Chuck: The Complete First Season on Blu-ray Disc Review by Brandon A. DuHamel on BigPictureBigSound

Blu-ray Disc and DVD : Blu-ray Disc Reviews

Published: 2008-11-13 - 21:41:30

Chuck: The Complete First Season on Blu-ray Disc Review

By Brandon A. DuHamel

The Series

After someone breaks into a government facility a series of events leads to an ordinary guy who also happens to be a computer whiz stumbling into top secret, cutting edge government technology that causes him to develop extraordinary abilities that the government can use to battle international crime syndicates and terrorists. From that point forward, that ordinary guy becomes a secret agent. By the way, what I'm referring to isn't Chuck, but Jake 2.0, the short-lived series that ran on the now-defunct UPN network a few years ago.

The first thing I thought of when I watched Chuck was the less than passing similarities between the two series. With only a few changes, Chuck is basically Jake 2.0 re-written. In Chuck, the regular guy, Chuck Bartowski (Zachary Levi) doesn't have the superhuman strength and abilities to interface with computers that Jake did, nor did he originally work for the government as a computer analyst. Instead, Chuck works at a Buy More as part of their Nerd Herd (think, Best Buy and GeekSquad) where his NSA handler, John Casey (Adam Baldwin) also works undercover, and Chuck's partner and CIA handler Sarah Walker (Yvonne Strahovski) works undercover at a nearby Wienerlicious hotdog restaurant.

Chuck, after having absorbed into his mind what is known as the "Intersect," a secret government intelligence database, when his former college roommate, a government spy, emails him the program, begins having flashes that enable him to foresee events and capture criminals when he sees certain people or objects.

The series has a fun romantic subplot between the protagonists Chuck and Sarah who are pretending to be in a relationship as part of their cover, but begin to develop real feelings for one another. Then there are the various cultural references that the shows producers sneak in that should keep geeks entertained and fishing for a longtime to come, such as the Tyrell Corporation logo that Chuck's best friend Morgan (Joshua Gomez) has on his bag, an allusion to the film Blade Runner or during one of Chuck's flashes when he blurts out that "Oceanic Flight 815 was shot down by a surface-to-air…" a particularly amusing reference to the ABC series LOST.

Chuck has its moments and it can sometimes be a good time waster, but it also has a lot of lulls. I don't know if perhaps the series suffered in its first season due to having only 13 episodes, and was therefore unable to be entirely fleshed out, but the characters sometimes lack chemistry and the stories lack the humor they seek to portray. Being that Chuck is meant to be a mix of action and comedy, it rarely fulfills completely on both levels. Perhaps in its second season it will reach its stride. In this first season, the series shows potential, but often disappoints.

The Picture

Chuck's picture offers little in the way of eye candy. All though it is an hour-long show, the color palette more closely resembles that of a half-hour sitcom. It may very well be due to the way the show was originally filmed, but picture quality also varies. At times Chuck is clean and sharp, with good detail, and other times it is soft, diffuse, with nearly distracting levels of grain. Contrast is set very hot, which is particularly noticeable in the many scenes in the Buy More and on Chuck's white work-shirt. Because of the overblown contrast levels, details are sometimes lost and blooming can be an issue. Black levels are also varied; sometimes deep, sometimes grayish, and tend to show a high level of slow-motion grain. Other than the varied consistency of the filming, there are no compression artifacts or processing issues such as edge enhancement evident.

The Sound

Chuck comes with an underwhelming English Dolby Digital 5.1 mix in addition to French and Spanish Dolby 2.0 dubbed options. The package is also erroneously labeled as having a German Dolby 2.0 mix, but I could not find this anywhere on the disc. Warner seems to not only have a history of crippling their Blu-ray releases with lossy audio, but also mislabeling them on the packaging, such as the mislabeled Pushing Daisies release which purported to have TrueHD, but, alas, had only Dolby Digital, or Purple Rain, which claims TrueHD and Dolby Digital Plus, yet only had the former and not the latter. Why the studio can't seem to get it together with the audio portion of their Blu-ray releases is truly perplexing.

But, I digress; Chuck is a typical television soundmix. It's front heavy and contains very little in the way of discrete information in the rear channels. Surrounds are used mainly for ambient effects such as the sounds of chattering shoppers in the Buy More or traffic noise in various outdoor scenes. There are little to no directional sound effects panned into the rear channels and the mix is mostly still. The various musical accompaniments and the series' score are well balanced into the mix, however the Dolby Digital compression doesn't allow for the sound to breathe, making the soundfield sound more closed in and the low frequency extension sound and feel a little constrained.

The Extras

Most of the supplemental material offered in this release is throwaway stuff that most won't go back to very often. Even the deleted scenes are annoyingly offered only in a continuous playback option. The most informative extra offered up is the Chuck's World "making-of" featurette, which is typical, but at least offers some background information.

The extras offered on this release are:

Disc 1:

Declassified Scenes (standard definition) -- Deleted scenes played continuously

Disc 2:

Behind the Story:
- Chuck's World (4:3/windowboxed/standard definition) -- Creators Josh Schwartz and Chris Fedak describe the origin, development and casting of Chuck's central characters. This featurette also offers some looks at screen tests for the central characters.
Declassified Scenes (standard definition) -- Deleted scenes played continuously

Disc 3:

Chuck on Chuck (1.78:1/standard definition) -- The show's creators, Zachary Levi and Joshua Gomez introduce clips of some of their favorite scenes from the series.
Chuck Versus the Chuckles A.K.A.: The Gag Reel (standard definition) -- Bloopers and outtakes.
Declassified Scenes -- Deleted Scenes Played Continuously
Chuck's Online World (4:3/windowboxed/standard definition): -- A series of online video clips from the Chuck online community.

Final Thoughts

Chuck: The Complete First Season is a lighthearted and sometimes humorous time-waster of a show. On paper, the concept it not wholly original, but it has the potential to be a modern Get Smart of sorts. Part sitcom/part action series, Chuck often struggles to find its place, as does this inconsistent video transfer from Warner. Because of this, I can only recommend this release as a rental first to anyone who is not already a fan of this series.

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