Drama
My Life with the Walter Boys
This Netflix drama about a teen girl who has moved from NYC to Colorado features enough adolescent angst to electrify a small city.
Chuck Bartowski is your average computer geek who works at your local Buy More store. Oh, and he’s also your government’s No.1 asset. That last bit happened quite by accident when he opened a hyper-condensed e-mail attachment containing a neural supercomputer called an Intersect. What he saw filled his noggin with gazillions of government secrets. Secrets that every bad guy/killer/thug/underground evil group in the world—especially the dastardly Ring organization—would like to get their hands on.
Sent to protect that information—and Chuck too, if necessary—are CIA undercover agent Sarah Walker and NSA rough and tumble John Casey. And from episode to episode this newly formed spying trio has to figure out how to access the brain-buried info while fending off the aforementioned bad guys/killers/thugs/underground evil groups. They also have to keep everything hidden from Chuck’s friends and family.
So Chuck has to keep working at the Buy More.
(Editor’s Note: Plugged In is rarely able to watch every episode of a given series for review. As such, there’s always a chance that you might see a problem that we didn’t. If you notice content that you feel should be included in our review, send us an email at letters@pluggedin.com, or contact us via Facebook or Instagram, and be sure to let us know the episode number, title and season so that we can check it out.)
CIA special agent Shaw (Brandon Routh) takes control of Team Bartowski and decides it’s time to test Chuck’s mettle with a solo mission. It’s obvious, though, that the mysterious Shaw has other Machiavellian reasons for the trip—namely to see how Sarah will react to Chuck being on his own. So our Nerd Herd hero sets off for Paris.
Chuck’s pal Morgan is having some mission challenges of his own. Since taking over as the Buy More assistant manager, he’s been tested at every turn by rebellious employees playing rough with everything from superheated doorknobs to superglue-coated chairs. An exasperated Morgan turns to the steely-eyed Casey for help.
What follows is war between Casey and the clerks—and a battle with “Stone Cold” Steve Austin at 40,000 feet for Chuck. And the writers are inserting competition for Sarah, too. Chuck meets a fellow passenger named Hannah (Kristin Kreuk) who’s not only beautiful, but as much of a computer geek as he is. They get along like a couple of gaming icons on a desktop.
The episode stays focused, flows quickly and sets up a number of future story ideas. Content issues are relatively minor. Chuck drugs people with a tranquilizer-squirting pen, gets poisoned himself while sipping martinis and ends up on the receiving end of several gut punches. But on this particular night in history, the spy action is far more reminiscent of stumble-footed Maxwell Smart than iron-fisted James Bond.
At the end of Season 2 it looked like Chuck was destined to be chucked. But impassioned fans flooded social networks with show-renewal pleas and bought Subway sandwiches by the thousands on the night of the show’s finale to send a message to sponsors. NBC ended up deciding to re-up Chuck for at least one more mission.
Things pick up where they left off. But Chuck is now having to deal with life with a supercharged, version 2.0 of the Intersect in his head. He can access this new neural encyclopedia at a moment’s notice (dubbed flashing) and instantly be fluent in anything from expert marksmanship to Mandarin Chinese. And so, instead of wanting to regain the Intersect and erase Chuck, the government bigwigs decide to give him a little training and actually use him on important spy missions. An excited Chuck has his fedora on and his trench coat all pressed and ready to go.
The privilege comes with a price, though. He has to pick spying over running away with the lovely Sarah. And then the Buy More pawn flunks out of spy school.
It turns out that all that spy programming was meant for an emotionless agent who’s willing to kill or be killed without fear. And every time the tenderhearted Chuck starts feeling something—like terror, for instance—his connection to the Intersect gums up.
For the most part this action-comedy is well-written, funny and often surprisingly touching. It’s really nice for a change to see somebody express human emotions when confronted by inhuman danger. But there are more than a few spy show hand grenades to contend with. You’re forced to duck slow-mo killings, stylized shootings and rapid, martial arts battles. And sexual references and visuals get downloaded into your brain along the way. In previous episodes, there’s been talk about prostitution, casual intercourse and threesomes. And if cleavage could kill, Sarah, for whom Chuck has fallen head over heels, would be a busty bottle of weapons-grade plutonium.
“The preteen extras who scurry into Wienerlicious to gawk at Sarah are surrogates for the kids admiring her from their living room,” wrote Slate magazine, “and also for their dads, who can give her a gander without feeling like dirty old men.”
Here, Sarah is seen in a dripping bikini among other form-fitting outfits. And bad language revolves around an unedited song from the Scottish band Frightened Rabbit—which features the repeated refrain, “You’re the s‑‑‑ and I’m knee deep in it.” Along for the ride are “a‑‑,” “h‑‑‑” and a few snarky insults.
After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.
This Netflix drama about a teen girl who has moved from NYC to Colorado features enough adolescent angst to electrify a small city.
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