Review: Chuck Season 3 DVD

STUDIO: Warner | DIRECTOR: various | CAST: Zachary Levi, Yvonne Strahovski, Adam Baldwin, Brandon Routh
RELEASE DATE: 9/7/2010 | PRICE: DVD $59.98, Blu-ray $69.97
BONUSES: deleted scenes, featurettes, gag reel
SPECS: 871 min. | action comedy TV | widescreen | Dolby Digital 5.1 | English, French and Spanish subtitles

RATINGS (out of 5 dishes): TV show | Audio | Video | Overall

Despite cancellation threats, TV show Chuck became the little show that could. The show’s third season gives all the fun, laughs and action fans have come to love as well as special features.

Featuring all 19 episodes of Chuck‘s third season, the five-DVD set starts with Chuck (Zachary Levi) turning down the love of his life, spy Sarah (Yvonne Strahovski) for a life of spy work, then getting fired — twice. But when a bad guy kidnaps Chuck and Sarah, he gets pulled back in. Throughout the season, Chuck learns more about his father (Men of a Certain Age‘s Scott Bakula) and his family becomes more of a target, including sister Ellie (Sarah Lancaster) and her husband, Captain Awesome (Ryan McPartlin).

Meanwhile, Chuck learns how to play in a mariachi band and waltz, among other skills, all while continuing to figure out his feelings about love — and maintaining his ultimate geek status.

The season also opens up the stories of other characters, including fellow spy John Casey (Adam Baldwin of Firefly) and nemesis Daniel Shaw (Superman Returns‘ Brandon Routh).

The DVD includes a handful of “Declassified Scenes,” a funny gag reel (sexy Routh gets spoofed by not quite as sexy Scott Krinsky — sorry, Scott) and two featurettes.

The first featurette, “Chuck-Fu … and Dim Sum,” goes behind the scenes of the TV show with the actors, creator and writers. Executive producer/writer Allison Adler even admits to writing scenes to keep the show’s men on screen without their shirts. “I like to make the men as naked as possible as often as possible,” she says in the featurette.

The piece also recaps Chuck‘s three seasons, examining the growth of the characters and their story lines, and looks at the show’s attendance at Comic-Con.

The second featurette is “The Jeffster Revolution,” a funny mockumentary profiling the rock band created by two of the show’s geeks, Jeff (Krinsky) and Lester (Vik Sahay). Krinsky and Sahay do a great job of sending-up rock stars in their interviews in the mockumentary, which is filmed in black and white for full joke effect.

Buy or Rent Chuck: The Complete Third Season
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