Chuck Premieres to Strong Ratings

I thought this could use its own thread!

http://tvbythenumbers.com/2010/01/11/chuck-season-3-premiere-ratings-yay/38337

For the first hour Chuck average 3.0 rating with adults 18-49 and 7.7 million viewers and the second hour averaged 2.9 rating with adults 18-49 and 7.2 million! That is a great turnout! Whoo!

 

Good numbers. I hope there's not too much of a dropoff against stronger competition tonight.

Using NBC's flawless decision-making skills, this also means they're going to order 30 more episodes and air them once or twice a week, completely saturating the airwaves with Chuck until everyone gets sick of it.

 

^ More likely, they'll order 30 more episodes, then when the show loses a small fraction of viewers on its second night, they'll move the show to Fridays, where it'll lose more viewers. A week later, NBC will put the show on hiatus and then burn off whatever they had left in July.

 

Much better than I thought it would do. It was advertised heavily but on NBC and you have to discount it automatically for that.

But I dunno if it will hold up. The show was pretty heavily aimed at existing viewers, who are the only ones who would give a flying fribble about the Chuck & Sarah romance. Anyone who's new to it would wonder why they were wasting so much time on the girly stuff and not showing more kung fu.

 

Tell that to my mom. She had never seen the show before and was already freaking out 5 minutes into the premiere when Sarah throws her phone in the pool.

"Why would she do that to him?!"

 

I need to get my sister into this show. She liked the O.C. and she does have her geeky side (like seeing Serenity with me in Theaters and watching Firefly with me).

 

Last night's numbers were down slightly, but they were the highest ratings in its timeslot since the Chuck 3D episode after the superbowl.

 

The irony is that Chuck was an idiot and deserved it. Sarah should run off with

Spoiler: upcoming ep

Superman

nyah nyah.

 

I just thought it was funny that my mom reacted at all having never seen the show before. I responded by going, "Haha, you already love it!"

 

Really? Chuck should have been willing to run away from his best shot at a real career with any real accomplishments, from his (self-imposed) obligation to make Bryce's sacrifice mean something? He should run away from his family and friends, and accept that he'll never see them again? He should go AWOL and turn himself into a fugitive from the government?

All because Sarah wants to, when Sarah has so much less to lose than Chuck?

I adore Sarah and understand why she did that. She had, after all, demonstrated to Chuck that she'd go AWOL for him, and she had come to realize that her life has been lived under the thumb of the CIA ever since her father was arrested. And she had come to realize how much she was missing out on a real life with someone who genuinely loves her by being with Chuck. But she wasn't being particularly rational, nor did she really pause to think about things from Chuck's point of view. She never really paused to realize how much more she was asking Chuck to give up than Chuck was asking her to give up.

And she dumped him, remember that. Chuck didn't break up with her, he just didn't want to go AWOL with her. She was the one who ended their relationship (such as it was).

 

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/showtracker/2010/01/chuck-ratings-are-just-good-enough.html

L.A. Times says that Chuck fans can breathe a sigh of relief.

 

^I can't say I was terribly worried considering how many episodes had already been ordered for this season.

 

True, but if the ratings remain solid, that increases the probability of a Season Four.

 

True. However, for the sake of my sanity, I have decided that this will be the final season (and I will let Season 4, if it happens, be a pleasant surprise!).

 

Agreed!

 

For NBC, "just good enough" is better than most of their lineup.

I still find it funny how "just good enough" translates to very different things to the different networks:

CW: Biggest. Hit. Ever.
NBC: It's not going anywhere unless the braintrust think a talk show five nights a week will put up competitive ratings against scripted programming.
Fox: It's safe unless it's helmed by Joss Whedon.
ABC: It's borderline.
CBS: Cancelled yesterday.

 

I don't really think that's true. In fact it was really only because of Whedon that Dollhouse got a second season.

 

Amen brother!

 

If Chuck can't bring himself to shoot a person in cold blood - or even self-defense - then the CIA is not for him. He's just deluding himself to think it'll ever work out. He should have run off with Sarah. He traded a real relationship for a career that will never work out.

Chuck didn't tell Sarah, "I can't run away with you because I can't stand the idea of never seeing my family again." He said, "I can't run away with you because I'd rather go play spy." That's why he's a moron.

...of course it's absurd that they would have to run away together. Real life CIA agents have marriages and families. The writers should stop trying to impose this BS contrived sexual tension and just let them have sex, get married, whatever. Why would it "ruin" the show?

 

Oh, I dunno about that. How many times now has Chuck managed to find a way to save everyone else's ass when they're busy thinking of new ways to kill people? How many times has Chuck made a mission work when murder would just lead to failure?

I think it's safe to say that Chuck is a show that's very skeptical of the necessity of extrajudicial killings in the name of national security.

No, he said he wanted to become a spy because it would mean helping people he cared about. Which plays into that wanting to finally have a sense of meaning and direction in his life that I was talking about. And I think it's implicit in Chuck's character that he does not want to give up his family and friends -- that's why they didn't just lock Chuck up in the first place, after all.

And then have their covers blown when the Administration decides that their spouses embarrassed them.

But this show is not real life and it's inappropriate to try to force it to be real. In this show, the CIA seems a great deal more sinister than it usually is in real life -- and a great deal more controlling of its agents' lives.