NBC’s ‘Life’ & ‘Chuck’: It’s All in Your Head

Fans of quirky police procedurals will welcome the return on Monday of NBC’s “Life,” starring the nifty British actor Damian Lewis as Charlie Crews, the Los Angeles detective with a love for exotic fruit, an oddly caressing voice, a fiery sunburst of clipped ginger hair, an eerily unpredictable smile, and a taste for Zen philosophy developed during a lengthy stint in jail for a crime he did not commit. Flush with a $15 million settlement, Crews is a two-track detective: There’s whatever case happens to land in front of him, and there’s the more long-term puzzle of who conspired to put him away. There’s also the question of why, with that kind of money, he should bother getting up for work at all. But it seems he loves his job. He also happens to be better at it than anyone else in his department.I guess we can thank the Eastern-centric British philosopher Alan Watts for that. Early in the season opener, there is a bit of quintessential Crews-speak when he engages in a conversation with his precinct’s very strange new captain, Kevin Tidwell (Donal Logue, in a terrific bit of casting), about three dead bodies locked inside expensive trunks that have turned up in various locations.“Three people chosen at random,” Tidwell observes, leaning back in his easy chair and looking like a greasily self-satisfied version of Jeff Bridges.“Except nothing is random,” Crews counters.“And why is that?”“Because everything is connected.”Somewhere in the middle of that exchange, Crews’s defiantly unmystical partner, Dani Reese (Sarah Shahi), mutters, “Here we go again,” and you can hardly blame her. It must be annoying enough simply to have to listen to this Zen 101 shtick over and over again — and doubly annoying when you know in advance that, yet again, he’s likely to be proved right.Like most of the better cop shows, this episode of “Life” is cleverly written but fundamentally improbable, surprising in some ways and predictable in others. That the suspect could pull off such an elaborate series of murders (he forces his victims into expensive trunks, then dumps them somewhere to suffocate to death) seems highly implausible, though it has the pleasing side effect of making Crews’s solving of the mystery appear all the more brilliant.The politics — Zen good, Christianity bad (a scripture-spouting murderer is given a moment to rant and rave in the spotlight) — are straight out of the mainstream television playbook, as is the sympathetic treatment afforded one of the victims’ wives, who has sex with a woman in her office shortly after her husband’s gruesome murder. True — as she calmly explains to Crews and Reese when they catch her in the middle of some mild after-hours S&M with her assistant — she and her husband had separated because she had different needs. But surely her “needs” could take a brief hiatus only hours after the husband she supposedly loves has been found buried alive in a box? But if Crews and Reese feel any repugnance, they certainly don’t let on. If anything, Crews offers advice. Need isn’t the same as love, he observes sagely, and she replies with equal sagacity with her eyes.* * *One of the great things about “Chuck,” whose second season also kicks off Monday on NBC, is that you will never find yourself pondering probability or politics or anything else, since the whole thing is an extended joke on geekdom, dead-end jobs, and girl power, as well as a splendid spoof of the spy-movie genre. (Next week’s episode, in which John Larroquette appears as a debonair ex-spy, is particularly amusing in that regard.)Chuck Bartowski (Zachary Levi), who works at the Buy More electronics store, is suffering from the misfortune of having had an entire Top Secret government database downloaded into his head (don’t ask). This alone would make him of great interest to the CIA, but the interest is even greater because his head — which is covered in a mop of wavy black hair, and fronted by a frequently quizzical expression — is the only place in which the database currently exists. Thus, Chuck is arguably the most important intelligence asset in the world, and his job at Buy More now merely a “cover.” It’s a Walter Mitty-style fantasy in which the fantasy happens to be true.That the show works as well as it does is largely due to the wonderfully comic (yet sweetly convincing) chemistry between Chuck and his gorgeous, lethal CIA handler, Sarah (Yvonne Strahovski), with whom he is, of course, in love. But Adam Baldwin is equally good as Sarah’s grimly efficient partner, Casey, who reveres Ronald Reagan and has a habit of saving Chuck’s life on a regular basis. However, Casey may be ordered to end Chuck’s life, because a new supercomputer is about to come online with an updated version of the secret data in Chuck’s brain. Luckily, the computer blows up (the program was an enemy Trojan horse), and Casey, who is secretly fond of Chuck, not that he’d dream of showing it, is spared the responsibility of having to put a bullet in his skull.In the meantime, life goes on at Buy More, where everyone from the manager to the lowest employee has perfected the art of doing as little as possible. Everyone there is so lazy, spacey, or lost in fantasy that no one blinks an eye at Chuck’s frequent disappearances, or his urgent conferences on the shop floor with the menacing Casey. Nor does anyone find it strange that a woman as beautiful as Sarah should be his girlfriend (strictly speaking, as part of his cover). It’s all just part of life’s goofily rich pageant, and as an affectionate satire of a certain kind of American workplace, it rings true. Though every episode sees him escape death by a whisker, Chuck lives, and Monday nights are the better for it.

NBC’s ‘Life’ & ‘Chuck’: It’s All in Your Head

NBC’s ‘Life’ & ‘Chuck’: It’s All in Your Head

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