Chuck 2.22: “Chuck vs. the Ring”

The Wife:

I could not have asked for a better season finale for Chuck than what we witnessed last night. It was moving, suspenseful, action-packed and funny – all of the things we’ve come to expect from this sophomore series which, I hope, gained enough viewers last night who also happen to enjoy $5 Footlongs from Subway to get NBC’s attention. Although last night’s finale would make a good end to the series as we know it, there’s so much more story to tell, heading in a fresh new direction. I’m trying not to get my hopes up that NBC will do right by Chuck and everyone who works on it and give it the greenlight for a third season, but I really believe that Chuck has the potential to have at least two more stellar seasons, maybe even three. And NBC needs to realize that. How could they not after “Chuck vs. the Ring?”

Finally, Ellie and Awesome’s wedding day has arrived, Chuck and Casey quit the Buy More and the team is about to split up to go their separate ways. Casey’s off to do some hardcore Marine shit somewhere in the Middle East, Sarah has been assigned to the new Intersect project acting as Bryce Larkin’s handler (as he will now carry the Intersect inside his head) and Chuck, well, all Chuck wants is to have a future with Sarah, turning down the opportunity to remain on the Intersect team as an analyst. Chuck barely has time to get a nice champagne buzz going over the news that his dream girl will be leaving with his old college rival/ex-bestie before Roark shows up at the wedding and demands that Chuck give him the Intersect cube within 30-40 minutes or he will kill Ellie.

Chuck heads off to steal the Intersect from the Castle and asks Morgan to stall the wedding by any means necessary. This, of course, means getting Jeffster to play a totally stirring rendition of “Mr. Roboto.” At the Castle, he finds Bryce, who offers to give himself to Roark and tells Chuck that Orion knew Bryce was a spy all along and sent him to be at Chuck’s side at Stanford to protect him. While Ellie’s guests are waiting in the church, Roark, Bryce, Chuck and Sarah have a reception ruining shoot-out in the dining room (scored by Jeffster, of course) and are almost toast, until Casey and his black ops soldiers crash through the skylight, killing Roark’s flunkies and arresting the software mogul. Even with her reception ruined, Ellie’s wedding could have gone on . . . had Jeffster not ended their performance by setting off some sparklers, which in turn set off the sprinklers, dousing the guests and the bride.

Ellie takes to getting trashed on champagne in her bathtub, still wearing her wedding dress, and Chuck tries his best to make her feel better by telling her that he was the one that screwed up her wedding and that he’ll make it up to her somehow. With Sarah, Bryce, Casey and the black ops’ help, they manage to pull together a second wedding for Ellie and Awesome (paid for by Chuck’s sizable government stipend for two years of spy work), more akin to the wedding she’d always wanted: small, on the beach, surrounded by friends and family, rather than the big fancy to-do cooked up by the Awesomes. Both weddings would have been beautiful, but the bridesmaids dresses were definitely better at the beach wedding. And, most importantly, Ellie looked better at her second wedding than she did at her first one. That silk halter with the deep v-neck was a total stunner.

Geek girl thought of the day: My dad was totally awesome at my wedding, but how cool would it have been to have Scott Bakula and Zachary Levi walk me down the aisle?

But even though all is right for Ellie and Awesome, Sarah tells Bryce during the ceremony that she won’t be going with him on their new Intersect mission and, meanwhile, one of Casey’s men kills Roark in cold blood, as well as the three other Marines on his team. Bryce pops up at Ellie and Awesome’s reception to talk to Papa Bartowski before being hauled away by his new handler, on whom Papa B flashes (because, hey, he has an Intersect in his head, too). That man is not CIA. In fact, he’s not even supposed to be alive. Once Sarah and Chuck get this information, they take off to save Bryce, with Papa Bartowski’s wristral jackomater in tow. By the time Sarah, Chuck and Casey arrive at Bryce’s location, he has already bested several adversaries, but been mortally wounded. As he lays dying, he begs Chuck to destroy the new, more powerful Intersect so that no one, especially these new, non-Fulcrum baddies, gets their hands on the intelligence. But, knowing the value of the Intersect and his father’s work on it, Chuck uploads the data into his head, becoming the Intersect once again, before destroying the upload computer. Just how powerful is this new Intersect? Well, it seems to come with some special new skills, best summarized by Chuck’s newfound ability to take out, like, eight dudes by himself and this paraphrased line from The Matrix:

“Guys . . . I know kung fu.” – Chuck

An excellent episode, worthy of more like this to come. Cross your fingers, guys.

Rivaling Angel for cool sequences that take place in white rooms.

Some other funny:

• “If you were a true patriot, you wouldn’t even cash it.” – Casey, on Chuck’s government check
  
• “Why are you letting Sam Kinison and an Indian lesbian wreck your wedding?” – Awesome’s dad
  
• “Hm. A real shotgun wedding. Just think: that terrible pun will be the last thing you ever hear.” – Roark

 

Chuck 2.16: “Chuck vs. the Lethal Weapon”

The Wife:

I’ve been putting off writing about Chuck this week because, for some reason I can’t adequately explain, I just wasn’t feeling this episode this week until the end bits, which were indeed stellar. I just don’t know how to reconcile my boredom with 60% of this episode.

Just . . . hang out for a second . . . we've gotta do some stuff with guns.

