A bit of a Bryce Larkin flail

[sholio]

Because of kanarek13 posting screencaps, I've now watched all the Bryce Larkin episodes of Chuck (plus a few other episodes for context, and the Evil Tim Dekay one for obvious reasons). And ... BRYCE. He's adorable!

... AND ALSO VERY TRAGIC. I knew he died, so it wasn't a terrible shock, but I still wish he'd gotten a happier ending. He's just so sweet, in his Ace Rimmer-like way. He tries so hard to protect Chuck, and his life is so lonely and empty -- POOR BABY.

(I'm not sure if I'd be reacting this way if he wasn't played by Matt Bomer, which is why this is tagged for White Collar rather than Chuck. I'm pretty sure that wishing Sarah would dump Chuck and take off with Bryce is not how we're supposed to be feeling either, but THEY SHOULDN'T HAVE CAST MATT BOMER THEN, DAMMIT. XD)

Like I was saying to Frith in email earlier, I can't help thinking of Bryce as a sort of alternate universe Neal who went in a CIA direction rather than a con artist direction. Looking at it from that perspective is particularly interesting because Evil Tim Dekay was Sarah's handler around the time she was working with Bryce, so they could have crossed paths at some point. Perhaps Peter is evil in this universe; it's canon that the CIA characters don't generally use their real names, so Ryker's name could be Peter ...

I'm not really into crossovers as a general rule, but I can see now why "Neal is Bryce's brother" or "Neal is Bryce" was such a popular idea in WC fandom for awhile, because the characters map onto each other very well (... well, played by the same actor, obviously, but even beyond that) and I can understand the urge to give Bryce a different ending than the one he got.

Comments

[magistrate]

...okay, but tell me you can also see how Ellie Bartowski is unmistakably Elizabeth Burke's cousin, because I cannot unsee it and it's wonderful.

(Also, let me know if I can badger you into watching Chuck's season 4, because Alexi Volkoff is fantastic and wonderful and his arc broke my heart like nothing else in the show.)

[sholio]

OH MY GOD I KNOW. I had to double and triple-check that it wasn't actually Tiffani Thiessen playing her! If this universe has alternate versions of Peter and Neal, then clearly this is Elizabeth's AU self.

[magistrate]

But having Elizabeth and Ellie be cousins mean that they could get together every once in a while and talk about how madcap their lives are! And that is a conversation I fully endorse happening.

[sholio]

That is a very excellent point, it's true. :D (I think another reason why White Collar/Chuck is such an easy crossover is because they both could quite easily take place in the same universe, or compatible universes; the style and tone of the shows is similar ...)

Regarding watching season four ... I don't know! There are aspects of the show that really frustrate me -- mostly to do with the way that it handles gender -- but this seems to be somewhat toned down as it goes along, at least judging from the one season five episode I watched. It seemed to end up in a more mature place than it started out, anyway. And Netflix does have the whole series streaming ...

[magistrate]

Argh, I completely feel you on the frustration. It's one of the reasons I'm hesitant to recommend the show to people, even though the parts I like, I really adore. But I did spend pretty much every episode tensing up and snarling whenever, say, just as one example, Jeff and Lester had anything to do with screentime at all.

(They... do not get appreciably better, from what I've seen, and it makes me want to do violence to people. Because as characters, they're very much about the "Sexual harassment is FUNNY! :D", and I want them both to die.)

So, I watched because I was invested enough in what I was invested in to hang with it, and there are some really spectacular moments in there. But yeah, I really can't blame anyone who gets turned off by the stuff it handles really poorly.

[sholio]

AARGH, YES. It's really frustrating because, as you say, parts of the show are wonderful and adorable and/or really interesting. But the fun A-plots are dragged down by really awful B-plots. After the episode in which Morgan hit on his female co-worker, and she turned him down, and the whole rest of the episode was about how she was being so mean and unfair to him, I ended up just skipping most of the retail/nerd-humor scenes to get back to the spy/family stuff. I would fully support Jeff and Lester being pushed unceremoniously off a cliff. :D (I would be tempted to push Morgan along with them, except that by season five he seems to have grown up a bit.)

... that said, I don't think it's an automatic dealbreaker for me, and it's not like most of the shows I enjoy don't have their problematic elements. Hearing that there's good stuff in season four makes me more inclined to give it a try. :)

[meridian_rose]

Bomer was the reason I finally checked out Chuck and I did watch the first season and some random later episodes from season two and three before I lost track of it. Bryce was all kinds of awesome. I know he died but I haven't actually seen his last episode(s) nor the Time DeKay guest spot yet.
There are definite similarities between Bryce and Neal :)

[magistrate]

There was this wonderful episode in... one of the seasons? Five? ...where one of the female characters has to rescue her male love interest, and when he's like "You're breaking me out of here on your own?", she's like "No, I brought someone who loves you as much as I do." And it turns out to be his totally non-romantic best buddy. I may or may not have punched the air.

And yet this is the same show that cannot figure out that nerds + girls can be anything other than slapstick OOH, LOOK HOW SOCIALLY INEPT NERDS ARE AND HOW ALOOF GIRLS ARE! humor. I just... why, writers? Why can't you just do good?

[sholio]

They're so similar! Even beyond being played by the same actor, because I've seen Matt in a couple other roles and he's not quite so intensely Neal-like. You can definitely imagine them being alternate-universe versions of the same character!

[veleda_k]

I've tried to watch Chuck twice. The first time I gave up after the first disc. Then I decided to watch specifically for Matt Bomer, and I finished the first season and couldn't be bothered to go on to the second. I know there's more Matt Bomer, but Bryce dies, and that just depresses me. And I didn't enjoy the show to watch it for non-Matt Bomer related reasons. (Though I may have to hunt down the Tim Dekay episode.)

Part of the problem with me enjoying the show is that I never got engaged with the Chuck/Sarah love story. Which meant that at the end of the first season, rather than "Oh no, will Sarah leave Chuck?" I was thinking, "Matt Bomer versus guy-who-is-not-Matt-Bomer. This is not hard." So, yes, I was also on the "Sarah should run off with Bryce" train.

[sholio]

Ha, it's nice to know it's not just me. :) I don't mind Chuck and Sarah as a couple (they get a lot more likable as a pairing later on, IMHO) but between the two of them, Sarah and Bryce just feel a lot more compatible and fun. (Though I also think there's an excellent basis for Chuck/Sarah/Bryce, at least if Bryce had lived past season two.)

Plus, one person over in the LJ comments made the point that Chuck sometimes slips into Nice Guy-ism in his relationship with Sarah. Actually, the whole show is something of a paean to Nice Guys and it really frustrates me, especially since the writing can be better and more nuanced than that! And sometimes it is! But the entire "beautiful badass lady falls for nice dweeb" trope is one I have problems with, and some of the background sexism in the episodes is really infuriating -- there are lots of things I like about the show, but also lots of things I don't like.

[sholio]

SO MUCH THIS. The show does a lot of things right, and quite a few things about it (especially the search for home and family) hit my narrative-kink buttons nicely. And as far as the actual female characters go, most of them are portrayed very well (with occasional frustrating exceptions, but those are more the exception than the rule). But yeah, there's also this powerful thread of geek-stereotype-essentialism and frustrating gender-role stuff that drives me nuts. Mixed bag, I guess, like a lot of shows are ...