This week’s episode of Chuck saw a lot of intriguing twists, a mysterious new member of the spy team, and a whole lot of Awesome. Captain Awesome that is. See my review after the jump.
Synopsis: In a continuation of last week’s episode, Chuck has to deal with the ramifications of Captain Awesome being kidnapped by The Ring, and Awesome’s forced spy gig that follows. Chuck has to become his handler and help him through the mission, on which they meet Daniel Shaw, a man they must kill to save themselves.
Also, Morgan becomes the new Ass Man at the Buy More and an accidental kick to the face from Chuck drives Lester and Jeff to start a fight club at the store.
What was good: Read that synopsis. How could that not be entertaining? This episode had the best balance of the season, as there was a little (but not too much) of the Sarah/Chuck dynamic, we had a great villainess in Angie Harmon, Brandon Routh’s new character Daniel Shaw was a stellar mix of mysterious and badass, Buy More was mixed in well, and phenomenal go to funny generators Awesome and Casey gave us big laughs.
Throwing Shaw into the mix works in a lot of different ways: first off, he’s the new apparent head of Team Bartowski. Second off, given that he’s Brandon Routh, he’ll likely be the third piece to a new Chuck/Sarah love triangle. Throw in his hatred of guns, he’ll even be a great foil for Casey. Routh sounded like a curious bit of alchemy from Fedak and Schwartz, but so far, so good.
What was bad: I would say my biggest beef with the episode were the fact that The Ring somehow zeroed in on the Burbank area to find a covert spy, yet they looked at Devon and not Chuck, Casey or Sarah. Of course not. The show requires a little suspension of disbelief at the fact this deadly covert organization never figures out the Intersect game, but this episode actually cleverly gave us a reason to believe that as possible: The Ring is comprised entirely of decentralized cells. Nice.
Overall: All in all, this was another great entry in the long line of great entries to this series. Chuck is uniformly superb, and this episode featured a most delectable mix of all of its parts, leaving me laughing, excited, and wanting more. Thankfully it’s back next week.
