Chuck, Life Get Full-Season Pickups

In my apartment we have a Monday night tradition. Our local bar/restaurant has half-price food on Mondays, which results in culinary miracles like $8 filet mignon and a $2 Egg McMuffin--but glorious!-- with coffee. Then at 7:50 we hightail it home to watch How I Met Your Mother. While I write up my recap, we flip the channel as quickly as possible from The Big Bang Theory so as not to lose any brain cells, and watch the second half of Chuck. Inevitably when we turn on Chuck, someone--usually Chuck-- has a gun pointed to their head. Tonight, while trying to make that point to our neighbors, my roommate and I triumphantly flipped the channel at the precise moment a main character was shot. We never know exactly how our characters came to be in mortal danger, but by the end of the episode we’ve usually figured it out.

This is all a very long way of saying that I enjoy Chuck, even though I’ve only once seen the first half of the show (and yes, I know I should get DVR-- I’m working on it, OK?) And this is good news for me, since NBC has given Chuck a back-nine order, along with a fellow freshman series, Life. This means that, once the writer’s strike is over, we’ll get to see more sexual tension between Chuck and Sarah ,more stupid antics from Morgan, and hopefully a lot more adorable homoerotic tension between Chuck and Morgan. Oh, and also firearms. Lots and lots of firearms.

Chuck and Life are the first freshman series to get pickups from NBC since the strike began, a nice sign of faith from the network that audiences will still return to the shows once the presumed strike hiatus is over. Life has held on well to its Bionic Woman lead-in audience, while Chuck’s sweeps ratings were comparable to those of Deal or No Deal, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Each show does the usual crime story with a hook-- Life features a cop who spent time in prison, while Chuck stars a computer geek who becomes an unlikely CIA agent when all of the agency’s secrets are transferred to his subconscious.

There’s no word on NBC’s other two freshman shows Bionic Woman and Journeyman, which is a shame since so much promotional money went into Bionic Woman, and I’ve really come around to Journeyman. The nice thing about this strike, though, is that all of these shows are getting a proper chance-- especially given that the website TVSeries Finale says that Journeyman’s ratings are even lower than the colossal failure Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip had toward the end of its run. I’m not sure if even the writer’s strike can save Journeyman, but for now, I’m at least glad I can see how the story plays out. And even if it doesn’t work out in the end, there will always be Chuck-- at least until next season.