29 Aralık 2007 Cumartesi
CHUCK Episode 12 - Chuck Versus the Undercover Lover
CHUCK SEASON 1 - EPISODE 12
We flash back to 2004 to see Casey involved with a female Russian who says she is a photo-journalist. She leaves the hotel room, leaving him in bed and suddenly he hears an explosion. He runs out to find her camera blackened from the explosion and Ilsa nowhere to be found. Back in the present, Sarah says Casey's cover is blown when Ilsa shows up alive with a Russian man named Victor Federov, who announces to the room that he is going to be her husband. Casey, Sarah and Chuck learn Ilsa is a spy and after finding a Russian-made bug, they realize her husband now knows it too, so they have to try and stop him from killing her.
Cast and Crew
Writer: Phil Klemmer
Director: Fred Toye
Star: Zachary Levi (Chuck Bartowski), Yvonne Strahovski (Sarah Walker), Joshua Gomez (Morgan Pace), Adam Baldwin (Major John Casey), Sarah Lancaster (Ellie Bartowski).
Recurring Role: Ryan McPartlin (Captain Awesome)
Guest Star: Pavel Lychnikoff (Victor Federov), Ivana Milicevic (Ilsa Trinchina)
Episode Recap
Episode 112 | Season 1 | 01/24/2008
Grozny, Chechnya, 2004. Posing as an energy consultant, Casey is having a torrid affair with photojournalist Ilsa. He presents her with a necklace just before she enters a café that explodes. Casey finds Ilsa's melted camera on the street, but there's no way she could have survived. Back at Buy More in the present day, Casey snaps out of his reverie, looking as if he wants to kill a pesky customer who is uncordially demanding assistance. Chuck cuts in before Casey loses it and helps the customer out.
Chuck finds Jeff stalking celebrities online, having broken into the Hotel Seville's database. Chuck goes to shut down the windows, and flashes on several names, all Soviet arms dealers, black marketers... and Ilsa. Chuck presents Casey with a list of names, explaining that for the sake of discretion, he left Ilsa off the list. Casey slams Chuck against the wall and threatens to end him if he ever mentions Ilsa's name again. Chuck runs to Wienerlicious to persuade Sarah to help him find out more about Ilsa.
Ellie and Captain Awesome break up Jeff and Lester's game of paper football, asking for sales assistance. "Retail therapist" Morgan steps in to help the couple, who want to go dutch on one big anniversary present to themselves. Ellie votes for a big flat screen TV so they can spend more time together, but Awesome wants a washer/dryer for clean boxers. When Ellie is paged to come to the hospital, she tells Awesome to surprise her and choose the gift.
Beckman sends Chuck and Sarah to infiltrate a private party at the Hotel Seville that will be attended by all the Soviet criminals. Chuck shows up in his tux, but he's overdressed, so Casey pulls off his jacket and sticks a tray of vodka shots in his hand. One of the gangsters recognizes Chuck as his cousin Sasha, so Chuck plays along and joins in a lusty circle dance. Chuck recognizes Ilsa, and Sarah calls in that their cover has been compromised. Chuck tells her to let Casey live a little.
Russian oligarch Victor Federov takes the mike to make some announcements, just as Casey makes his way over to Ilsa in disbelief. Victor introduces his bride-to-be: Ilsa! Back at Buy More, Chuck asks Casey if he wants to talk, but he doesn't, aside from informing that Sarah has been assigned to set up surveillance on Victor. Morgan and Awesome surprise Ellie at home with a new washer/dryer, but she thinks Awesome getting what he wants is no surprise. They want different things in life. Therapist Morgan suggests Awesome's need for extreme adventure stems from his fear of intimacy. Ellie has been banking her future on a giant muscley child, and she's not going to do it anymore.
Chuck presses Casey for info on Ilsa. If a guy like Casey can find love in spyville, maybe there's hope for Chuck. Casey finally admits that he met Ilsa in a flower market, and she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, but it's over. Nice girls don't marry corrupt Russian oligarchs. Chuck thinks nice girls don't marry guys like Casey, either. Casey points out that Ilsa didn't know what he did for a living, and Chuck suggests she might not know what Victor does, either. Casey should fight for her.
Chuck convinces Casey to return to the Hotel Seville, where they run into Sarah, on her way to plant a bug in Victor's suite. Chuck pretends they came to watch surveillance footage, so she leaves them in a housekeeping closet, where she's set up the monitors. Spying Ilsa alone at the bar, Chuck persuades Casey to go after her. Sarah runs into Victor's goon in the hallway, then radios to Casey to plant the bug while she takes care of the body. Only trouble is, Chuck's holding the radio.
