Chuck

While we were nervous that Intersect 2.0 and Chuck being a real spy would destroy the essence of the show, this week proved to us that Chuck could still be a spy and still be Chuck.  Heck, other than a couple references to Intersect 2.0 and the confidence it gave him, Chuck didn't even use the thing this week!

During Chuck's mission, "Chuck Versus the Mask," Chuck manages to prove to be a real hero using only his computer skills and intelligence.  Wait, Chuck can be that decisive?  Well, the new spy Chuck can be apparently.

Overally, we really like where they're taking Chuck's character, and we're very curious to learn more about the ring and really see where season three is going.  That's actually our biggest issue with this episode.  We have to wait nearly a month until Chuck returns with a new episode, "Chuck Versus the Fake Name" on March 1st.

This week we were left with no cliffhangers and no standard spoiler-rific preview of when Chuck returns.  While as fanatics you know we'll be tuning in March 1st no matter what, but how about the rest of the television world?

Of course, what kind of Chuck fans could we be without mentioning the awkward love quadrangle in our review.  While we think both sets of couples clearly have chemistry.  The Shaw / Sarah pairing was inevitable.  As the girl states, she's drawn to heroes, and both of these actors are just too good looking.

While a Chuck-Hannah pairing may not have the chemistry of Chuck-Sarah (duh), they do have this cute, nerdy thing going.  So with both couples having chemsitry, why are we still bitter?

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Great Scott! This is a cool bit of casting news:

Chuck has tapped former Back to the Future star Christopher Lloyd to portray a therapist for the title character, according to producer Josh Schwarz's Twitter account.

Look for Chuck to turn to Lloyd later this season, as the pressures of the spy business continue to escalate. The veteran actor will appear in an installment that airs in late April or early May.

Remember: Chuck viewers: tonight is the final original episode before a long, Olympics-related hiatus. Enjoy every second and return to TV Fanatic for a detailed review of it.

Our boy Chuck is all grown up!  On this week's episode of Chuck, "Chuck Versus Nacho Sampler," we opened with a flash to Chuck's first meeting with Sarah for a very good reason.  It was time to see how much our hero has grown.

While Chuck certainly still had some bumbling idiot moments this episode, it was nice to see him juxtaposed with his nerd self of the past in the form of Manoosh (Fahim Anwar).  Manoosh literally paralled some of Chuck's moves including declaring it the best day of his life when he met Sarah.

However, Chuck proves how much he's grown when he's able to successfully manipulate Manoosh into thinking their friends, therefore making him an asset, only to burn him.  It's funny to see how much harder Chuck has become, while Sarah continues to become a big softie.

We suppose that's why the ended the episode showing Chuck's "Vicki Vale" moment with Sarah from her perspective at the end.  Very nice parallelism and use of flashback.

Meanwhile, Jeff and Lester did an amazing job as comic relief as they creeped on poor Hannah (Kristin Kreuk) on her first day at the Buy More.  Our only complaint is that they're not really taking advantage of Kreuk's guest starring role and simply pushed her to the back this episode.  The girl is gorgeous, can act, and her character has shown great chemistry with Chuck.  Bring her to the foreground!

That rant over, we have to give it to Casey for the best laugh-out-loud moment of the episode as he read Bartowski's old file when he was supposed to be reading Manoosh's.  Amazing.

The episode was funny, action-packed, loaded with character development and helped moved the plot line as Ellie and Morgan are on to Chuck's double life.  We can't wait too see where this is going next week.

Now on to our favorite Chuck quotes from the episode after the jump.

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From Stone Cold Steve Austin to Kristin Kreuk and Brandon Routh, Chuck has attracted top-notch guest-starring talent this season.

We can now confirm: that streak will continue through the end of the season.

Entertainment Weekly reports that Fred Willard and Swoosie Kurtz will guest star as a veteran spy couple on an upcoming episode. The pair will be recruited for an unannounced mission.

Willard was most recently seen on Modern Family in the role of Phil's dad. He'll reprise that character again this season.

Kurtz, meanwhile, has guest-starred on a number of shows over the past year or so, including Heroes, Nurse Jackie and Desperate Housewives.

We interviewed the actress when she played a key role on Pushing Daisies and can state for those interested: she's as nice as they come.

Even with Intersect 2.0, season three of Chuck has been sticking to the show's general formula up until Shaw decided to shake things up.  In this Chris Fedak penned script, Chuck went on his first solo mission.

While we loved the generic formula every episode prior stuck to, we've been waiting for the supposed "game changer" that Intersect 2.0 was meant to be.  For the first time, "Chuck Versus First Class" gaveus  a taste of what that's going to be like.