So Sarah’s living with Chuck until they can get an apartment, but then Cole somehow busts out of captivity and breaks into the Castle, where the General sets the whole gang on a mission to track down a doctor at a Swiss embassy thingy. (I don’t know. That wasn’t very clear.) The Doctor, whose name I never quite caught, may have something to do with someone called Perseus, the code name of a person who created the Intersect. And really, it’s just as well that I refer to him only as The Doctor, because that was Robert Picardo’s character on Star Trek: Voyager. Cole and Chuck have to stay behind and run surveillance, which goes well, until Cole recognizes his torturer and sees him jam their signal, allowing him to capture Casey, Sarah and The Doctor.

Cole, newly in love with Sarah, decides to drag Chuck along with him to save her in some heroic fashion. Chuck sneaks in through the window, but unheroically crushes his ankle, which causes him to drop his gun and shoot The Doctor in the leg. This creates enough of a distraction for Casey and Sarah to fight their way out, but Cole still gets to save the day when Sarah gets ambushed in the hallway and he takes a bullet for her. Chuck limps home, having lost the girl again, and Ellie forces him to go to the hospital to get his foot checked out, where he runs into The Doctor in the ER and decides to follow him all the way back to his lab. There, caught being not so stealthy, Chuck finds out that The Doctor is Perseus, and he flashes on some papers labeled Orion. Here, The Doctor recognizes that his work has come to fruition in Chuck – a human Intersect exists. Chuck demands answers. He wants to know if the Intersect can be removed, but The Doctor tells him only Orion knows the answer to that. As Chuck pleads to know Orion’s identity, The Doctor gets shot, and just as it seems Chuck is about to die, as well, Cole swoops in and saves the day by telling Chuck to kick his would-be assassin with his cast. Then Cole’s life is threatened and Sarah swoops in to save him.

While all this is going down, Chuck doesn’t tell Morgan that he’s moving in with Sarah, but Anna sees the lease papers on the Buy More fax machine and she thinks Morgan got the apartment for them. And Morgan doesn’t have the heart to tell her that the apartment is for him and Chuck! Oh, comic misunderstandings! Jeff and Lester suggest that, rather than tell her the truth, Morgan engineer a series of obstacles that will make Anna not want to live with him, such as suddenly being unavailable for couples time due to a newfound interest in recreating famous tennis matches on the Wii, or producing a detailed, alphabetized set of rules for living together called a Morganuptual – the best of which we caught on the DVR was a rule stating that no one shall ever discuss Barcelona in his presence. I wonder why that is. Eventually, Morgan decides to just move in with Anna anyway, and grow up, while Chuck decides that he can’t move in with Sarah at all because his feelings just get in the way.

I think my issue with this episode was that while it was one of the more Bondian ones (complete with Cole making a Bond joke while being tortured), it lacked a little bit of the usual humor and sweetness, save for the opening shot of Chuck unable to sleep with Sarah next to him in a mixture of fear and excitement, and the final shot of Sarah, looking like she’s on the verge of tears herself when Chuck tells her they can’t live together without him wanting her. And while I’m interested in finding this Orion person – who I’m willing to bet will either be upcoming guest star Chevy Chase or, perhaps, even Chuck’s own missing father whom I’ve always suspected was a spy – the set-up for this was very action-heavy and story-light. I need a better balance of the two to not be bored.

Nice, though, to see Robert Picardo. I had trouble remembering the actor’s name and went looking around on the IMDB page for Voyager in order to remember. There, I discovered something amazing. I’d noticed the name Robert Duncan McNeill pop up on Chuck sometimes, but I couldn’t remember in what capacity. Then I remembered that he played Tom Paris on Voyager, on whom I had a giant crush as a geeky tween, and I thought, “Hmm. I’ve not seen Tom Paris on Chuck.” And then I scrolled down further and saw that McNeill has been directing a few episodes of Chuck and that he’s also a supervising producer on the show. It’s super cool that he hired his friend Picardo. Now I want to see more Voyager alums on Chuck. Robert Beltran is hanging out over on Big Love these days – maybe Chuck could have an adventure at an Indian casino just to get Beltran a guest spot. And if McNeill could get Jeri Ryan to show up, geeks across America would not be able to contain themselves. That’d be hella tight.

 

Chuck 2.14: “Chuck vs. The Best Friend”

The Wife:

Finally, an episode that deals with how Chuck’s spy life affects his relationship with Morgan! I think we often look at Morgan as comic relief, and he does get to be the ringleader of the Buy More shenanigans most of the time, but rarely do we see Morgan as a fully-realized person (with feelings other than lust and humor), and to that end, this episode was a great success. It also answers my question about where the hell Anna has been for the past six episodes or so, because the answer is making out with another guy who is taller than Morgan and richer than Morgan.

Morgan convinces Chuck to help him spy on Anna, and in so doing, Chuck flashes on her new boyfriend’s car. Anna’s new boyfriend, Jason Wang, deals with an espionage group known as Triad, and the General orders Chuck to get close to Jason Wang so he can suss out his exactly level of involvement with the group and find out what their planning. Chuck refuses to do this, feeling that any association with Anna would betray Morgan’s trust.

“You want me to befriend my best friend’s ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend?”