Chuck radios Sarah back faking Casey's voice, then leaves to plant the bug. He spies a briefcase on the desk, filled with files on Ilsa, who is an undercover French agent. Ilsa and Casey enter, and immediately get busy on the bed while Chuck hides underneath. When Sarah calls, his cover is blown, and Ilsa aims her gun at Casey. When drunken Victor shows up, Ilsa tells Chuck and Casey to hide under the bed. Victor passes out on top of Ilsa, and she kicks the guys out.
Newly single Awesome plays poker at Buy More with Morgan and the guys. When he learns it's strip poker, Awesome leaves to reconsider the single life. Dejected, Casey lays around the Home Theater Room, telling Chuck that Ilsa is dead to him, when she shows up to explain her cover. Casey threatens to make one call and have her and all the Russians detained, but Ilsa knows he wouldn't be unprofessional like that. She wishes things could be different, and gives him back the necklace before saying goodbye.
Chuck visits Casey, who drowns his sorrows in scotch. Sarah knocks on Ellie's door looking for Chuck. Ellie's been drowning her sorrows, and doesn't want to be left alone, so when Morgan shows up with a comforting shoulder, Sarah takes off. Meanwhile, Chuck discovers that Ilsa's necklace contains a Russian bug, so her life is in danger. Chuck and Casey proceed to the hotel and phone Sarah to join them.
Sarah cases the wedding party as the poolside ceremony gets underway. Meanwhile, Victor captures Chuck and Casey in Ilsa's suite, and ties them up while laying plans for their imminent death. Tied together, Casey and Chuck do battle with Victor's goons, only to fall off the side of the balcony into the pool. Casey exits the pool to protest the wedding and all the Russians pull out their guns. Sarah puts down her gun, then kicks it to Ilsa, who holds it to Victor's head, and the détente is finished.
After passing out, Ellie wakes up hung over in bed with fully-clothed Morgan, who assures her that nothing happened except a hug. Awesome interrupts, with a surprise for Ellie - he's bought the big TV. She apologizes for getting mad, but Awesome tells her that he was being selfish, which he realized after a taste of the single life. Chuck spies on Casey and Ilsa saying goodbye. She's going back undercover. Chuck thinks it sucks, but Casey assures him that such is the spy's life.
28 Aralık 2007 Cuma
CHUCK - VIDEO : Yvonne Strahovski Undos Her Hair
CHUCK - VIDEO : The stars of "Chuck" Invent a Game
CHUCK - "Chuck's" Josh Gomez Talks Games
"We're both HUGE Gears of War fans," said Gomez. "Halo was Halo...it will always be that, but as soon as I played the first Halo is how I feel about Gears. I anticipate the sequel to Gears like I anticipated the sequel to Halo. It's going to be tough to follow up on that. I understand why Halo kind of dipped. I don't know if Halo 2 could have ever lived up to the expectations, because they were so high, and I kind of feel like there's going to be a similar thing with Gears. I've taken a lot of heat from a lot of people because Gears was so hyped and so huge of a game, but to me I thought it lived up to it. And multiplayer-wise, that game is so much more up my alley. I actually prefer the smaller four-on-four combat because then I knew who I was playing with and you could communicate and I thought there was a lot more strategy and things like that to it."
Gomez said that a lot of the video game references in the show's dialog comes from ad-libbing, because the writers of the show aren't gamers, themselves.
"Exactly, that's totally me and Zach doing our thing and we try to throw in game jargon wherever we can," said Gomez. "On the Call of Duty 4 episode, I said, 'Come on, Chuck, I need a snipe to cover my back,' and the writers were like, 'Huh?' But we got it in there. I think we need to get them Geek 101 lessons sometimes."
Unlike Levi, who'd love to do a video game voice, Gomez has dabbled in game work. In fact, he can be heard in one of the best games of this year, BioShock, as well as in the upcoming Turok from Disney Interactive.
"I did some work on some Final Fantasy games, Call of Duty, Armored Core, and I got some stuff that's still coming out like the new Turok game," said Gomez. "I come from a commercial and voiceover background, which is how I made my living in New York City before coming to LA."
Gomez brought a couple of Slicers to life in BioShock, as well as PigSkin, that football helmet-wearing freak that "was pushed a little too hard by his father." Before stepping into the booth on these games, Gomez gets to geek out on character art of the game, as well as video, sometimes. And as a die hard gamer, that's really cool for him, especially since he was a fan of System Shock.
