Most importantly, Zachary Levi's birthday is next Tuesday! Get your donations in to http://www.weheartchuck.com/ soon! Do it right now so he gets your birthday wishes by the 29th.
Since the last "Dear DR" was so popular, I am of course prepared for another! So, here we go:
DR, if you know something about season 3 that would calm the shippers down, then why not share it? -- Your Mother
First, it is really weird when you call me DR. Second, what makes you think I know something about season 3? Third, even if I did know something about season 3, the stuff I might possibly know is not going to calm down the shippers at all. If anything, it is going to drive them insane! I mean, they are imagining Chuck and Sarah having love interests that likely don't go anywhere but still keep Chuck and Sarah apart. They have NO CLUE just how inaccurate that belief... never mind. I should stop now.
Not to mention that Sarah ends up not tru... agh! Sheesh.
Ok! Ok! Stop right there! Wait! WHAT?! You are saying Chuck and Sarah end up with other people and not only that but Sarah ends up not trusting Chuck! THIS IS THE WORST SEASON EVER! -- Crazy Shipper About To Lose His... Ship
Woah! Woah! I never said any of those things!!!
I implied them.
I quit the show! I frakin' quit the show! That is frakin' it! I can't believe we SAVED the show and our reward is the worst Chuck and Sarah news ever! This sucks! -- New Supernatural Shipper
That is probably the best idea you ever had.
P.S.
Dean and Sam ARE brothers and it is just wrong to ship them!
Please, DR! Please tell me that something good happens between Chuck and Sarah! Why would the writers do this after all we have complained to them about? Is this like an eff-yew to us for annoying them? -- Gilligan
Well, after Bryce is finally killed for real.... oh wait, that was the original plot. Never mind.
I will just say this: if you stick it out and enjoy the show and get your friends into it and STOP BADMOUTHING THE SHOW, I promise you that season 4 will be like royalty and birds.
Royalty and birds?! Why are you playing mind games, dammit?! -- Crazy Shipper #467
Maybe I just don't know anything and am messing with you. Or, I am just not willing to publicly leak the whole season to the world. I don't think the people on the show would appreciate that.
I knew you didn't know anything! -- Alex aka Mamma's Boy
We shall see in 6 months. ;)
Or, if http://www.weheartchuck.com/ reaches $25,000 by Zac's birthday (the 29th of this month), I promise to tell you all a lot more. :)
Everyone did a great job last night using We Heart Chuck as the new term. We tweeted the term over 1,400 times even though some did not even have the episode (come on, NBC & WB). We did not have much of a chance to trend last night as Parick Swayze's passing dominated the trending list (RIP & Red Dawn ruled!).
It will be interesting to see what happens from here on in as shows come back next week and will likely dominate the trending list. If, for whatever reason, we cannot continue to trend the topic (well, we certainly can if everyone joins in), then I have a backup plan ready to be sprung. ;)
As the title of this posting says, there will be no changes next week. We will continue to use We Heart Chuck in our tweets. However, the following week I am hoping we can get as many people as possible to join in to wish Zachary Levi a happy birthday. His birthday is on the 29th so we may have to return to the scene of the crime the following day to try and get our favorite guy a nice birthday gift.
Speaking of birthday gifts, http://www.weheartchuck.com/ is rolling along strong in its reboot efforts to raise money for the American Heart Association in the name of Chuck Bartowski, closing in on $20,000 in total. The current campaign will take your donation and allow you to send a birthday card to Zac! You can give as little as $5 (the cost of the card) but more is always good as well. His publicist has indicated that Zac will read every card he is sent, so get involved now so he gets your card on time.
First!NO HASHTAG for September 14th. Instead, we will type out We Heart Chuckas three separate words, in honor of the American Heart Association fund raising effort by the campaign of the same name. That is right, absolutely NO HASHTAG for this week. It is time we test to see if we can trend common words as opposed to hashtags. Might as well start now. So, your tweets could look like:
Chuck and Sarah are so cute together in this episode! We Heart Chuck
Second, we may be changing terms every week. So, check back here every Tuesday or Wednesday for the new strategy.