To facilitate this, Chuck invites Anna and Jason to go on a double date with him and Sarah. Thrilled, Anna invites them to a party Jason is throwing that night to display the collector’s cars he’s lined up for auction. Uncomfortable with his betray-Morgan mission, Chuck proposes a sub-mission in which he and Sarah try to get Anna and Morgan back together. At the party, Sarah endears herself to Anna, telling her that she’s always thought of Anna and Morgan as a great couple and good friends, which instantly wins Anna’s trust and has her confessing to Sarah that she still loves Morgan even though she thinks Jason is a better catch. Morgan, spying from outside, catches Chuck talking to Jason and instantly thinks his friend has betrayed him.

Chuck then flashes on some of Jason’s friends, members of Triad, and follows them to the garage to plant a bug so Casey can survey them and find out what they’re up to. He knocks over a can in the process, leading him to almost get caught. When he hears Triad call for security, he assumes Casey is coming to rescue him, but then they both realize that the Triad gang members have caught Morgan and the only way Chuck believe he can save his friends life is to publicly shame him, telling the Triad folks that Morgan isn’t a spy, just a worthless, lowly stalker who can’t get over his ex. With a half-hearted plea to “grow up,” Chuck breaks Morgan’s heart and his trust, and undoes all the legwork Sarah had done to convince Anna to take Morgan back.

Meanwhile, Ellie is up to her neck in wedding plans and she asks Shirtless Awesome to help her with some of her to-do list. In a good-natured attempt to get Chuck involved, as well, Awesome asks him to help find a band for the wedding, which Jeff and Lester overhear and pitch themselves for. Chuck nixes this plan without even hearing their music, to which Jeff shoots back:

“Don’t be a musical bigot.”

When Ellie’s computer crashes, Jeff and Lester see it as an impromptu chance to audition, so they take the Nerd Herder and head over to Chez Bartowski to endear themselves to Awesome and Ellie, but once they set up shop, Lester gets stage fright and can’t bring himself to live out his dream of singing in the greatest rock band of all time, Jeffster. (He fears, by the way, that he will die of auto-erotic asphyxiation, which is always funny, because I think of Peter Boyle telling that to David Duchovny in The X-Files episode “Clive Bruckman’s Final Repose.”) Ellie then gets mad at Awesome for outsourcing his list to Chuck, as brides are want to do.

This is not what I ordered from Amazon!

Chuck feels awful about hurting Morgan, but Sarah has little sympathy for him, putting the greater good of the mission into perspective. Chuck tries to make up with Morgan, but Morgan realizes he doesn’t want to be Chuck’s friend anymore because, ever since the flashback to 1992 that opened this episode, Chuck has always been stepping in to save that little bearded Alf-loving man’s ass and it’s about time Morgan learned to do things on his own. But then Chuck sees those Triad baddies enter the store, and he knocks out Morgan with some knock-out Binaca and tries to haul his buddy out of danger in a flat-screen TV box, until he gets distracted and flashes on Jason Wang on TV, leaving Triad to steal their boxed-up and incapacitated target all the more easily. While he loses Morgan, Chuck realizes through his flash that Triad plans to kill the Chinese ambassador at Jason’s auction by planting a bomb in his brand new Rolls Royce. Things only get worse when they arrive at the auction and find that Triad has put Morgan into the Ambassador’s trunk, killing two birds with one bomb, as Smooth Lau observed.

Sarah heads to the garage in the hopes on intersecting the vehicle before it’s driven away, but instead she gets into a knock-down drag-out girl battle with Smooth Lau, and they end up beating the shit out of one another using car parts and seatbelts in a BMW. Chuck chases after the Rolls with Casey hanging off the roof, begging to be let in. Chuck finally agrees and Casey takes over driving the car with his remote control, until he is able to corner the Rolls and stop it. As Casey distracts the Ambassador and his driver, Chuck pulls the bomb out of the car and puts in the Nerd Herder, appearing to drive away with it, and causing late-arrival Sarah to react in tears and horror when the Herder blows up. Apparently, Casey forgot Chuck knew about the remote control he had only told him about minutes before, because Casey seemed pretty upset to potentially lose Chuck, too. But you know who didn’t think Chuck was in that car at all? Me. Nonetheless, having Sarah and Casey believe Chuck had just died for Morgan made the scene worthwhile, providing the right note of drama on their horrified faces that I didn’t get from the Nerd Herder fake-out. (Note: I want to trick out my Matrix with a remote control, too.)

Apologizing for nearly giving Sarah and Casey heart attacks, Chuck gets Morgan out of the Ambassador’s trunk and wheels him back to the Buy More before he even knows what happened. Chuck tells him that he passed out before the Triad guys could even fight him, and Morgan is touched that someone he’d been mean to recently would have his back, always and forever. Awesome makes up with Ellie and convinces her to let Jeffster audition for them at the Buy More, where they rock out to some sweet sounds by Toto. At the show, Anna and Morgan get back together, and Sarah apologizes to Chuck for not understanding how important his friends are to him because she doesn’t have anyone who cares about her like that, to which Chuck replies, “Yes, you do.”

What I love about Chuck is that for all its coolness and geek humor, it always finds a way to make use of tender and heartbreaking moments. I was sad for Morgan when Chuck betrayed him in front of Anna, and wholly touched at the end when Chuck professed his devotion to Sarah as Morgan and Anna joined them at the Jeffster show. This was a solid episode, all around, and fused the three plots pretty neatly.

