It seems every television season comes to a close with at least one series resting unsteadily on the cancellation bubble, with rabid fans and supportive TV critics rallying behind it in an attempt to save it from an early death. Chuck was that show for the 2008-2009 season and, unlike many programs that find themselves in that precarious position, NBC’s quirky spy comedy actually got that second chance at life. However, it also received an eight month sabbatical between its second and third seasons, rather than the usual four month summer break, as well as a reduced budget that has forced the creators to make some creative decisions with casting this year. Still, after the excellent season two finale, I, like many Chuck fans was anxiously awaiting the show’s return, no matter how long I had to wait. I was not disappointed.
Perhaps to cushion the blow of the extra months without our beloved Nerd Herder (or perhaps it has something to do with NBC ongoing programming struggle), in just two days, we received three brand new episodes with a double-header on Sunday night (garnering the show’s best ratings ever) and a third airing in the program’s normal time slot yesterday evening. These episodes were clearly not created with the intention of sandwiching them together this closely, as there’s no real continuity between them. In fact, it seems like the third and fourth episodes will fit together much more snuggly than any of these first three did, but then we wouldn’t have bee left with that most excellent cliffhanger last night.
As the third season begins, several months have passed since Chuck received the fresh download of The Intersect 2.0, an upgrade to the computer that he had downloaded into his head when the series first began. The first version of the Intersect made Chuck’s mind a file full of information about various international baddies and dangerous technology and, when he saw images or heard voices the Intersect would “flash” and fill Chuck’s conscious brain with all the background intel on that person/thing. Version 2.0 is much more show than tell. As we saw in season two’s finale, Chuck pulled out some impressive Kung Fu moves after receiving the upgrade and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. In these first three episodes, alone, the Intersect grants Chuck the ability to play guitar, box, flip through crazy moving security lasers, dance like mad man and perform some minor surgery on one of his cohorts.
These crazy super spy skills all sound awesome, but there is, of course, a catch. This isn’t The Matrix or Dollhouse, while all of these skills do reside somewhere in Chuck’s noggin, they aren’t easily within his reach. Just as the Intersect required him to have some sort of stimuli in order to access background information on a particular person or thing, these new skills require Chuck to be in complete emotional control and focused on the task at hand. Needless to say, this isn’t especially easy for him, especially when the woman of his dream, who he can’t have, is constantly at his side. For example, in “Chuck vs the Three Words,” Chuck can’t manage to access the ability to leap through the laser beam security system until Sarah promises him that the two of them will have a serious talk about their relationship once the mission is over.
It’s because of this inability to control the Intersect that Chuck washes out of spy training. As if that wasn’t already disheartening, it turns out that Chuck chose to train to be a real spy over running away with Sarah, so now she’s mad at him and won’t return his phone calls. With no job and no girl, Chuck resigns himself to sitting on the couch with a gigantic barrel full of cheese balls, allowing one day to sluggishly drift into the next. It’s only with the return of his best buddy Morgan—who, himself, washed out of his dream of being a Benihana chef and lost his girlfriend Anna in the process (so long, Julia Ling, you’ll be missed)—and the realization that Sarah is still in Burbank, that Chuck is able to pull himself out of his slump. He throws himself into the operation that Sarah and Casey are in the middle of to prove that he still has the chops to be a spy and, in the end, succeeds in getting General Beckman to reassign both of them to Operation Bartowski and things go back to normal with Chuck and Casey resuming their cover jobs at the Buy More.
In the process, the show faces it’s first real consequence for the danger of the spy game when an assassin that comes looking for Chuck shoots Tony Hale’s uptight Buy More manager Emmett Milbarge right through the eye. It’s incredibly dark scene for this usually bubbly show. At this point, Casey seems to be the only one that knows about Emmett’s sad fate, as he lies to Chuck, telling him that he took a job at Large Mart in another city. Time will tell as to whether or not he will ever learn the truth.
With the show back on its normal footing, “Chuck vs the Three Words” feels the most like an old Chuck episode and addresses the kinks in Chuck and Sarah’s relationship. Mini Anden returns as Carina, as the team attempts to retrieve a mysterious weapon from an arms dealer, played by guest star Vinnie Jones. In the heat of the operation Chuck apologizes to Sarah for not running away with her, explaining that, in training to be a spy, he was trying to do what she’s taught him over the years and, at long last, tells Sarah that he loves her before collapsing into her arms from toxic gas. There isn’t a satisfying resolution to the Chuck and Sarah relationship in this episode, but it feels like they both recognize the feelings they have for each other.
Part of the now reduced budget means that while the spy team of Chuck, Sarah and Casey will appear in every episode, the supporting cast will have to sit the occasional episode out. Awesome and Ellie took a break in episode two and Morgan and the Buy More crew were MIA in episode three, “Chuck vs the Angel de la Muerte.” I’ve seen this done before in the latter seasons of Veronica Mars and, while it can be frustrating to see your favorite characters get benched, it does open the option for sometimes marginalized supporting characters to get a little bit more of the spotlight. This is true for Awesome (or Devon, if you prefer) in “Angel de la Muerte.”
At the close of season two, Awesome became the first civilian in Chuck’s life to learn about his identity as a spy, in addition to Sarah and Casey’s. In this episode, they finally deal with it, as he feels an itch to share his new brother-in-law’s profession. The opportunity presents itself when Awesome finds himself serving as the doctor to Allejandro Goya, the Costa Gravan Premier (guest star Armand Assante), a man that Chuck and his team are tasked with protecting from a perceived assassination attempt. Despite his enthusiasm, Awesome initially makes more trouble than not, causing Casey to end up in the hands of the Costa Gravans, who view him as a political prisoner due to his part in many attempts on the Premier’s life during the ’80s. When Awesome is called back to provide medical help to the Premier, he seizes the opportunity to make things right, taking Chuck and Sarah along to jailbreak their partner. It all seems to end fine, but at episode’s close, Awesome is abducted by a member of The Ring (this season’s shadowy bad guy organization, replacing Fulcrum) who had been implanted in the Premier’s security team. Her husband’s abduction leaves poor Ellie at home, awaiting his return from the hospital, while Chuck and Sarah can offer no real answer as to his whereabouts.
We’re off with a bang with these three episodes. They seem to be handling Chuck’s new abilities really well by not making him a total super spy, just granting him with the occasional ability to do something extraordinary. There is a little bit more continuity between episodes. The previous seasons seemed to have an operation-of-the-week approach, where things reset themselves to normal at the end of the hour. However, with moments like Emmett’s death (and Casey cover-up of it), General Beckman’s brief exchange with an unseen figure (”We need to tell them. They need to be prepared,”) and Awesome’s abduction, Chuck is getting more layered, working to something larger than it has in the past.
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