"I thought BioShock was phenomenal and the story was so amazing and the actual emotional ties that I have to it, which is what I love about where gaming is going," explained Gomez. "You can actually convey emotions now and get attached to characters and really tell a story, which is really fun for me, obviously, because that's the thing I love about acting and doing all that stuff. Games are now this other medium, which I happen to be addicted to and really love, that are so deep now. I just thought BioShock was a beautiful game--the art style was just up my alley, that whole world, and the '20s theme and music...that was great."
When it comes to being on a hit TV show on NBC, most of Gomez' gamer friends are genuinely more impressed when he gets voice acting gigs on games like BioShock and Turok than when he gets Hollywood gigs. The hit show and the grueling pre-Hollywood writers' strike schedule, made it tough for Gomez to do anything but game.
"I barely had time to go out and be in public," said Gomez. "On my days off I just have a love affair with my couch and my 360. I'm like, 'Oh, this is heaven. I have nothing to do for 12 hours but play videogames and maybe drink a beer.'"
When he does go out, Gomez is recognized a lot more often.
"People will come up and say, 'Hey, you're in Chuck!' and you're like, 'Whoa. Yeah. Hey, what's up?' and it's great when they say, 'I love that show!' I always thank God they're not saying, 'I hate you.' That's never good."
Cliffy B is among the millions of fans of "Chuck," which will be back in 2008 with more action, comedy and videogame placement. In the meantime, Gomez, who does game with Levi, will have plenty of time to do what he loves--game.
By John Gaudiosi
27 Aralık 2007 Perşembe
Way to Go, 'Chuck'!
Way to Go, 'Chuck'!
With a Dash of Hitchcockian Intrigue, NBC Comedy Strikes a Blow for Nerds
By Tom Shales
Washington Post Staff Writer
2007;
"Chuck" is Chuck-full of elements already available in wretched excess (the only kind of excess TV knows) in prime time. There's the stereotypical wacky slacker, and lots of tongue-in-cheek, high-tech derring-do, which, if you're not in a playful mood, will come off as derring-don't.
But the show, premiering tonight on NBC, also has a happily palpable likability going for it, a lot of that courtesy of Zachary Levi, who plays the unlikely and in fact unwilling hero. Chuck Bartowski is a suburban schlemiel whose passive existence as supervisor of the Nerd Herd at the local Buy More is shattered one day by a portentous piece of e-mail from Chuck's old Stanford roommate Bryce Larkin (Matthew Bomer).
Larkin is some sort of secret agent involved in rooftop chases, spectacular explosions and the like. He works in a room whose walls, floor and ceiling are all papered with changing images, like the inside of a big brain. That e-mail, sent in feverish desperation, is going to plunge poor unprepared Chuck into that same kind of world, and predictably but amusingly, he's one fish who quickly begins to miss his water, lukewarm though it may have been.
As a hapless and helpless victim of circumstance, Chuck is a distant relation to Roger Thornhill, the advertising-man hero of Alfred Hitchcock's "North by Northwest," whose life goes haywire when he's mistaken for a secret agent named George Kaplan. Producer and series creator Josh Schwartz has in fact decorated the series pilot with many a Hitchcock reference, including a rooftop chase as in "Vertigo," the prevention of a political assassination as in "The Man Who Knew Too Much" and that Hitchcock favorite, the icy blonde -- in this case Yvonne Strahovski as one of the prides of the CIA.
The e-note somehow implanted a dizzy gallery of information in Chuck's head, and he finds he's being pursued and besieged with annoying and yet exhilarating frequency. This interferes with, but does not replace, such Nerd Herd duties as placating a cute little ballerina whose daddy forgot to load the camcorder with which he thought he recorded his daughter's dance recital. Obviously, that guy's in Big Trouble, too.
Details of mall life in modern America are wittily observed and make a cleverly incongruous background for Chuck's narrow escapes, mad dashes and clumsy attempts at swashbuckling. But he's no dope; if he were, he'd lose our sympathy soon enough. Behind that pocket protector, he's playful as a puppy.
To steal from the title of a great old Chuck Jones cartoon, this isn't just "Chuck" but "Chuck Amok," and if the premise and execution remind you of teen-aimed movies with similar setups and characters, at least it should remind you of the good ones, not the lame-o's. "Chuck" cheerfully brightens up NBC's Monday night of video fantastique and does it in a pretty magnifique way.
Get Behind Me Chuck!
Get Behind Me Chuck!
There had been some talk in the USA Weekend post about Zach Levi's religion so here is the article where he talks about his Christianity and how it affects ~his life~
I will bold the interesting parts.
