Sometimes the answer is just that simple.
Josh Schwartz, who created "The OC," was asked this morning at NBC's Q&A session for his new sales-drone-turned-spy romp "Chuck" about one of this season's big trends. As has been written here, there and everywhere, the fall network schedules feature a lot of geek/nerds. Chuck of "Chuck" works in a big-box-store's "nerd herd." The CW's amusing adventure "Reaper" has another slacker sales dude pressed into the service of reclaiming escaped evildoers for the devil. And there's already "The Office," "Ugly Betty" and "Beauty & the Geek," among other showcases for those folks that "Chuck" title star Zachary Levi [in NBC photo, right] called the "cool-challenged" among us.
So how come this is?
"They say you should write what you know," Schwartz replied. "And I know a lot more people like Chuck than people like ['24' action-figure uber-hero] Jack Bauer."
But this early critical fave is also a finger-on-the-pulse of another trend. "I think big-box culture is very much a way we live our lives right now," said Schwartz. Yet we don't know what kind of future these stores' McJobs will provide the current generation. Executive producer McG (also "The OC," as well as the director of movies like "Charlie's Angels") said he sees "Chuck" as "a subversive but elegant commentary on 'Is this big-box culture really progress?' It's a way of connecting to a great many people and saying 'We understand.'"
Chuck ends up straddling the geek/spy worlds by accidentally having a whole supercomputer's-worth of international espionage secrets downloaded into his brain. (Don't ask. In this kicky comedy actioner, it makes sense.) The government drafts him into secret agentry alongside a gorgeous blonde female operative (of course), under the suspicious eye of a resentful agency dude who promptly joins the same store's workforce to "protect" (read: torture) America's most unlikely hero.
McG says "The Office" has already made clear the richness of that arena: "There's so much humor in the workplace, as much as in his work in the spy world." Schwartz noted "there are people trying to take Chuck down at work" already, including rival salespeople and aspiring assistant managers, whose scheming is played with ironic gravity. "It's almost as scary as when he has to go out in the field and do spy work."
In other words, says Schwartz, "everybody in the audience sees themselves in the character of Chuck." So do members of the cast. Right after star Levi played a scene in which Chuck's hands are injured from too much Call of Duty -- the video game, not the spy gig -- the actor showed up on-set with his own off-camera bandaging. "He was playing tennis with Wii," Schwartz recalls, "and put his hand through a light fixture," requiring 14 stitches.
Is that what they call method acting?
(Watch "Chuck" video previews/interviews here.)