The Hour-Long Comedy and Chuck
TV World has a formula, comedies are half an hour and dramas get a full hour. That’s the way things work. It is always true for dramas. And with a few exceptions it is true for comedies. One of those exceptions on the air right now is Chuck.
Chuck is the story of an average guy who has all the governments secrets downloaded into his brain and the lengths the government must go to protect him, and in turn use the information he has in his brain to protect the country. While the spy stuff is interesting, the best part of the show takes place at Chuck’s day job, the Buy More, and Best Buy/Circuit City type electronics store. This part of the show is where the comedy really come through. The whack-pack of characters that are Chuck’s co-workers really steal the show.
There should be more of these hour long comedies on. I did a search for similar shows and came up with a few others, but most of them are considered Dramadies. Here are a few on the list: Boston Legal, Pushing Dasies, Ugly Betty, Desperate Housewives, and Eli Stone. On this list, I would only consider Ugly Betty a true comedy in the same vain as Chuck. I’ve seen it a few times (it is one of the wife’s favorite shows) and it is funny, and follows a similar premise to Chuck, a good balance of Betty’s personal and professional life.
I’ve kind of lost track of where I was going with this post so I’ll just go ahead and end it here. If you aren’t watching Chuck, you should be.
3 years ago