Stray observations:

• I also like that this show realizes how much the female/gay male audience loves to see Captain Awesome shirtless. I will never say no to shirtless Captain Awesome.
• Y: The Last Man makes two appearances in this episode! Awesome is reading “Volume 1: Unmanned” when he wakes Chuck up to ask for band advice, and Chuck also has a poster of some of the art on his wall. And no, I don’t think it’s sad that I can identify a graphic novel just by seeing a panel of a blonde girl in the Aussie outback and a glimpse of the back cover. You know what that makes me? Fucking awesome, is what.
  
• Because I spent so much time last week reading the last four volumes of Y and thinking about how it interacts with Brian K. Vaughn’s work on Lost, I also realized that the graphic novel also makes sense in the Chuck-verse, on a surface level. Like Yorick Brown, Chuck Bartowski is a man thrown into a situation that he’s completely unprepared and unqualified for. They both hang out with monkeys, or men who are very monkey-like, and both narratives feature an awful lot of hot girl-on-girl fight scenes. I might even propose that Smooth Lau is an homage to Y‘s super-ninja bitch, Toyota. (For serious, they look alike.)
• In short, all of you should read Y: The Last Man. It’s fucking amazing.

The Husband:

The best episode in some time, this was the Chuck that brought us back to the show’s original intention – to be a comedy/action show, and they should hold equal ground. The entire second-to-last segment was as good as anything s1 cooked up as far as tension was concerned, what with a surprisingly well-shot car chase sequence (it helps that both of the cars looked effin’ sweet), mixed with some old school Bondian gadgets and silly criminals. I think I like the show best when all of the main characters are acting in one reality (ours), while the spy story is something out of a comic book (alternate reality), finding the humor in the dichotomy. It’s what makes Monty Python so funny, applying logic to the silliest of situations, and it’s what makes Chuck special.

I will show you smooth, bitch.

And yes, the Sarah-Smooth Lau combat inside the BMW was so well-choreographed that it felt like an early 90s Jackie Chan movie (one of the ones with Michelle Yeoh). Good stuff, Schwartz.

 

Chuck 2.11: “Chuck vs. Santa Claus”

The Wife:

I’m going to be honest here: I thought the first twenty minutes of this episode were terrible. A hostage taker with no confidence at all is not a threat. There was no sense of danger at all because he was so non-threatening and, therefore, no real drama. I thought to myself: Really, Schwartz and Co.? Really? You know how to tell stories better than this! You know that the threat of death/danger is essential to making the action of Chuck work. That, combined with the sentimental montage of the Buy More hostages calling their loved ones, made me think that this was going to be the worst episode of Chuck ever. (And the worst hostage episode on TV this year, to boot.) But then: enter Michael Rooker as a hostage negotiator who is actually a Fulcrum agent in a nice end-of-act-one twist that really shook this episode up and put it back on its trajectory to being a great addition to the Chuck cannon.

I eat my tongue, Schwartz and Co. I should have never stopped believing in you.

The set-up for the hostage situation went a little something like this: the Buymorians are preparing for Christmas Eve last minute shoppers, with nearly everyone dressed as elves (and Anna as a sexy Mrs. Claus), Big Mike and Emmett are ready to gouge lazy last minute shoppers by marking up prices by 15%. Not wanting to participate, the Buymorians would rather spend their time taking bets on the results of the high speed chase they’re watching on the local news. That is, until that high speed chase crashes through the front of their store and the driver takes everyone in the store, including shoppers Ellie and Awesome, hostage. Family Matters‘ Reginald VelJohnson is the officer on duty in charge of working with the hostage negotiator (Rooker), and he’s also Big Mike’s cousin.

The hostage taker, Ned, is so incompetent and unconfident that he makes Chuck do most of the talking to Rooker on the phone. Eventually, Sarah and Casey sneak in from their secret entrance and get held hostage, too. Ned “accidentally” shoots Casey’s toe off out of “surprise” when he sees the two of them in the back room with Chuck. (Fortunately, Ellie and Awesome were there to patch him up, with Ellie assuming Casey that people survive on 9 toes and Jeff announcing that he’s survived his whole life on only 8.) After said sappy phone call montage, Ned agrees to let two hostages go, choosing the injured Casey and, because of Chuck’s loyalty, Sarah. After the two agents are released, Rooker comes in and speaks with Ned personally. Chuck then flashes on Rooker’s watch, immediately knowing that he’s Fulcrum. Chuck, fearing for the safety of his sister and his friends, tells Ned that he should let all of the other hostages go, keeping only Chuck because he’s the thing Fulcrum wants, after all.

It's okay, John. People have survived on 9 toes for centuries now. Wait, what? We're supposed to have ten?

Rather than letting the rest of the hostages go, however, Rooker insists that Chuck tell him the location of Bryce Larkin and the Intersect, or else Ned will kill Ellie. Not wanting to lose the only family he has, Chuck tells Rooker that he doesn’t know where Bryce is, but admits that he is the Intersect. Rooker agrees to let Chuck say goodbye to Ellie, but only if he comes quietly with Rooker into Fulcrum custody. As Chuck hugs Ellie goodbye, he tells Captain Awesome that now is the time to rally the remaining hostages and take out the gunman. As Chuck is escorted off the premises and placed in an ambulance with Rooker as Sarah and Casey, realizing that Ned didn’t call his wife during the montage like he said he did, try to track Chuck’s location from inside the Castle. Once they get a lock on Chuck’s location, they are able to intersect the ambulance, allowing Chuck to escape and Sarah to give chase to Rooker through the foggy haze of a Christmas tree farm. Alone with Rooker, Sarah tells Chuck to find Casey and go back to the Castle.