FUTURE LOVERS?For Zachary Levi, there has never been a backup plan.
For the 22-year-old actor and co-star of the ABC sitcom Less Than Perfect, acting was his calling; it was what he was supposed to do. After being cast in supporting roles in two NBC sitcom pilots (which weren’t picked up) and the TV movie Big Shot: Confessions of a Campus Bookie, Levi wasn’t satisfied. As a Christian in Hollywood, the most intensely competitive atmosphere in the entertainment world, he is constantly working to maintain both his positive attitude and his personal ministry in a jaded industry.
[RELEVANT magazine:] You were a mainstay in the Ojai Theater for several years doing The Outsiders, Godspell and other plays. What did you learn from live theater that is helping your career now?
[Zachary Levi:] Theater has been my entire training process because I never took any acting classes—any kind of conventional training. I learned everything that I know now from doing constant theater, working with different directors, writers and other actors. The actor that I am today would not exist had it not been for everyone that I’ve worked with before, God working within me, constantly keeping my eyes and my ears open to act as a sponge to soak that stuff up and then be able to spit it out when I needed to.
[RM:] Was your family involved in your acting at that point? How did they encourage you?
[ZL:] My family was always very supportive. Whether you’re an actor or not, everybody hears the horror stories of people going to L.A. and trying to be an actor, and their dreams are crushed, and they end up working for the IRS. So they were always protective to the point that they wanted me to have a backup plan, which is understandable, but there was always something inside of me that knew: backup plan, schmackup plan.
[RM:] Before Less Than Perfect you were a hard-working actor in Hollywood like a lot of people are today. What advice would you give others about going to audition after frustrating audition?
[ZL:] The first advice that I would give is to really spend time in prayer to make sure that this is exactly what God wants you to be doing and not just something that you really feel like you should be doing. Many times I have come home from a really devastating audition, and I’d be really thoroughly depressed because it was a role that I really was hoping for. I realized how crucial having a walk with God was because I could turn around and say, “It didn’t happen, but obviously it wasn’t God’s will.” People who don’t have God in their lives only have themselves to blame. So they look back at the audition and they say, “I didn’t do a good enough job.” But so often it has nothing to do with how good you did in the audition; it has to do with the fact that you’re a brunette and they were looking for a blonde. So, to me, the most important factor in all of the rejection was that I had a walk with God. As far as being an actor is concerned, you have to have passion. If you’re not bringing the passion of the character into the room with you, you might as well not come into the room at all.
[RM:] Now you’re part of one of the hottest casts in TV, and you’re playing the role of the archenemy. How have the last few months been for you?
[ZL:] It has been really crazy. You get free stuff; you get to be in the newspaper, in magazine articles and on television shows. It’s weird. To me, it hasn’t all completely sunk in yet. But at the same, I hope it never does. I hope it never completely sinks in. I hope there’s always at least a small part of me that’s always surprised, always taken aback, always childlike or innocent in the whole process.
[RM:] Is it hard to maintain that innocence in this environment?
[ZL:] Overall, as a human beings its hard to maintain that innocence. Even now sometimes I’ll find myself in a situation, and I’ll think to myself—and not in a really negative way but—“I wonder if they know who I am.” And not like, “Don’t you know who I am?” like I’m this huge guy, but I wonder if they know if that I am this guy on this TV show, more out of curiosity than anything else. But the problem is that the curiosity, in an instant, can turn into conceitedness. To me that’s what makes putting on the full armor of God everyday so important. Even saying that right now I feel like such a hypocrite, because reading your Bible and really spending alone time in prayer with the Lord every day, I stumble in that.
[RM:] Is Hollywood a difficult atmosphere to be in as a Christian?
[ZL:] Absolutely. The atmosphere in Hollywood in general is very anti-conservative, very anti-Christian. The liberal segment of Hollywood, which is 80 percent of it if not more, they look at Christians as hypocrites that are false and fake. The tough part is that in many cases I can’t argue with them. My job on my set, I believe, is to first just love people and gain that trust with people where they know that I really do love them and care about their well-being, so that when they are running into problems, they will hopefully, at some point, come to me and ask me, “What is your peace all about? What is your comfort all about? Where do you get your love? Where do you get your talents? And I can turn to them and say without blinking, “Jesus Christ.”
You can’t just come out there and say “Hey, I’m a Christian, and I’m gonna beat you into thinking the way that I do.” You can’t do that. It’s not about manipulation so much as it’s about getting in on someone’s life on the ground floor. So more than anything, that’s what I’m trying to do now. Just build relationships with everyone that I work with.
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