“Chuck” star Zachary Levi reveals that the additional six episodes that NBC has ordered for the third season of the show will feature a completely new storyline. Levi talks about this new arc:

“We were only going to do 13, so the writers wrote an arc for 1-13.  They were basically done writing them, and then the network said, ‘Hey, we’d like to do six more,’ and they’re like, ‘Well, great. We can’t rework the first arc, so we’ll just make these six stand alone.’ They’ll be based on the 13 that we do in the first part of the season, but it will be its own little mini-arc… To be perfectly honest, I like 13 episodes.  I like how cable does it. Thirteen episodes allows you to really make it lean and mean. You focus on those 13 episodes, and you make them all great, as opposed to the traditional 22-episode network season, which, if we’re all being honest, there tends to be a couple episodes that are like the packing peanuts. They’re the filler. ‘We didn’t really know what we were going to do this week, so everybody just vamp for a little while, and then we’ll come back for an episode that really means something.'”

“Chuck” returns to NBC on January 10, 2010 with a two-hour season premiere at 9 pm ET/PT.

[Source] SciFiWire