Meanwhile, at the Buy More, Awesome and Big Mike invent a football play in which Lester and Jeff attack Ned with candy canes as a first line of defense. Lester, unfortunately, is no match for Ned and gets taken out quickly, allowing Morgan, hidden in a pile of fake snow, to enact the true diversion: spraying snow all over Ned to blind him temporarily while Awesome and Big Mike (dressed as Santa) body slam the gunman from both sides, effectively taking him out and removing the other hostages from the real threat of danger. Anna, seeing how hurt Lester is, completely misses Morgan’s act of heroism – an act he thought would win her back after he balked at moving in with her. Lester, taking advantage of Anna’s kindness, tries to put the moves on her, unfortunately right in Morgan’s line of sight. Ellie, meanwhile, is relieved to hear that Awesome has decided to cancel his potentially dangerous skydiving trip, not needing any more excitement after playing hero by saving her and the Buymorians.

Back at the Christmas tree yard, Chuck couldn’t bear to leave Sarah, so he hides behind a tree as she corners Rooker. Rooker tells her that he knows Chuck’s secret and that he will willingly go into CIA custody, warning her that he’s not just any other Fulcrum agent. His people will find him and in the process, they will all learn of Chuck’s identity. Still wearing the charm bracelet Chuck gave her as a cover Christmas gift, Sarah decides that she would rather not follow protocol than lose having Chuck in her life. With Chuck looking on from the treeline, she shoots Rooker square in the chest.

Merry Christmas, Rooker. You'll get no vampire lap dance from me. That offer was only valid on Scream Queens.

Chuck returns to the Buy More before Sarah does, living with the weight of what he has just seen. When Sarah arrives, she tells Chuck that Rooker has been arrested and that Casey is driving him to a secure location. She assures Chuck that everything will be alright, but Chuck, in the back of his mind, doesn’t believe her. Morgan asks Chuck if he could possibly imagine what it’s like to see someone do something so terrible (like kissing Lester) that it changes the way you look at that person forever. Solemnly, Chuck can only agree with Morgan, still unsure of how to process Sarah killing someone for him.

I think this is a great emotional weight to end the show on before its lengthy 6-week hiatus. For once, the real moral quandaries of his spy vs. spy lifestyle have come into focus for Chuck. Sarah’s actions at the end of this episode hang over him like an albatross. On the one hand, her break in protocol is an assurance that Sarah, somewhere inside her, has very deep feelings for him. But on the other hand, it’s a reminder that his life is constantly threatened and that any minute he could lose the people he loves. Shooting Rooker is also very likely to become a catalyst for a variety of other Fulcrum baddies to pop up, knowing that Agents Casey and Walker are closely guarding the Intersect. From here on out, even with Rooker dead, Chuck just isn’t safe. And neither are his friends and family.

Good work, Schwartz and Co. This episode could have been absolutely perfect with about 5 fewer minutes of the first act, but I’ll forgive that, just for the wounded looks on Zachary Levi’s face at the end of this episode.

The Husband:

What did I say about my opinion on hostage episodes?

Yeah, I still feel that way. They are still desperate attempts at ratings and false drama, so thank God that this episode tried its best to infuse the plot with something involved in its serialized story. I don’t think it succeeded nearly as well as my wife thinks it did, but I will accept the righteousness of the final bits of drama involving Sarah and the issue Chuck has with her license to kill.

Otherwise, it was only mildly fun to spot the references to Die Hard – the hostage situation during Christmas, Reginald VelJohnson, the Twinkies, some of the music choices – and not much else. Casey and Sarah, for the majority of this episode, didn’t act like the badass spies they were, where even if Ned really was involved with Fulcrum and therefore at least somewhat trained they could have easily taken him down, missing toe or not.

And yes, you do know that Ned guy from somewhere. His name is Jed Rees, and he was by far the best and funniest alien (better than Enrico Colantoni, funnier than Rainn Wilson) aboard the Protector in Galaxy Quest. I’ll never forget that chubby face. Maybe y’all should rent that movie again. It’s better than you think it is.

The upcoming 3D episode, airing the day after the Super Bowl, better be fucking amazing, because the show may need a quick recovery to regain all the viewers it may have lost after this week’s episode.

 

Chuck 2.10: “Chuck vs. the DeLorean”

The Wife:

Further utilizing the backstory established in “Chuck vs. the Cougar,” this weeks’ episode turned our nerdy spy show into a con game when Sarah’s dad, played by Gary Cole, comes to town to visit his daughter while working a big money con of a Sheik. Via flashback, we’re introduced to the kind of cons the Burton family used to pull on their neighbors and strangers when we see little Jenny play dead and her dad bark the crowd with a sob story about not having health insurance and needing to take his girl to the hospital. In the car, safely miles down the street, little Jenny pops her head up over the back seat as her daddy peels of his mustache and asks, “How much did we make?” Man, I can only hope that if Sawyer ever makes it off the island, he and little Clementine can one day pull adorable father-daughter cons like that. So. Freaking. Cute.

