Chuck - The Series Finale

After five seasons, Chuck ends its run on January 27th with two back to back episodes... "Chuck Versus Sarah" and "Chuck Versus the Goodbye".

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZtkyte8C9U[/yt]

 

I'm gonna miss that show. It always made me smile.

 

This is it guys, the moment we've all been waiting for, when the show goes off the air.

 

Here in the UK we've still got S5 to look fwd to.

 

I'll jump back in for the last two eps, even though I thought last season's finale was perfectly good as a series finale.

I hope the writers and the best of the actors get new shows soon. Probably too late for 2012-13 unless they really hustle.

 

I had no idea the last episode was tonight! I am so behind!

 

Recording it now; will watch it when Hubby gets home.

It's a bit sad that it's over, but it's been very uneven this last season.

 

Part One of the series finale was a good, emotional hour with Chuck faced with the heartbreaking problem of a Sarah without memories of the love between them. But Part Two..meh. I didn't like the ending. It lacked the emotional impact of a series wrapup and it felt more like a cliffhanger than a satisfying ending. There is the hope that one day she will regain her memories like Morgan. But that glimmer of hope isn't enough to make me feel differently about the ending. And the whole thing with Ellie and Awesome getting job offers from another hospital, Alex and Morgan moving in together, and Jeff and Lester being offered to be stars felt so out of blue than a series of natural developments.

 

Oh damn.. that's all i can say now.

I've just finished the show finale and i never expected that. Chuck was always a light show (with few exceptions) and always managed to find a way (usually with a big disregard for logic and/or realism) to reset such situations and go on and i can't applaud the producers enough for having the balls to completely change their style and actually have this finale.. to have these balls to write and stick to the ending as they did.

I love this show to death.. wasn't always easy, especially with their will they/won't they during seasons 2+3 and i absolutely despised the Shaw character but the show had so much heart that few other show can come close or be on the same level.
Everything i saw around the show, the Comic Con panels, interviews, the gag reels etc painted a picture of a big family that likes each other very much and likes to work together and to see them goofing off between takes was just delightful and i believe this translated to the show very well.

I loved the nerd and pop culture references throughout the show, done the same things with buddies of mine that Chuck and Morgan did (minus the spy stuff off course ) and that alone would have made me fall in love with the show but then they had those goofy plots, grunting Casey, the absolutely gorgeous Yvonne Strahovski (who i so wish to expand her career and get her big breakout) and all the other secondary or tertiary characters.

I have got to say that this finale probably ranks amongst the best i've ever seen because of the risk they took.. on par with the bittersweetness of the DS9 finale, the heartbreaking end to MASH and the hope inspiring Buffy finale. It had all that.. i know that it's "only" a TV show but nevertheless my heart broke and my chest tightened a bit at the end of the first part when Chuck breaks down, gets beaten around by Sarah and essentially loses the love of his life. Coming to terms with the loss of "his" Sarah was hard to watch and for a fleeting moment i believed they'd hit the reset button but this is where the aforementioned producer balls come into play.. they don't! They motherfuckin' don't hit the reset button!!
This is Adama getting shot in the season 1 finale and actually dieing! The heroes of whatever show actually failing in their mission to save the world and having to live with the consequences when the show continues. This is a level of Game of Thrones where even beloved and cool characters get killed off and i would have never expected that from Chuck.

Instead they invent a whole new kind of reset button and rewind the show back to the beginning.. Chuck has the Intersect again ("Boy.. i haven't done that in a while!" - yes Chuck, you didn't and i missed it so much), Sarah isn't in love with him but there is so much hope instilled in the last scene that the outcome is inevitable.. the loveable King of Nerds will do the unthinkable and conquer the heart of his love for a second time and they will rebuild their life together. That is a hopeful message to take with in the years to come when we pop in a Chuck episode from time to time to rewatch the gang save the world and catch the bad guys.


Parts in the finale that stood out even amidst the awesome:

- Jeffster.. holy friggin' Jesus! Jeffster saves the day and boy do they do it in style. Jeffster was one of the most genius things to come out of the show.. during the height of their antics it was always awesome and to give them a farewell in this way was just brilliant.

- John Casey.. that big hunk of a soulless assassin from season 1 has found a heart and i daresay better life in Burbank on a routine mission (or so he thought) when he met a nerd who'd change his life. It took Chuck 5 years to warm up an entire iceblock but he did i and i can't imagine a better thank you than him doing his part in reconnecting Chuck and Sarah and that big hug he gave Chuck.. i was smiling from ear to ear.

- nice for everyone else to end on a high note.. Morgan and Alex moving in together, the Awesomes starting a new life and Big Mike is happy as ever (and having his very own Subway now , god i love how totally unsubtle and in your face they do their product placement)

I will miss you all and you did a brilliant job all these years! *raises glass and bids farewell*

P.S.
Yes i know.. some of what i wrote is sappy and maybe overly sentimental but it is what it is and if you don't like it.. your problem!

 

Jeffster were at their best and most awesome in the finale. They got to be heroes and now they're gonna be as big as David Hasselhoff in Germany. Perfect ending for those guys.