Sure, Casey, Sarah and Shaw were there by phone and some remote control plane to help, but Chuck had to carry the mission, and episode on his own.  The show continues to let Chuck slowly grow, and this time our Nerd Herder was able to properly use the Intersect both times required, even if he never got to take advantage of those nunchucks. 

We were getting sick of Chuck's Intersect impotence plotline and preferred other problems facing Chuck on his solo mission.  The girlish scream followed up by master sword fighting?  Perfectly Chuck.

Now on to our four amazing guest stars.  Brandon Routh seemed irritating to us as Shaw at first, but now the character is quickly growing on us, especially since he's pushing Chuck to be the spy in ways that Casey and Sarah were never willing to do.

While we've never seen enough Smallville to hate Kristin Kreuk like some of the Clois fans do, we thought she was ridiculously cute and charming in this role.  We kept expecting Chuck to flash on Hannah and her to be a part of the ring.  We hope she doesn't go the way of Lou (Rachel Bilson) or Jill (Jordana Brewster) and that our main man is finally able to maintain some sort of normal relationship.  Those Chuck spoilers from next week's preview sure do look promising at least.

Stone Cold Steve Austin was a perfect casting as a gorilla of a ring operative, and we loved the wrestling reference they made.  It was also fun to see Josie Davis (the nerdy sister from Charles in Charge) as Serena, the evil flight attendant.  We just have to ask one question, why didn't Chuck flash on her?  Oh who are we kidding.  There's never a point to analyizing plot holes in Chuck.

Meanwhile, without Chuck to protect, we finally got to see what a Casey-Morgan storyline could be like at the Buy More, and it was surprisingly amazing.  We're actually shocked they never explored how funny it is to have a bad ass like Casey working at the Buy More.  The last bit we can remember related to this was Casey tackling a shoplifter at the first couple episodes of season one.

Overall we thought this episode was perfection as far as anything Intersect 2.0 and season three can offer.  Heck, we're gonna say this episode could even stand up to most of season one and two.  Plus, it had none of that annoying Chuck-Sarah sexual tension!

Our favorite Chuck quotes and our rating after the jump.

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As previous Chuck spoilers have alluded to, Kristin Kreuk and Stone Cold Steve Austin both guest star this season.

Moreover, they both guest star next week!

On Monday's new episode, everyone's favorite spy meets Hannah (Kruek) on a plane to France. That's also where his actual mission takes place and where he runs into Hugo Panzer (Austin). 

In the following clip, we see Chuck's first interaction with Hannah:

Below, we've posted another clip from "Chuck Versus First Class." Watch it now and then return to TV Fanatic for a full episode recap and review after it airs.

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This week's episode of Chuck took over directly where last week's episode ended, with Captain Awesome being kidnapped and dragged to the rooftop by ring operative, Sydney (Angie Harmon).

Now if you can forgive this major plothole of the Ring, who supposedly knows everything, having the worst intelligence and mistaking Devon for the spy, the main storyline of "Chuck Versus Operation Awesome" was actually quite good.

Chuck simultaneously played the bad ass spy he could be when he was cool, calm and collected and trying to impress Devon with his "duck hunt training" and the bumbling, nerd idiot when he tried to hatch his own plan to capture Sydney.

We actually really like the idea of Chuck trying to master the Intersect 2.0 and like seeing the moments of weakness.  Chuck is not and should never be a Casey, or even a Sarah.  We like seeing him slowly improve as he learns to master his powers and hopefully by season 4 can be a little more competent.

This episode also saw the introduction of Shaw (Brandon Routh), who initially came across as a bit of a one dimensional tool.  Sure Shaw is meant to be seen as a super man and the casting was perfect for that, but he's a bit cheesey... even for this show.  And that's impressive.

We were glad to see Shaw has a bit of a backstory and there may be more to this character, but we've already dealt with the "no emotional ties" theme of spies enough.  Move on.  Even his hatred of guns feels played out.  Maybe we just hate Shaw because all Chuck spoilers point to Shaw being a potential love interest for Sarah and that relationship needs anything but another wrench.

Meanwhile, as overdone as Fight Club parodies are, we actually enjoyed the Buy More subplot this episode.  Maybe Lester just did a phenomenal job, or we loved Morgan's threatening to fire him at the end, but for some reason this diversion worked for us.  Plus the electrified fight cage tied nicely into the A story.