Sarah tells Chuck that she’s taking a “personal” day, which he automatically assumes means that there’s a mission he is intentionally not being included on. He tails her to the restaurant where he sees her having dinner with a man he deems much too old for her. He flashes on Gary Cole’s wrist scar and finds out that he’s a convicted felon just as Sarah hears her GPS beep, alerting her that Chuck is nearby. When she confronts him about his presence in the restaurant, he tries to warn her that she’s dating a very bad man, whom she introduces to Chuck as her father. In Sarah’s room, her father asks her about her boyfriend Chuck, her job and her lavish apartment. He assumes that because those things don’t make sense with one another (a minimum wage job and a lush pad, plus a dude who seems like he’s not in her league) she’s followed his footsteps and plays the con game, too. He tells her that he’s in town working a big con: taking $1 million from a Sheik. Immediately, Sarah heads off to work and reports her father to the general, who tells Sarah that she must in turn con her father in order to gain access to the Sheik’s bank accounts. The Feds will let Burton’s game slide if they can use him to catch a bigger fish.

Meanwhile, in Buymoria, Anna has finally found her way back into the plot. She encourages Morgan to move in to a fancy apartment with her because she feels their relationship has progressed to that stage. That, and she’s tired of hooking up in the Home Entertainment Room of the Buy More. Morgan asks Captain Awesome for relationship advice and Awesome happily agrees to lend Morgan $2500 to put a down payment on the apartment so that Morgan can grow up a little bit and make his lady happy. (Of course, Awesome’s charitable bequest must be paid back biweekly with 12% interest. “Welcome to adulthood.”) But then Lester and Jeff alert Morgan to the fact that a vintage 1981 DeLorean that barely runs and doesn’t go more than 22 mph has pulled up in the audio install bay. Unable to resist such a sweet piece of pop culture, even if one of the doors doesn’t work, Morgan forks over Awesome’s money and becomes the proud owner of a car he will dub DEMORGAN, complete with personalized license plate. (In California, you can actually only put 7 characters on a license plate, which means, Chuck fans from the Golden State, that DMORGAN, DEMORGN, DEMRGAN and DEMRGN are still available if you want them as your own plates.)

Chuck, emergine Doc Brown-style from the Demorgan.

While lunching with Gary Cole, Chuck and Sarah learn that her father conned the Sheik out of his million by promising to sell him a huge plaza in L.A., a move known in the con community as “pulling a Lichtenstein,” in which one pretends to be an inventor or collector who needs to make a big sale fast because the biggest lie is usually the easiest to believe. After lunch, they are surprised to see that the Sheik has come to LA looking to collect on his purchase. He and his posse demand a meeting with the fictional Mr. Lichtenstein and Gary Cole, thinking fast, ropes his daughter into the con to play the role of Lichtenstein’s assistant. Sarah wears the role like a second skin, promising a meeting with Lichtenstein the next day. When the Sheik starts to believe that Lichtenstein isn’t real, Chuck calls the hotel’s front desk, getting the clerk to call out across the lobby for Lichtenstein, just in time for Chuck himself to enter the con, playing the German-speaking Lichtenstein. Convinced, the Sheik agrees to meet with them the next day.

Sarah tells him that she’ll help with the con only if Chuck “the Schnook” and Casey can help. Gary Cole puts Casey on security because he doesn’t trust his “Cop Face.” The next day, Casey takes over as building security and helps Sarah, Chuck and her father break in to an office by pretending to be exterminators. Once the building is evacuated, they cover the signage with “Lichtenstein Enterprises” signage and take their places in the office. Cop Face sends the Sheik up only when it’s clear, and Sarah is prepared to translate made-up German to Chuck, whose only role is to simply sit there and say nothing that makes any sense. But then the Sheik throws them a curveball: he rightly, smartly, brings his own translator, whom he insists will be the only person speaking directly to Dr. Lichtenstein. Chuck saves the day by insulting the translator’s accent with the little English he knows and insists that, due to this outrage, the deal is off. Chuck’s reluctance to sell only makes the Sheik want the building more and Sarah convinces the Sheik to wire a small deposit into their account so that they can hold the property for him, successfully gaining access to the accounts for her boss and saving her dad from certain death, and they leave to let the Sheik enjoy his new purchase just as the real occupants of the office exit the elevator.

Only Gary Cole is a better con artist than his daughter. He didn’t set up the wire transfer to go into the CIA account and takes off before the rest of the team realize that the money is gone, along with Chuck’s laptop. Sarah feels terrible that helping her dad compromised the mission, and Chuck tells her that she’s not responsible for her father’s sins, something he took many years in therapy to learn after his engineer father left him and Ellie. (I am now about 90% that Chuck’s father was recruited by the CIA to build the Intersect and had to be sequestered because of the information to which he was privy, thus explaining the dwindling contact he had with his family after he left his children.)

Casey is sent to find Gary Cole alone, learning that he checked into a downtown L.A. hotel under the name Guido Merkins. (Thus marking the second vagina wig reference of this TV season.) But then Gary Cole calls his daughter from the back of a limousine, where the Sheik reveals that he has kidnapped Cole and will only return him unharmed if the Sheik’s money is returned unharmed. So Sarah, too, sets off on a mission alone to save her father.

