Things That I Learned From Chuck – A Nerd Herd Manifesto

“For us, the originality of the show clearly spoke to those individuals out there in the audience who also felt unique and original. And the final thing I’ll say is it was the story of a guy who felt he had all this potential but never lived up to it. A guy who felt he had the promise to be something better than he was when we first met him. This underdog, this nerd, who’s thrust into this life and lives up to it and becomes a hero spoke to people. A lot of people saw themselves in Chuck, and want to believe that if given their own opportunity they could also become a hero.” – Josh Schwartz, Co-Creator of Chuck

A Quick Summation of What Chuck Meant To Me aka The Reason For This Article Existing

Chuck is a show about an underachieving 25 year old guy who receives an email from an old college friend that contains tons of U.S. secrets, imprinting them into his brain and giving him “flashes” whenever he sees something from the Intersect in his head. Two government agents named John Casey and Sarah Walker are then assigned to be his handlers, but throughout the course of the series, become his friends. For five years, it combined romance, drama, comedy and action in a way that I’ve rarely seen attempted in a network show, let alone done well.

I’ve seen every episode of Chuck, some multiple times, some only once, but once Chuck finished it’s run recently, I didn’t really know what to do with myself. Where would I go to be happy, sad, angry, giddy, all the while being on the edge of my seat… every week? Where would I go for the awesome pop culture references that seemed like they were made just for me? Where would I go to reinforce my belief that there’s true love out there for every nerd, even if it may not come in the form of a beautiful CIA handler like Sarah?

Now was the time to face my own quarter-life crisis and become the hero that my friends and family always knew that I could be! I knew Chuck would have said, “don’t freak out!” so let’s start there…

Lesson 1:  “Don’t freak out,” or How To Channel My Emotions 

As Chuck’s handlers Casey and Sarah learned during the course of the series, Chuck is very emotional. Many a time during the series, Chuck’s emotions hindered missions, sometimes even ensuring the mission’s failure. As Chuck grew as a person and as an agent, this flappability began to change. Chuck came into his own as he burned an asset, became a handler himself, and began to formulate missions and lead a team of spies rather than always being delegated to the spy van. Part of this change involved Chuck being more realistic and more focused on the missions as his personal life began to fall into place, and part of this change involved him taking a more active role in the spy world.

For me, the journey from emotional man-child to a grown up is still in progress, but I’m taking some cues from Chuck along the way. I’m learning to use my ability to empathize to understand other people better and try to see the other side of arguments. I’m also learning to focus my energies better at work and in my personal life so that I can use that emotion to make even the most mundane things seem important.  

As a teacher, why just make standard lesson plans when you can guide students on epic adventures through literary analysis? Why simply describe two teenagers trying to fix a mess they created instead of engrossing students in a tale of two outsiders trying to save kids from a towering inferno about to burn down the church that was their safe haven? The more genuine and focused my emotion gets, the more the students will be able to see the merit of these stories and being able to analyze and use the skills they learn in class to interact with their world around them in a more substantial way. Instead of just being passengers in their own life, they can take the wheel and steer.

With regards to my personal life, I’ve always prided myself on being a good friend. That used to mean I would drop everything to be with as many friends as possible, spreading myself so thin nobody felt they were getting 100% of me. Being a good friend doesn’t mean you have to go overboard to impress people. Just be there for them. I simply needed to channel my emotions to be what my friends or family needed, whether it was a voice of reason, a devil’s advocate, or a distraction. I’m finding that my closest friends and family are noticing that the change in my emotional stability means that my ability to say no to people has increased, making it easier to just relax, take my time, and be a good friend.

Lesson 2: I Shouldn’t Always Be Content To Simply “Stay in the car, [like] Chuck!” But Believe In My Own Creativity

Much like Chuck, I have an almost childlike trust of others, which can be boring as I have always wanted people to like me and thus usually did what I was told. But why should I just be boring and “Stay in the car!” as Chuck’s handlers Casey and Sarah told him to in the beginning of the series? I’ve learned that I can help the “mission” and can try something new that might not have as wide an appeal to others but that I may love.

This new attitude has led me to try several creative projects this summer like making a clay maquette of Voldemort for a friend, dressing up like Lando Calrissian for Comic Con, and even starting a musical story of my life experimenting with different genres. I even had the pleasure of meeting up with Zachary Levi, Joshua Gomez, Mark Christopher Lawrence, as well as Isiah Mustafa, Olivia Munn, and Danny Pudi! I would have never gotten the chance to meet these people at this year’s Comic Con if I weren’t actively trying to step outside of my comfort zone.

