Well this thread certainly exploded today. I will say I agree with some of the points brought up, although not all of them.
Writing: I will agree that it has been sort of inconsistent this season. But from my point of view, even the down episodes are better than a lot of season 3. Not hard to guess from my posts over the last year, but I really, really disliked 3.0. Obviously there were a few standout episodes in there, but the whole tone of the show really soured me on the whole thing. Which is why I find it amusing that whatever current inconsistency is what is driving people away from the show, after they got through 3.0 with no to little issues. Of course that is all just opinion and people watch the show for different reasons than me.
The above is also why I didn't mind the writing changes after last season. Sure it led to some of the inconsistency we are seeing while the new writers get used to the characters, but some of the best episodes this season (Phase Three and Seduction Impossible) came from new people. Although I wish Matt Miller would have stayed on Chuck. Not because I think he was necessary to Chuck, but because that means he never would have had a chance to become show runner of Human Target; a show that was formerly awesome, in which he has ran into the ground and then defecated all over its corpse.
Music: I have mixed feeling on this one. I agree with Solo in that due to budget cuts a lot more of the music is forgettable. At the same time it means they license a lot of music I would probably never have listened to other wise. So I have discovered some new stuff, which I appreciate.
The Budget in General: I do feel this has hurt the show the most. There are a lot of memorable action scenes in Season 2; Mr. Roboto/wedding shootout in Vs. The Ring, the fight scene to Twisted Sister's "We're Not Gonna Take It" in Vs. The First Kill, and Sarah's fight in the car in Vs. The Best Friend come immediately to mind for me. Even in season 3, there was the pretty cool fight scene in Vs. The Honeymooners. I can't really think of any standout action scenes this year, except for maybe Vs. Phase Three. I think the major issue is they can't afford to do large gun battles anymore. Which leads to everything happening off screen, which isn't that interesting.
And I don't think there is really anything I can add to the "location" discussion that hasn't already been said.
Solo said:
I'd be curious to see where the show would be had they had Chuck and Sarah hook up in S1, discover how wrong they are for eachother, and split amicably, forming a purely platonic relationship. Something along those lines could have saved a lot of the headaches.
Honestly, I would like to agree with you here, but as I think it through in my head I imagine it would actually be worse. This is Schwartz we are talking about after all. At some point they would bring on a new female romantic interest for Chuck (either permanently or as a reoccurring role) and we would still have just as many stupid, pointless fights every episode. Even worse, they would probably have to have a separate love interest for Sarah, so we would have double the annoying. Then just to make it worse, they would do something ridiculous like Scrubs and get back together at the last second before one of the two characters was to get married. No matter what, horrible all around.
I think the only solution would have been to write Sarah out of the show in season 3, which I believe you proposed last year at one point. Of course since Strahovski is one of my favorite parts of Chuck, I would have been opposed to that. The other solution would have been to write Chuck out of the show and then make Morgan the new Chuck (Ignoring how that will never, ever happen for obvious reasons). Then they could bring back the bumbling spy portion of the show and would have kept Casey as an integral part of the team. Of course the show would get really weird if they kept Sarah in character by having her fall in love with every male partner she is assigned to, not named Casey. Then again a Morgan/Sarah relationship might be sort of hilarious.