Chuck returns to work at the Buy More, only to be hounded by Morgan, who asks if Chuck can lend him $2500 to pay back Awesome, who demanded that Morgan return the money when he found out that it was used for the childish purchase of a novelty car. Chuck agrees to lend Morgan the $2500, only to find out that there’s an extra million dollars in his bank account. He then borrows the Demorgan in order to follow Sarah and Casey on their “personal” missions.

Give me your account number so I can make sure you get your British Lottery Winnings.

In a rooftop standoff, Chuck gets the Sheik to input his account number in order to return the $1 million, hoping that the time it takes to transfer the funds will be enough time to keep Sarah, Burton and him alive. Just as the Sheik’s money transfer finishes, Casey swoops in, pretending to be from the U.S. Treasury department and arrests Chuck and Sarah before the Sheik has time to shoot them. In a last-ditch effort to make the con look real, Sarah shoots her father in the shoulder. Hoping to not get arrested or shot himself, the Sheik steals the Demorgan, unaware that he won’t be going very far at only 22 mph.

Back at the Castle, the General thanks everyone for their attention to the mission and arranges an arrest for Sarah’s father, asking Sarah to keep him in a certain place at a certain time to facilitate the capture. In deference to his help on the case, Casey asks the General if he can testify at Burton’s hearing in order to reduce his prison sentence, a request that she allows. Chuck returns to the Buy More to give Morgan the bad news about the stolen Delorean. Morgan could not be more pleased to hear this, because it means he’ll get Blue Book value for the car after it’s impounded. That money means he can pay back Awesome and still move in with Anna. That is, until Jeff and Lester coax him into the audio install bay where he feasts his eyes on yet another novelty vehicle: the General Lee.

As Sarah prepares to facilitate her father’s arrest, she fixes his wound and Gary Cole tells her that he’s convinced that she and Chuck the Schnook are an actual couple. Happy with the man he thinks his daughter’s chosen for a mate (or a con partner), he tells her that she chose “the right schnook.” She asks her father to go get her some rocky road ice cream as she notices the time for his arrest draws near. He runs into Chuck on his way out of the hotel and expresses similar platitudes to the schnook. As the police cars arrive, Sarah comes out to tell the cops that she doesn’t know where her father went, and he slips away, effectively evading arrest under the Intersect’s nose.

Nothing says 'I Love You' quite like a father-daughter con.

I liked this episode, although it certainly wasn’t as funny as a normal Chuck episode. In fact, it was hardly a normal Chuck episode at all, focusing on the work of grifters instead of the work of spies. Overall, it seemed a little out of place, but it was a nice change of pace and, most importantly, a really good character study for Sarah. That’s one thing I can definitely give Josh Schwartz and his writers major props for this season: they’ve worked really hard to keep growing their characters, never sacrificing them and their actual motivations for the sake of plot contrivances, which is more than I can say for the NBC show that directly follows this one.

The Husband:

Gary Cole has had a long, strange career. Let’s just put this into perspective. 15 years ago, he starred in The Brady Bunch Movie, followed three years later by a very goofy, sleazy supporting role in Office Space.

Now, he stars as a sly grifter this week on Chuck, as a terrifying and abusive policeman husband on Desperate Housewives last season and starred on a bounty hunter show on TNT called Wanted a couple years ago.

In between, he found the time to voice the lead character in Adult Swim’s Harvey Birdman: Attorney At Law.

So I say, what the hell? It’s madness, I says!

Added Note: If you watch the episode on Hulu.com, you can see a friend of my sister, Mary Howard, as an extra, dressed in a gray sweater, at one of the Buy More scenes. The timestamp is 19.26.

 

Chuck 2.7: “Chuck vs. the Fat Lady”

The Wife:

Just as Chuck finally gets a chance to have a real relationship that he seems happy about (he and Jill can spend hours solving strange music box puzzles together and writing Fibonacci sequences), it gets taken away from him when Sarah and Casey realize that Jill is actually a Fulcrum agent who is, in all likelihood, not taking Chuck on a vacation at the end of this episode, but kidnapping him with the potential intent to murder. Good plotting all around with the Jill arc. I started to suspect that she might be with Fulcrum when she knew that Guy’s bomb was not a bomb, but a puzzle, but the final revelation at the end was still quite a blow. I feel so awful for Chuck. I guess he’ll just never get to be happy.

However, before that crushing blow, this episode had a lot of good spy work (with fun puzzles!) and some good Sarah-Chuck-Jill moments. Sarah, Casey and Chuck are sent back to the hotel where Guy died to find a list of Fulcrum agents that he had hidden in his room. In order to infiltrate the hotel and break in to the crime scene, Sarah has to dress as an escort for Chuck’s “businessman having a tryst” cover. Obviously, Jill is none too pleased with smokin’ hot Sarah in her smokin’ hot red hooker dress. Later, as Chuck, Casey and Sarah crawl through the ventilation ducts to break into Guy’s room and find the list, he accidentally pocket dials Jill, allowing her to hear a conversation with Sarah about how long it would take them to have sex to make their cover look reasonable, mixed with Chuck’s oddly sexual noises and Sarah’s instructions about where to move his hips when he gets stuck in the shaft. Once in the room, Chuck flashes on a Venetian puzzle box that he believes holds the list. He solves the puzzle and then gets sprayed with what Sarah thinks is a poisonous gas, causing her to strip them both and shower together, which at one point winds up with Chuck motorboating her as she washes the substance out of his hair. Casey runs out for an antidote, and Chuck and Sarah open the door in their wet underwear, thinking the knock would belong to Casey . . . only it belongs to Jill, who is now super pissed.