Overall, we thought this episode was the weakest of the incredibly strong third season, but still a good outing by Chuck and crew.  Now for our favorite Chuck quotes from the hour:

Lester: I wanted to thank you Chuck, you made me feel something I haven't felt in a long time...
Morgan: Another human's foot on your body? | permalink

Awesome: You're incredible, is that your spy training?
Chuck: Duck Hunt, Nintendo. | permalink

Awesome: Geeze, this guy's heavy.
Chuck: Well bad guys don't count carbs, buddy. | permalink

Casey [about Shaw]: I have issues of Guns & Ammo magazine that are older than him. | permalink

It's a big episode ahead for Chuck.

Monday's installment, "Chuck Versus Operation Awesome," features the debut of two recurring guest stars on the NBC hit: Angie Harmon and Brandon Routh.

After this article's jump, we give fans a sneak peek at each big-name actor in his/her new role. Read on and enjoy!

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Last night NBC aired its first new Chuck in its regular time slot on Mondays, giving us three hours of Chuck in just two short days.  So was it too much?  Luckily there's no such thing for a man who did a marathon of season one that same weekend.

The episode, "Chuck Versus Angel De La Muerte," finally took advantage of Captain Awesome knowing that Chuck is a spy in a clever way when their two worlds collided.  A visiting prime minister, Allejandro Goya (Armand Assante), fell ill and required Awesome to be his doctor, while Chuck and team had to protect him from further assassination attempts.

We love Awesome and seeing a dynamic to the character besides simply being the manliest of men was nice.  Seeing Devon actually fail, admit jealousy and admiration towards Chuck was actually nice.  Maybe someone as nearly perfect as Devon could exist then.  "Is there anything your brother-in-law can't do?"  We're definitely hoping for more Devon / Chuck missions.

The episode also toned down Chuck's action sequences, using the Intersect 2.0 mostly for dancing and cramming a 4 year medical degree into a few seconds.  The action was mostly handled by the commie-hating, Angel De La Muerte of the title, Casey.

Casey may have shown hesitation and some signs of fear, well as close to fear as Casey can feel, but when Devon screwed things up, our boy was in their to clean the mess.  The torture scene and some of line given by Casey were the best in this character's history.

Luckily, the Chuck-Sarah annoying tension has been dialed down a bit.  Sure, Ellie (who looked hot!) had a little heart-to-heart with Sarah (who looked silly hot in her stripper version of a nurse outfit) and Chuck and Sarah decided to be friends, but none of it got to the point of annoying like last night's.

Overall, the episode was phenomenal.  We're sad the amazing cliffhanger at the end was spoiled by a preview shown a split second after the episode ended.  The ending definitely had me screaming, only to be relieved a second later.  Weak, NBC.

Our favorite Chuck quotes from the hour are after the jump.

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Chuck may know Kung Fu now, but Operation Bartowski was back in full effect on the second episode of Chuck's premiere last night.  With most of the setup already done in the first hour, "Chuck vs. the Three Words" was our first taste of how Intersect 2.0 will be.

The episode was a nice throwback to season one with the return of Carina (Mini Anden), who was last seen in episode four, "Chuck Versus the Wookie."  The episode also saw Vinne Jones guest starring as her tough, but sensitive fiancee Karl.

Our only issue with the episode was Chuck's annoying decision to keep insisting to talk about his feelings to Sarah in the middle of their mission.  While we're okay with much of the show reverting to its formula of previous seasons and making Chuck a bumbling idiot, we'd think he would have grown past this.

That one gripe aside, the rest of the episode was fantastic.  Morgan got to shine as he finally got his woman and stood up for himself, while Jeff and Lester are back to providing plenty of comic relief with Emmet gone.

As much as we love Tony Hale, he never really found his place on Chuck like he had in Arrested Development.  We're actually glad to have Emmet gone and the big softy, Big Mike back.  The episode made sure the Buy More employees were able to get their goofy, fun selves.

Overall, the new formula of season three appears to be working nearly perectly and we can't wait for tonight's episode.  Now for some of our favorite Chuck quotes from last night's second hour:

Morgan [about Carina]: Do you think she'll remember me? We only went on that one date and tall women have very short memories. | permalink

Morgan: Carina is not just some girl. She's basically a Swedish supermodel. The country's greatest export since Björn Borg.
Jeff: People mistake him for me all the time. | permalink

Lester: The studs inside are going to ruin our chances with the medium-hot chicks from Underwear Unlimited.
Jeff: I've been drinking this jail juice since I was in diapers, I'll challenge them to a drinking contest and they'll pass out.
Lester: By process of elimination we land the ladies. | permalink

Chuck: There's gotta be a contingency plan if enemy agents infiltrate my house. Like a button you push that calls that cavalry so they can swoop in and get everyone out. Where's the button?
Casey: Me. I'm the button. | permalink