The General: “We are in the midst of a secret war with Fulcrum, and I believe that the outcome of this fight will rest squarely on your shoulders.”Casey: “Argh.”
Chuck is still plotting his escape (and how), but it’s looking more and more like the General won’t let him out of the spy game. His attempts to track down Orion were successful enough for Orion to “come out of the cold,” with rather troubling results.
And on the BuyMore front, it’s war.
My past few reviews have focused on the arc of the show, but this episode really stood out as being great for the mythos and the dialogue. The BuyMore War was hilarious, from the baudy French farce of the masked burglars to the Beverly Hills vs. Burbank disses.
Chuck’s fervor to find Orion was suspenseful, to say the least—I actually found myself gripping the arm of my couch in the downtown scene. The General was punchy and intimidating, albeit small. The Fulcrum agent was deadpan. Really, absolutely everything went absolutely perfectly (except the mission itself).
A lot of this episode felt like the inmates were running the asylum, especially when Chuck was given the chance to plan his own mini-mission to recapture the Orion computer, which was paralleled with Big Mike letting Emmett run Operation Vandalism. "Calm and collected" it was not, which really ratcheted up the suspense and the humor.
According to my cursory Internet Research, it doesn’t look like there’s been any decision made on whether or not to renew the show—and the ambiguity is making me even curiouser and curiouser about how this season is going to end. Will Chuck escape his misery? Will he realize he likes it? Will Ellie and Awesome ever get married?
Fun Stuff:
• The Predator Drone really does look like a lumpy penis with wings.
• The BuyMore PowerWalk.
• The Orion theme music sounded vaguely like the Usual Suspects score. Even the fedora was very Keyzer Soze.
• The Beverly Hills BuyMore sign read: “BuyMore. Because you can!” And another one read: “Proud to help you spend your parent’s money.”
• The weird symmetry between the Hong Kong scene and the episode of Heroes that aired right after this. I watched Heroes first, which made it even weirder.
Quotes Gone Wild:
• “Your plan necessitated that we do actual plumbing. And, for the record, none of us actually know how to plumb.”
• “We admit nothing. Although we are in Burbank—that should be a crime.”
• Chuck: “Look, you’re not going to shoot anyone, right?”
The Fulcrum Agent: “It would be unprofessional not to.”
• “We will be calm and collected when we burn that motherloving store to the ground.”
• “Wake up, Casey. The eighties are over.”
• “Don’t scream. I have a splitting headache.”
• “I love the smell of Burbank in the morning.”
• Barclay: “Speaking for my store, and the city of Beverly Hills as a whole, we do not approve of your methods.”
Morgan: “Well, you’re not from Burbank.”
Four out of four Beverly Hills.
Josie Kafka is a full-time cat servant and part-time rogue demon hunter. (What's a rogue demon?)
The Buy More power walk was the best thing ever. Every episode of Chuck has at least one of those awesome moments. How could they NOT renew it???
ReplyDeleteIt would certainly be a shame if this show wasn't renewed. It manages to effortlessly combine personal drama, great spy action, crazy hijinks, and fabulous pop culture references on a weekly basis. This episode was chock full of subtle to not-so-subtle homages, from the power walk (Armageddon and countless others), to "the smell of Burbank in the morning" (Apocolypse Now), to "Well you're not from Burbank" (The Untouchables). Overall a fun and emotional episode. Thanks for the great reviews, Josie!
ReplyDeleteWe're going through season two pretty quickly, and what has struck me is how much more I like Chuck himself this season. I think they're de-nerding him just a bit.
ReplyDeleteThanks for reviewing this show, Josie. I might never have tried it if you hadn't.
The end of this episode made me sad. Chuck, who has obviously had enough, is now lying to Sarah and deceiving the General. Granted, she is spying on him in his bedroom, but having to live like that would be impossible.
ReplyDeleteBefore we got to that point, however, I loved the homage to The Untouchables. It made me laugh out loud.