then being unable to shoot a suspect, for fear of hitting Chuck (in an earlier, similar scenario with Bryce being held by the baddie, Sarah had no problem shooting the bad dude right in the middle of the forehead).

Chuck finally faced the facts: he and Sarah are never going to be a normal couple with a normal life, even when he’s no longer the Intersect (Chuck’s not yet aware that, if the General has her way, he’s going to be eliminated as soon as the new Intersect is functional). He’s not going to know stuff about her, he’s not going to be able to know what’s really going on in her life, and she’s so awesome that she can’t possibly be expected to do normal. In a scene filled with appropriate face-redness and blinking, Chuck breaks up with Sarah, who’s totally sad and moved, too. It was awesome.

Also awesome? Michael Strahan as a jock bully from the sporting goods store in the same shopping complex at the Buy More. Athletes usually make  terrible actors (see: Anderson, Brady on Sabrina the Teenage Witch – it’s been over a decade and I’m still rolling my eyes over that appearance), but Strahan was a natural. He didn’t mug for the camera or chew scenery, and he injected just the right amount of menace into the role of Mitt (horrible name, btw) to make me buy it. They should bring him back to sit on Nicole Richie, who put the “stunt” in stuntcasting and will be in next week’s episode for a girlfight with Sarah. I refuse to link to her, because if you’re reading this blog, you know who Nicole Ritchie is. Can they bring back Rachel Bilson? I really liked Lou, and Chuck could use some awesome-but-normal love right now.

Clothes!

Yesterday I accidentally discovered Uniqlo. Obviously, the store existed before I arrived in SoHo and, thanks to the many posts devoted to it on Gothamist, I did know that it was there, but I hadn’t realized that it was so close to my destination. I saw it immediately upon exiting the subway and was very curious, but wanted to get to Helen Wang before the store closed. I figured that Uniqlo was larger and on a main street and would probably stay open longer, and I was correct on all three counts.

I tried on lots of pretty, girly dresses at Helen Wang, but apparently Helen is not interested in the fact that some of us have boobs. The size 6s and 8s fit everywhere except for across my girls, which made me sad. A LOT of that stuff was gorgeous, and I guess it’s probably a good thing for me that I couldn’t fit into most of it. There were some sun dresses that fit okay, but I found them a little boring. I ended up getting a cute, loose-fitting dress that put me in mind of something that Blair Waldorf from Gossip Girl would wear. I really don’t know what that says about me. I’m still putting things together in my mind, but if I go somewhere formal for New Year’s Eve, this is definitely what I’d wear.

So I meandered after leaving Helen Wang, and went into some other stores on Mercer. Lots of sales, but nothing that I would buy even for any reason other than the fact that it was a good deal. So off to Uniqlo I went, where the first thing I saw was really a cute cashmere pullover for $40. It really makes no sense that they can sell things so inexpensively (not that I’m complaining, just confused). Initially, I picked up one of those, but when I went to the fitting room for the first time, I saw that that shirt had some schmutz on it. I’m not picky, but I’d like to believe that my clothes are clean when I buy them (because it’s not like I wash them before wearing. Shut up). Also, my like for the shirt was closely tied to the high quality fabric at a low price, and I felt little admiration for the item itself, so I passed on getting a newer, hopefully cleaner shirt.

I tried on a cute white pea coat that put me in the mind of this Bailey 44 coat I tried on earlier that day, but which cost $341. It wouldn’t have been the most I’d ever spent on a coat, but that’s not exactly the best rationale ever for buying something, now is it? The skirts at Uniqlo were kind of cute, but the lengths did nothing for me. They were either too long and made me look stumpy AND frumpy or too short and made me look trashy. I did end up buying a cute corduroy pencil skirt that my mom cautioned me against wearing to work (as if I ever would). I was just about to leave when a cute, extremely personable salesguy came by and offered me his opinion on the pea coat (I was looking for it in black, but he thought the white looked better). He also talked me into trying on skinny jeans, which he said would look really good on me (he was right, damn him) and a pale lavender shirt, which I’m not completely sold on, but can appreciate in the abstract. I got that same shirt in several colors, but I did draw the line at the shade of green he tried to get me to buy it in; I’m not a fir green kind of person.

In the end, I got a lot of stuff that I like but didn’t necessarily need, so I decided that I should end my night by buying something that I did need: new sneakers. I have owned my Converse Chuck Taylor All Stars since the night in September of 2006 of the Heroes series premiere, and decided that the broken elastic and ripped side of my shoes meant I could go ahead and replace them without feeling wasteful. I got home exactly 30 minutes after boarding the bus at Port Authority, which was pretty sweet, and my evening only improved when I found out that Monday was the season premiere of Chuck and Life, and that this week’s Gossip Girl was everything I dreamed of. I watched Chuck while eating dinner, and then watched Gossip Girl during the changing breaks in the new fashion show of that I put on for my mother. I’m only halfway through Heroes because those people are kind of boring me right now, but I hope that I’m in a better frame of mind to watch it tomorrow.

This is the best picture my mom took

but this is the best picture of the dress...

Dream on, Jumpstreet!

Yay! Veronica Mars is getting way better. I’m more than halfway through season 1 now, and we’ve gotten to the point where Logan is a much friendlier psychopath. He’s still nuts, but now he uses all those psychoses for the good of the people he likes. It’s pretty great. I really always loved the Veronica-Logan pairing, and it’s great that they spent so much time subtly altering his character so that, by the time the two of them got together, it wasn’t jarring and unexpected. I contrast this with the way that the Chuck Bass character was rehabbed rather quickly by the Gossip Girl writers. I actually adore Chuck now, but it’s not believable how the guy who tried to rape two girls in the first episode is somehow now this hardened, but secretly sweet, sorta-hero. Also, the VM production values have increased appreciably (now, when characters travel by car, the scenery they pass is real), which is definitely adding to my enjoyment.