The gas turns out to be powdered fruit punch, which Jill accepts as an explanation for why Sarah and Chuck would shower together in their underwear, thinking the fruit punch to be a gas. However, she seems very concerned that the fruit punch is a clue (Guy loved puzzles a whole bunch, apparently) and uses her mad science skills to determine that the specific brand is Rootin’ Raspberry Hi-C. Once Chuck figures out that “Hi-C” refers to the musical note, Casey pulls out a perfect high C and opens the music box, where they find opera glasses and a key.

“Choir boy. What? I wasn’t hatched.” – Casey

Chuck and Co. head to the opera house to locate the lock for Guy’s key and find it in a private box, where he and Jill open what Sarah believes is a bomb, but Jill knows to be yet another puzzle that must be solved by arranging blocks printed with sheet music, marking our second music-sensitive mission of this season (the first being Rush’s “Tom Sawyer” behind the mathematical formula for beating Missile Command). Once Jill and Chuck solve the puzzle, they receive the flash drive and, contained on it, the list of Fulcrum agents.

No, Chuck, I will not hit that note again just to impress your girlfriend.

As a reward for completing the mission, Chuck is allowed to go off for a weekend alone with Jill, something he’s been craving all episode, as he’s been unable to get any alone time with her due to Casey’s constant surveillance cameras. (He even has them on the roof of the Buy More.) When Chuck runs into a gas station to nab some snacks, an insidious Fulcrum agent (Mark Pellegrino) kidnaps Jill and holds her ransom for the Fulcrum list. Casey refuses to help Chuck save Jill, so Chuck goes rogue, stealing the flash drive and committing what amounts to treason.

Meanwhile, at the Buy More, Emmett has his eye on Chuck Bartowski, wondering where the man goes when he’s assigned to off-site installations that he never brings back a signature from. Emmett interrogates Lester and Jeff about Chuck’s whereabouts, and they give up that he’s cheating on Sarah with Jill. When Emmett threatens to take away their poker night, they tell him to crack Morgan to get to Chuck. (By the way, this is the second week in a row we have not seen Anna. Where is she? Actress Julia Ling is a martial arts expert, so I’m just going to assume that she had to go kick some ass and win some awards for a little bit. Either that, or a vampire slayer died and she was chosen to be the next slayer . . .) When Emmett confronts him, Morgan sees Chuck with Jill and inadvertently gives up that information to Emmett, all the while upset that Chuck has been lying to him about Jill being back in his life. Morgan confronts Chuck about Jill and Chuck manages to mollify the situation, reminding Morgan that he’ll always get information first from now on. (If only Morgan knew what else Chuck has been hiding from him.) Morgan later blackmails Emmett with a tape of him drunk off his ass in Big Mike’s office after getting toasted on wine coolers at the weekly poker game, which forces Emmett to call off the Bartowski witchhunt.

This could actually make a pretty cool opera.

Chuck sneaks in to Morgan’s locker to copy the flash drive on Morgan’s illegal Canadian media ripper and brings the drive to the opera house to bargain for Jill’s life. Sarah and Casey show up, as well, with Casey willing to shoot Chuck rather than see that information fall back into the hands of Fulcrum. Sarah takes out Fulcrum’s sniper and no shots end up being fired. Jill is released and Chuck gives up the flash drive, which Fulcrum destroys. Casey berates Chuck for this, until Chuck pulls out the copy he made and hands it over to Sarah and Casey. Unfortunately for Chuck, Jill is in that list of agents, and Sarah and Casey race to his house to save him from her, only to find that the pair has headed off into the potentially dangerous sunset together without Chuck’s GPS watch.

I can’t wait for the end of this arc, even though it breaks my heart to know that every chance at happiness Chuck gets is taken away from him somehow. Life’s tough when you’re a spy.

The Husband:

This season has focused very clearly on how being a spy has negatively affected Chuck’s life, both professional and personal, and that definitely came to a head in this episode. Not only is Chuck nearly on the verge of losing his Buy More job each week due to Emmett’s rather normal insistence that he does his job and gets his Nerd Herd reports signed (even if they are a cover for spy work, you’d think Casey would have figured that one out), but he just simply can’t seem to catch a break in his love life. He loves Sarah but can’t compromise their professional relationship, he couldn’t date Rachel Bilson last season because of her involvement in a smuggling ring (even if she thought it was just salami smuggling) and now his first real true love, his college sweetheart that has reentered his life, is now an archvillain.

I think my wife could tell you that I actually cried a little during the ending, after which I grabbed the nearest cat and squeezed him to my chest. Chuck has been established as a very personable, very real character, and to see him enter a world of hurt like this was kind of overwhelming. It’s very sad, really, that in order to be a better spy, he’s having to become more like Casey – someone who is, to quote the NSA agent himself, not even interested in his own feelings.

Chuck means well, but is meaning well good enough? Not even Numb3rs can get this depressing as far as CIA/FBI shows are concerned, because even when they show that Charlie Eppes is slowly becoming a colder person, by each episode’s end he’s usually back to normal.

I am loving this three-episode arc, though, and hope that the producers can learn from the quality that is gained in a more drawn-out story. More extended arcs in the future, please. It’s when Chuck is at its best.