Great news. I hope a pickup for next season is announced soon.
I hope so too. The ratings and demo's of the next couple episodes should make or break it. If it stays consistent, then we'll probably get one.
I didn't realize it was in danger of not being renewed!
I'll keep my fingers crossed!
Me too.
Supposedly it's on the bubble. According to the experts anyway. It's ratings and it's demos flat out suck. But it still gets better numbers then most of NBC's other shows, which is just sad and shows how weak NBC is. They're looking to cut their programing hours next season, so programing time will be scarcer. And you have Jay Leno, who's going to be given an hour a night to crap up our living rooms with his lame jokes. So that's really not good. It's also not made by them, it's made by Warner Brothers. So they might be more inclined to renew a show they make rather then one they don't. And NBC has 4 new shows they're trying to bring in. However, 2 of them(Kings, The Chopping Block) bombed horribly so that's good news for Chuck.
Chuck is down for a variety of reasons. One, NBC in general is down and as such so is Chuck. When NBC was doing good, so was Chuck. It's a small, little niche/cult show that's being asked to go against Dancing with The Stars, House, and CBS's Monday Night Comedy Juggernaut. Also, genre television is a niche market that does well on cable but usually bombs when it's forced to go against Reality Shows, Generic Sitcoms, and Crime-Investigation Shows. And then you have it having to act as lead in to Heroes, a show that pissed away and pissed off more viewers then Enterprise and Voyager combined. Medium has suffered because of it as well. If people don't like the main course, they ain't gonna eat the orderves or the desert as well. The only reason it does resonably well given the circumstances is that it has a strong cult following. Chuck was never going to get Lost-type numbers anyway, but the time slot combined with Monday's competition combined with people giving up on Heroes has hurt them considerably. It's amazing they're still barely hanging on.
What it has going for it? The critics love it. NBC usually likes critics darlings if they get bad ratings or not(Homicide, 30 Rock, etc.). However, given how poorly they are doing, they might not care about the critics. It has a strong cult following, which is good. It gets better numbers then most of their shows. And it's cheap to make. Like it litterally doesn't even cost half of what it costs to make Heroes. The Network is supposedly high on the show as well. And Josh Swchwartz has said they've all but promised him a third season.
I wouldn't hold it against NBC if they pulled the plug. I'd probably do the same in their shoes. I would hold it against them if they didn't give the writers a chance to wrap it all up and give it a proper ending. Because Chuck is a show they could easily wrap up in a single episode.
