CHUCK - AV CLUB: Co-Creator Chris Fedak Interview
by Joel Keller
November 3, 2011
By any measurement, Chuck never should have survived to its fifth and final season. The perpetually low-rated show about a humble computer geek who becomes a top spy, thanks to a supercomputer that was transferred into his brain, was always on NBC’s cancellation bubble. But thanks to a rabid, loyal fan base, love from television critics and recappers, and a network mired in fourth place, co-creators Josh Schwartz and Chris Fedak were able to explore the geeky world of the Burbank Buy More and the relationship between Chuck (Zachary Levi) and his handler, Sarah Walker (Yvonne Strahovski).
Going into the final season, some things have changed: Chuck and Sarah are married, the team is no longer working for the government, and Chuck’s bumbling best friend Morgan (Joshua Gomez) is the one with the Intersect in his head. Right before the season première aired last Friday (to record-low ratings, of course) Fedak sat down with The A.V. Club to talk about the final season, what fans of the show should expect (more Buy More stories, for instance), and why he digs the idea of Stan Lee as a spy...
Joshua Gomez, Zachary Levi, Yvonne Strahovski and Adam Baldwin
... The A.V. Club: What was your reaction when you got this order for 13 episodes, and the word that it was going to be Chuck’s last year?
Chris Fedak: "Oh, we were jazzed. I think when we’ve come to our season finales, especially for the first four seasons, we’ve always kind of designed them to launch a slightly different version of the show, or a new version of the show, each year. The idea was that if we didn’t come back, people would know deep down that Chuck Bartowski and his team were off saving the world.
You know, I love those endings that promise another show, be it Claude Rains and Humphrey Bogart walking off into the mist in Casablanca—and I’m not making that reference comparing my show to Casablanca—or Batman going after the Joker. It’s that notion [that] there’s great adventures out there. So for us, when we got the pickup, we were excited to start breaking season five, because we liked what it did to the show. We like the fact that Chuck didn’t have the Intersect. We loved the idea that Morgan had the Intersect, his best friend, and now it was [Chuck’s] job to take care of him. Because, you know, it’s been five years; he’s gotten better as a spy, and he’s now ready to be a handler. He’s now ready to be who Sarah Walker was in season one.
The other part of it, too, was I think that we had a lot of fun with Chuck having these abilities and doing those Superman stories, and having him figure out the Intersect 2.0. But it was neat to take it away from him, and I think that’s what we’ve had fun with this year as well, is that the spy world is that much more difficult for him..."
Chuck airs Friday at 8/7C on NBC
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