Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Chuck-"Chuck vs Agent X"

The boys are on a mission at Chuck's Bachelor Party on "Chuck"
Credit: NBC

My very delayed review of this week's episode of Chuck is after the jump.

Now that we got that out of the way, that was a very good episode of Chuck. It was a busy episode that had what could have been badly stretched out over three episodes played in one episode very well. I'm glad that they chose to cover those stories in one episode rather then over multiple different episodes because of how well they played together. The episode was full of moments that were payoff and moments that have the story going somewhere very interesting.

I'm going to start off talking about how the episode had probably the best possible payoff involving Chuck and Ellie. The show has been building to the moment when Ellie finds out that Chuck is an Intersect for a very long time. And the way the show did that was absolutely fantastic. The show really couldn't have done it any better then having Ellie come down to Castle and watch Chuck do his intersect thing. It's a moment that I knew was coming, and I had high expectations for it, but it was so well executed by everyone involved, especially Zachary Levi and Sarah Lancaster. They both killed it in this sequence (heck, they've been awesome during this entire arc. It really is a full circle moment for the series as Ellie now knows the full details of Chuck's secret. This has been something that the series has been building up to throughout its run and I'm glad that Ellie finally knows so everyone can stop lying about the spy life and the Intersect.

Even if the brother-sister relationship was a major part of the episode, the true center of the episode was finding Agent X, a mysterious agent who is connected with Orion as the first human Intersect. I admit that I was a little bit skeptical of how this would be executed, how could they draw this out over an episode? My question was answered by a very well executed plotline that held the mystery very well and took the show to very interesting places. Quite frankly, the way that they brought this into everything else that was going on was brilliant. I loved the way that this was added into the bachelor party sequence. That fight scene was very well choreographed (with some great Jeff material).  And there were also great scenes from England, where we meet this nice British woman. (Who if I'm not mistaken is Volkoff's mother, am I wrong about that?). That was another very cool scene that had a very well executed (and expensive looking on a Chuck standard) action scene.

But honestly the most important part of the Agent X plotline was the payoff, where we find out that Agent X is Alexi Volkoff. I'm surprised that more people weren't shocked by this when it first aired (although, in hindsight, that was a pretty easy twist to make, it just surprised me when it aired). But I'm more excited for the potential this has to play out over the next two episodes. (Especially when Vivan finds out).

As for the bachelor party storylines, those were very fun and very lightweight. Awesome taking them to Las Vecas was a lot of fun (and had some good material for the Buy Morons). And Sarah's bachelorette party, the phrase "something for the ladies" comes to mind.

Some other thoughts:

  • The ratings ticked up a little bit this week. I'm really hoping for a renewal, but there's a strong chance for the opposite to happen. No matter what happens, I'm going to enjoy these final two episodes.
  • That was an unfortunately time Bin Laden joke, wasn't it.
  • There was some great Casey material in this episode. He gets to be a total badass with a mudface, meet the mother he wishes he had, and he gets to play serious. This was a good range of material for Adam Baldwin to play.
  • It's not like the men were forgotten in this one, we did get Sarah in bubblebath.
  • Ray Wise was fantastic in this return episode, I just wish he was given more to do then walk around and be menacing.
Overall, this was a very strong setup episode for what should be a great final two episodes of the season.

What did everyone else think?

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