Chuck…oh Chuck. The only thing your worse at than fighting without flashing is dating women for very long at all. Tonight on Chuck, we have “Chuck Versus the Fake Name”, an episode that finds our boy assuming his first alias, having his first family dinner with Hannah (Kristin Kreuk), and (assumably) making his first foray into forced dentistry. That’s a lot of firsts, but when you have the Intersect 2.0 inside of you and you are a huge dork, a lot of new experiences come your way.
Check out my review after the jump.
Synopsis: When the episode begins, we find Shaw, Sarah and Casey on a mission to abduct the world’s most dangerous assassin. Given the recent trend, it’s unsurprising when they decide that Chuck is the man for the job, as Chuck takes on the persona of Rafe Gruber – death bringer! The rest of the episode finds Chuck attempting to juggle his burgeoning relationship with the adorable Hannah and his responsibilities as a spy. Throw in Sarah and Shaw’s relationship growing and the Buy More trying to sell some crock pots (really), and you have a busy episode.
What Was Good: Chuck as Rafe Gruber was freaking spectacular. That’s the first thing you have to mention. It was alternately hilarious to watch our boy Chuck act as a hardened assassin in front of a couple Sopranos goombahs (seriously, it was Paulie Walnuts and Skip Lipari) and also strangely believable. One of the most underrated aspects of this season is Levi’s ability to believably move down this dark path, and the pathos that he displays when he comes to some hard realizations.
This episode did a good job of doing what I clamored for last episode: more Casey! Any time we get more Casey, the better off we are. In this episode he both gets to act as Chuck’s goombah, display some actual admiration of the spy Chuck is becoming, and gets to show off his rather impressive skill set. Plus, we get a tease of a new story beat – a possible deadly alias for Casey in Alex Coburn, an assassin with an entirely unknown past.
Throw in some seriously funny bits and some fantastic meta-commentary (the Sopranos guys talking to Chuck about his “will they or won’t they” relationship with Sarah), and it’s an all around great episode. We even had some cool revelations, and an excellent scene in which Shaw and Chuck face off for Sarah, except it’s so Chuck doesn’t blow his alias (or is it?).
What Was Bad: The rapid disillusionment of Chuck and Hannah’s relationship was fairly bothersome, especially considering they’d really only been together for one episode. Kreuk and Levi demonstrated real chemistry together, and it’s a real shame that she had to go already. While we know eventually Chuck and Sarah will get together, it’s obviously not happening any time soon with Shaw and Sarah’s relationship growing with each passing episode.
I can say I’m just glad Hannah didn’t end up being an agent for The Ring. It remains to be seen what Shaw’s final fate is, but odds are on it being nefarious in some way.
Overall: According to my boy Sepinwall, fan people out there of Chuck are getting really tired of the relationship roulette we’re seeing on a weekly basis here. To me, that isn’t as big of a deal is the rapid destruction of Chuck’s relationships. While they make sense organically most of the time (such as with his relationship with Rachel Bilson), this one just went by too fast. Fedak and Schwartz would have been better off in my book to let this relationship simmer an episode or two more.
As it is, this was still a really fun episode with a lot of character development. It continues in the dark direction we’ve seen recently, and Sarah is obviously lamenting the loss of her once loquacious and pure hearted love. This direction is a really interesting one, and with additional story turns like Casey’s secondary identity and Hannah’s departure we can only expect more and more excitement in future installments.
Final Verdict: 7.8 (Solid, but Hannah…you went too soon)
