Welcome to another special Morning After edition of TV or Not TV, where I have been bowled over by Chuck and under whelmed by Heroes. As always I will remind you that I talk about anything and everything with the shows being discussed so if you haven’t yet watched them you might want to come back to this a little later.

CHUCK vs. THE RING

Many of you may be thrilled at the fact that the season finale of Chuck happened last night as you won’t have to deal with me whining about the
potential demise of the show. My feelings aren’t lifted any bit after the NBC.com official Chuck page had the following listed for their streaming copy of the show.

The description has since been corrected to remove the Series Finale description, so who knows?

What I do know is that last nights episode of Chuck was pure entertainment. One of the things that I love about this show is the subtle pop-culture references that are quietly slipped in. One that stands out was when Jeffster took to the altar at Ellie and Awesome’s wedding and Jeff turned to the string orchestra and told them “watch me for the changes“ just as my good friend Marty McFly did in Back to the Future. The Jeffster performance of Mr. Roboto combined with the shoot-out in the reception hall was also well played out both from a soundtrack stand-point as well as a plausible reason that the guests never heard one shot fired.

Another thing that I enjoyed about last night was the performance of Chevy Chase as Ted Roark. I can’t think of another role where I’ve seen Chevy Chase play the heavy and I think that this may have been a missed calling since he really seemed to hone in on the part. I don’t know what this says about him playing such a believable bad guy, but it’s something I would have enjoyed seeing more of in the future.

There are still two moments that stood out for me with last night’s show as well. When Sarah gave the confirming nod of no to Bryce that she wasn’t coming with him and was instead staying with Chuck it gave all of us sappy romantics a nice confirmation that there really is a future for these two.

The other moment, of course, was the “game-changing” ending that the producers of the show have been alluding to for weeks. In many ways it does change the game, taking the potential of the show up to the next level. On a more important note, however, it was a defining moment for the character Chuck as he was actually faced with a choice in the role that he’s been playing in Operation Bartowski for the past two seasons. It wasn’t a decision forced on him as it was before and this is another important element that would benefit the character in his growth within this show.

Was this really the finale that, if not renewed, Executive Producer Chris Fedak described the fan reaction as one wanting to have them, “burn their living rooms?” In retrospect, not really. There is the frustration that the show ended with the words TO BE CONTINUED… but the story itself could serve as an ending that simply let’s us know the story continues for these characters even though we don’t get to see it.

Now we wait patiently for the NBC up-fronts to find out what the fate of this very family friendly and entertaining show is. How do I know it is
family friendly? My five year old daughter had me rewind the DVR three times so she could jump up and do kung fu along side of Chuck as he took down the bad guys. Chuck me indeed.

HEROES: AN INVISIBLE THREAD

My love-hate relationship with Heroes truly culminated with the season finale. A whole lot happened and we got somewhere, even though I’m not really sure where. They tied up loose ends but created a big ol’ plot hole for me that I just can’t seem to step around.

There were two things at play with this episode: the bringing down of the ability hunting group in Building 26 and the stopping of Sylar meeting the President and taking control of the country by becoming him. The former story line was apparently necessary in aiding the release of Noah Bennett and confusing us with the fact that Hiro’s body is now rejecting the very time-stopping ability that used to naturally be his own.

The bringing down of Sylar was the story that took up the majority of air time, and it was a compelling and interesting one. It is also, however, the most flawed story line due to a major plot hole that the writers I’m sure are really hoping that we overlook. Last night we saw the rather gruesome death of Nathan Patrelli at the hands of Sylar. After Sylar is eventually captured Noah and Angella come up with what they feel is the only plan to neuter Sylar and stop the government sanctioned capture of people with abilities: Use Matt Parkman to erase Sylar’s memory of himself and make him think that he is Nathan Patrelli and as such forcing his shape-shifting to make him Nathan Patrelli. A win-win for the writers but a major plot hole since we all know that Claire’s blood can revive the dead just as it did with her dad and, by proxy of Peter, healed Nathan’s blast wounds from the season 1 finale. This wasn’t in fact the only way to resolve this issue and is probably the most dangerous way to solve it.

I can’t blame the writers for going this route. A bad guy like Sylar is darn near impossible to stop and there’s no single hero that can bring him
down. He’s also too good of a bad guy to let go of incase you need to have a fallback. This means that you can’t kill him off but you also don’t want to allow him to still be in play since he’s really too big of a bad. I understand the reason they went the direction that they did, I just don’t agree with it.

Unlike Chuck the show Heroes already has a pick-up for next season, so they teased us with a glimpse at the next volume titled Redemption. Here’s hoping there is more to the name than just a title because this show really needs some serious redemption in more ways than one.

– Will Wilkins is recorded from a previous live broadcast.

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