This week’s episode of Chuck finds our boy a full fledged spy, although still a horribly love stricken one. This episode covers his one week period as he tries to win back Sarah and possibly shut down The Ring for good with Shaw in the process. Note to Chuck fans: this episode actually marks the penultimate episode of the original season order that the show got from NBC. If it seems like the season is near its end, that’s why. But it’s not the end of the season at all – we have six more episodes after next week. Yay!
Check out the review after the jump.
Synopsis: When Chuck is able to take his pick of the finest CIA agents for an undercover mission, he considers only one very special superspy – Sarah. Enter Casey, Morgan and Awesome, who try to help him win her back.
What Was Good: Lester: “You’re the Picasso of creepiness!”
Jeff (as he rubs a BuyMorian’s hair): “And this is my Blue Period.”
That line itself made the episode for me. Jeff and Lester’s discussion about their abilities as stalkers pretty much killed me, and singlehandedly put this episode into the level of “hilarious” for me. Brilliant.
While the episode itself started out a bit uneven and perhaps exposed Chuck as too obviously a terrible spy outside the Intersect (while the gun bit was funny, it was perhaps too much), it quickly rounded itself up to be one of the better episodes of the season. While the suspension of disbelief meter was working overtime (ski masked Awesome, Morgan and Casey working together! Chuck walking out of a blown up building with Shaw over his shoulder! a B2 Bomber blowing up a building in Los Angeles!), it brought back a lot of the inescapable charm that makes this show so damn hard to not love.
Chuck and his regular overtures to Sarah were touching and a relief to finally hear him actually say to her, while Casey finally supporting his boy at the very end to share the truth with Sarah was delightful.
Zachary Levi gave a great performance in this episode, giving us range from his emotional scenes with Sarah to some great action hero moments to some humorous moments like the aforementioned beginning scene with his gun. It was superb work from one of the underrated stars on TV.
Giving us Mark Sheppard (aka Badger from Firefly and Romo Lampkin from Battlestar Galactica) as the Ring’s director was a thrill for myself as a genre fan, and he did a deliciously evil job in sharing the big twist of the episode: that Sarah was the person who killed Shaw’s wife! How delicious is that?! That’s the best and least expected way they could have gotten that duo to end their romantic relationship, and man, was I thrilled to see that.
All in all, it prepped next week to be absolute insanity. Can’t wait.
What Was Bad: As I said, there were some ridiculous moments that were hard to get past. While we expect serious ridiculousness from the show, scenes like Chuck carrying Shaw out of the recently blown up building was a bit rough. It was a bit cheesier than we normally expect to be, and with the rest of the episode being so good those moments stood out like a sore thumb.
Overall: All in all, this was one of the better episodes this season. I really enjoyed it and it was fantastic to see Fedak and Schwartz’ warped plan come together. What they did to Shaw was pretty tough, but it means our boy Chuck gets to be the big hero next week (probably). I can’t wait…this got me amped up after a few weeks of lower quality Chuck action.