Chuck and Sarah...not so much. Sarah Walker basically died last week. The one in the final two hours wasn't the one I grew to love over the past 5 seasons. There was hope in the end she'd regain her memories after that beach scene but it's a little too ambiguous for me to not leave a bittersweet taste in my mouth. I guess I was hoping for a more Alias type ending where they a flashforward of Sydney and Vaughn happily married with kids. I was hoping for a more happier ending then what we got tonight. I just kinda felt numb. I wasn't sad or happy...just numb. I'm semi disappointed but not upset. I choose to believe that she remembered everything. She did remember some Weinerlicious stuff, remembered the porn virus and the beach from the pilot so the signs were there. I was just hoping the end had her getting a flood of memories back like what happened at the end of Lost. Anyway guess I can live with the ending. The ambiguity really doesn't quite fit with the tome of Chuck. it worked much better on and with the end of The Sopranos.


Anyone catch Robert Duncan McNeill who directed the Chuck finale in the helicopter with Casey? He was sitting right next to him.

Chuck Vs. The Post Mortem: Show Bosses Spill Series Finale Secrets, Say There's More to Come

There's going to be some additional scenes for the finale on the DVDs...stuff they had to cut out to have a 2 hour finale.

 

The ending reminded me of 50 First Dates.

 

I like the fact they stopped the bomb with porn lol.

 

The finale last night wasn't bad, it had all the various comedic and action beats that make Chuck what it is, I just wish the writers had come with their A-game and actually created a through-line that had a resonance with what had come before.

It actually wasn't the fault of the finale entirely. This last season really had no idea where it was going or what it was trying to say from a narrative sense. And waiting until the last four episodes to really start any sort of progression to what they had in mind for the end was really poor planning. They had the time, the forewarning to really construct a careful layered closing story-arc, and they did not even attempt it.

The nostalgia factors almost got to me, almost. Seeing the Chuck and Sarah relationship rebooted reminded me of those halcyon days of season one and two where the show had a real drive and spark. But then I remembered that it was season five and the show was ending. The Sarah memory wipe was a big middle finger to the fans no matter which way you take it. Option 1) Sarah doesn't regain her memory and has to fall in love with Chuck again. Cute. Now what about all those long conversations between Chuck and Sarah, "I don't want to be a spy!", "Being a spy is all I am!" yeah, all of those are meaningless now. So why did the season waste so much time on them? And you can go back farther of course.

Option 2) Sarah regains her memory(I personally think she did given how fast she was remembering things), in which case the whole final four episodes become a manufactured excuse for a reset button. Or in my mind, the writers basically saying, "We can't think of anything new to say about the core relationship of our show, so lets just do a greatest hits remix." Which was executed pretty well, but not the ending the show deserved.

I guess it is not a surprise, the show ran out of gas creatively when Sarah and Chuck finally got together for good. But I was hoping the writers would manage something more creative for the finale.

 

Quinn was a rather lame bad guy in the end. Sarah took him out so easily it kind of negated the difficulty in fighting him the last several episodes. And he was the guy who was originally going to get the Intersect before Bryce Larkin took it? You sure couldn't tell that from this arc.

As I searched for reactions to the finale on various sites it's kind of hard to believe how well received the final scene of the finale was. The vast majority of posts were very happy with the final scene and thought it was perfect. Again...it was too ambiguous for my tastes. A silly show like Chuck shouldn't end on such a note.

 

Bah, I messed up the DVR programming. What happened at the end? Is Sarah preggers? That's the big secret, right?

Uh...

Is that how they really ended the series? Maybe my DVR was doing me a favor.

 

Adam Sandler should sue.

I was falling asleep in the middle.

Had to slap myself.

Jeffster had a fantastic conclusion.

Germany.

It makes so much sense.

 

The way Chuck ended is basically Angel all over again--lots of people will absolutely HATE it because of how open-ended it leaves things and lots of people will love it due to how bittersweet it is.

I fall into the latter group. I would have puked up my lunch if they had flashed forward with Chuck, Sarah and baby living in a house with a red door and a white picket fence. I know the show is sappy as hell but that would have broken my sap-o-meter into a billion pieces, causing me to consider one of the previous "endings" (Paris, Morgan getting the Intersect, etc.) as my own personal ending to the show and the remaining eps being some sort of alternate universe that doesn't really count (a la Buffy).

I think the finale was only the second time I actually enjoyed Jeffster (the other time being at Ellie and Awesome's wedding). I liked all the references to earlier hijinks (the Wienerlicious and Irene Demova) and Chuck staying true to his "no guns" policy.

As not-so-brilliant as I think the last two seasons were (they were good, but not great like the first three), I'm going to miss this goofy show that had more heart than just about anything else on network TV (and most of cable TV, for that matter).

 

I thought it was a perfect ending. Much better than I anticipated.
Jeffster were awesome! One last in-your-face product placement for subway. And no reset button! The last scene was beautiful without any sap.

 

Chuck's last words...

"I've always wanted to slay a dragon."