Third, now for the strategy:
Based on the poll, the majority want to continue into Season 2 of CHUCK in order. So, we will do that. However, since there are some people who can't find it in their wallet to spend $2 to $3 a week on CHUCK (I spend more than that a day on tea), I am going to offer up alternate strategies for them.
MAIN STRATEGY
We watch Season 2 in order from First Date to Ring. You can purchase the episodes via iTunes, Amazon, Playstation Network, and XBOX Live or find some other method I don't want to know about (well, not publicly at least).
ALTERNATE STRATEGY #1 Watch any random episode from the second half of Season 2 on NBC.com, selected from Third Dimension to Ring. Fans will watch at the same time as the main strategy group and tweet as normal. You will likely annoy the rest of us with your tweets about Best Friend and Colonel every week, but whatever. If you can't afford the episodes, or find some other way of acquiring them (I told you! I DON'T WANT TO KNOW!), then this is at least a way that you can join us and help the trending. :)
Alternate Strategy #2 Watch Season 1 over again. I don't care in what order. Just tweet like a maniac.
There you go. I do not recommend buying the entire season yet, unless you really want to own it now. NBC and WB might have the correct order of episodes coming for online viewing (looks like NBC's license for the second half runs out on the 20th of this month).
Monday, September 7th, is a holiday in the US: Labor Day. While many people will be away, those of us not going anywhere too far away from our computers, will be watching CHUCK episodes together for a few hours and trying to trend #FREECHUCK yet again on Twitter.
The episodes, as voted by the fans, and the times we will watch are (yes, we will watch 13 and 14 in the correct order, as originally intended):
The times have been set so that everyone around the world can participate at some point.
We will be using the NBC Viewing Party whenever possible. Anyone who hosts a viewing party can bring 10 people into a room. It is highly recommended that anyone who hosts have a good computer and a good Internet connection. The older the computer and the slower the connection, the more problems for everyone who joins.
I created a little video for people who want to use the Viewing Party but were not sure how to do it. Hopefully this helps:
If you cannot join a viewing party, you can also watch the episodes on NBC.com by using the links I have provided above for each individual episode.
While the Viewing Party feature has its own chat room, it would help our effort the most if you used a third party Twitter application like twhirl or the more popular TweetDeck both of which are far more useful than the normal web browser version of Twitter.
FYI, you get 150 API requests per hour on Twitter, per account. That means anything you do on Twitter counts against that. Once you reach that limit, you will be blocked from tweeting for that hour. Here are the limits as per Twitter Support:
1,000 total updates per day, on any and all devices (web, mobile web, phone, API, etc. )
250 total direct messages per day, on any and all devices
150 API requests per hour
So, while trying to trend, limit how often your refresh or receive updates, if you want more of your tweets to count in the trend.
We Heart Chuck needs your donations they are doing it via birthday cards to Zachary Levi. Please give at least $5 (to cover the cost of the American Heart Association sending the card to Zach). Zach will read all your cards and has already commented on the campaign. So, whether or not you are able to watch and tweet with us on Monday, you can still do some good in the name of CHUCK.
Please go to the site, follow the directions on how to contribute, and give. The AHA and Zachary Levi will surely appreciate it.
Subway is the reason we got a third season of CHUCK and they deserve our patronage. So, please go out on this day and purchase at least one $5 footlong and enjoy a great sandwich while watching CHUCK. Or, as with We Heart Chuck, even if you can't watch with us, you can still stop by a Subway.
Last night was a great deal of fun and success for Chuck Me Mondays. We watched three episodes and trended the hashtag #FreeChuck several times during the process. In all, we had nearly 4,000 tweets during those three hours and had writer Ali Adler tweeting along with us and engaging the fans in her special way (thank you, Ali!).
Our plans for next week, as NBC and WB still work to figure out this season 2 online issue, is to take one more week of Chuck Me Mondays fun. Since September 7th is a holiday in the US, we will use that day to spend more time with CHUCK for those who want to join in together. It will be a marathon of five episodes that may include episodes from season 1 and season 2. A poll is going up where fans should vote on their five favorite second half of season 2 episodes. These episodes are available on NBC.com right now for free viewing.