I’ve also become more engaging as a teacher because I understand what may have helped me to learn certain lessons does not always work for others and that’s perfectly okay. Chuck didn’t force Casey or Sarah to change throughout the series. He was, as the quote from Gandhi says,  “the change [he] wish[ed] to see in the world.” There’s nothing wrong with using my own experiences to relate to students in a way that’s new for both of us, instead of just using the same old teaching practices that have been accumulated like an Intersect that all teachers should follow. Chuck’s not your average spy, so why should I be your average teacher?

Lesson 3: “True Love” Is Not a Fairy Tale, But There’s Someone Out There For Us All

The hopeless romantic in me takes the series’ ending as a chance for the couple to fall in love again as Sarah continues her life with Chuck. With that in mind, Chuck’s romantic entanglements did not always include Sarah and Sarah alone. When we meet Chuck at the beginning of the series, he has been pining for his ex-girlfriend Jill, and as Sarah enters his life as his handler, becomes his girlfriend as a cover. The next season Chuck develops real feelings for Lou the sandwich girl, and “breaks up” with Sarah, in order to pursue a “real” relationship. Unfortunately, that relationship doesn’t work out and after things get complicated with Sarah, there was Hannah, a girl that Chuck dumps in order to get back together with Sarah. Chuck genuinely had feelings for these girls and wanted things to work out with all of them, even if he subconsciously or in Hannah’s case, consciously, cared deeply for Sarah at the same time. Ultimately, he was able to slowly help Sarah realize she loved him back, get married, and get the happy ending he so richly deserves.

I haven’t always had the most luck in love, but I don’t want to go through life thinking that my ability to feel is my Achilles heel. I’d rather it be an asset that will help the right girl fall in love with me. While I’m Chuck’s age now, I am starting to realize that the less I actively look for a girlfriend, the more likely I will be to find one. Along the way, much like Chuck, I have had a long-term girlfriend who ended up not being the one, and a few girls that I dated for a while, but each of these relationships taught me a little more about what I’m looking for and what I need in a relationship as well. When you have your own life in order and you don’t need someone to complete you, someone can step in and simply add to your awesomeness and make you even better. Eventually, I have faith that somewhere out there there’s someone who will like me for me, which brings me to my final lesson.

Lesson 4: There’s Truth To The Saying “Always Be Yourself”

Chuck has had many roles throughout the course of the show: unofficial Nerd Herd commander, The Piranha, Rafe Gruber, The Analyst, The Intersect, Charles Carmichael… but the biggest role that Chuck plays is Charles Irving Bartowski. In fact, the best Chuck episodes were when he didn’t even have to use the intersect to save a mission. He simply used his latent geek skills. After all, Chuck is an awesome show not because he is a spy a la James Bond, but because he is a spy a la Chuck Bartowski. He chugs wine when hacking into government computers. He uses a tranquilizer gun when he has a vast arsenal at his fingertips. And he always thinks with his heart.

While sometimes this frame of mind may have left him vulnerable at times, it also infused the show with a sense of relatability uncommon to most network shows these days. You simply care more about his hero’s journey because he makes choices you’d like to think you would make in the same circumstances.

Speaking of the Intersect, remember the episode where Chuck took the emotion suppressing drug and was finally able to use the Intersect on command? As part of my quarter life “crisis”, I’ve at times suppressed my emotions to be someone that I’m not. I am guilty of thinking that my emotions and empathy for others was a weakness instead of one of my strengths. Luckily, I’ve begun to realize that trying to be more Charles Carmichael than Charles Bartowski might get me more girls or more single serving friends now, but being myself might actually bring me lasting happiness.

So in Closing…

Over the last five years, I have realized that being a hero in my own life means realizing the potential that I had all along, instead of relying on a perceived crutch or false identity to reach my potential. I don’t need an Intersect or a million dollar Volkoff fortune. I just need to believe in myself, as cheesy as that sounds. My friends and family have always known my potential and have pushed me to reach for it instead of settling for the best that I could get through easier means. I’m glad that I’ve grown secure enough to finally listen to them. And as the sun sets on this chapter of Chuck’s life, I’d like to think that my story is just coming up over the horizon, with plenty of lessons still left to learn.

Nerd Herd Employee of The Month: Pravin Kaipa