Now, as for WE HEART CHUCK, this incredible charity drive that raised over $17,000 in 17-days in May, for the American Heart Association, is being kicked off yet again. The creators of the campaign have some great ideas and are looking to get as many people involved as possible, this time for the long run. Show everyone how much you value the show and those involved while saving lives. I did an interview with some of the members of the effort and it is posted in the right side panel or you canfollow this link to Chuck You Tuesday - The Podcast.
#FREECHUCK is the new hashtag for this coming Monday. Please let everyone you know who participates in Chuck Me Mondays know about it.
We are watching THREE Season 1 episodes on Monday as we wait for NBC to correct the Season 2 episode issue. We are attempting to trend for 3+ hours and this is also a good test for future efforts.
Based on your votes, the episodes we will be watching are:
Episode 8: CHUCK VERSUS THE TRUTH Episode 9: CHUCK VERSUS THE IMPORTED HARD SALAMI Episode 10: CHUCK VERSUS THE NEMESIS
Viewing starts at the NORMAL time of 9PM ET and ends at 11:43PM ET (we will start each episode at the top of each hour so everyone has a chance to tweet, eat, and whatever else comes to mind).
This will give a majority of people in the other time zones the ability to participate, though it does ask those on the east coast of the US and Canada to stay up later. Hopefully, what we lose in east coasters will be made up for by the amount of people we retain in the other time zones.
Based on the current poll count on August 26 at 7:33PM ET, next Monday, August 31st, it looks like we will be watching:
Truth Salami Nemesis
We will start at 9PM ET (so, the normal time) and take 15 minute breaks between episodes to tweet, eat, and whatever else comes to mind. [this is up for debate in the comments section]
We will finish at roughly 11:43PM ET.
We will be changing hashtags (we are still testing to see if Twitter is blocking us once we succeed in trending).
Next week's hashtag will be #FreeChuck.
If we succeed in trending that, we will consider changing hashtags each week. They will need to be simple and we will give everyone more than a day or two to learn of the change.
By the way, great job last night. We had over 2,000 #chuckmeout tweets in 43 minutes.
Based on the comments here and others I have received, it would seem that the most popular idea for August 31st sounds something like Wendy Farrington's comment in the last blog post: August 31st - We watch 3 episodes that fans vote on from [Season 1] (ed. note: see poll on the right side) ... This will help us trend longer on a standard Monday evening and give [NBC and WB] extra time to try to work out the early [Season 2] episode issue.
The choice we need to make for August 31st is what time we should start the viewings:
1) 6PM ET 2) 7PM ET 3) 8PM ET 4) 9PM ET
The earlier we start, the easier it will be for the east coast and Europeans to join in, but the later we start, the easier it is for the rest of the US and Canada to join in. Starting at the normal time and watching two more episodes would allow us to trend longer but would mean those who watched all three, on the east coast, would be up until 11:45 PM (since each episode is around 43 minutes long without commercials, and figuring for 15 minute breaks in between).
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- As forSeptember 7th,I like the idea of organizing another Subway specific day. Make Labor Day a Subway Monday in honor of Chuck (Chuck Me Subway?). Toss in a catchy name for it and we can make it happen. Ideas? Remember to sign your comments if you are posting anonymously so we can credit you for any ideas we use.
As Bethany Actually and Agent Taylor said, we would use that day to push people to @chuckmeout on Twitter, as well as @subwayfreshbuzz.
But the other issue is what we will watch and when we will watch it. The choices are:
A) an all day viewing of Season 1 starting at some undetermined time
B) a 5-episode viewing of Season 1 starting at some undetermined time
C) take the next 3 most favorite episodes in the poll on the right and watch them as we do/did August 31st
D) Put together viewing parties using NBC's Viewing Party feature and watch select season 2 episodes (this is limited to US dwellers and anyone who is crafty)
So, other than voting in the poll on the right, please put in your comments what time you want the August 31st event to start (the 3-episode viewing) and what option you want for September 7th.
You can also toss in an idea for what we want to call our Subway effort.
