Big Chuck Post

I know, I know, you've all been waiting for my reaction to the Chuck season finale. :-P Sorry, I have Monday classes now, and they're fucking with my Chuck. I actually did watch last week's episode, but wanted to rewatch before talking about it, so here's my belated thoughts on the last three episodes.

Chuck vs. the Living Dead

Heh, I love that Ellie and Papa Bartowski have a code using the classifieds. It's so old school.

Morgan: "Did you check his pulse?"
Chuck: "Well, he fell into a river."
Morgan: "He fell into a river?! Well, of course Shaw's alive! Haven't you ever seen a John Carpenter movie?"
Hee! And then the callback later when Sarah shoots the CIA guy and Chuck tells her to check his pulse.

Hahaha, Sarah intimidating Morgan into telling her about Chuck's dreams. It's like they listen to me - I said more Morgan and Sarah, and what did we get? More Morgan and Sarah!

Casey: "Reviewing pictures of people you killed? I do that myself from time to time." *snort* Of course he does.

You know what's funny? When Chuck is trying to convince his dad that he's no longer a spy, and he says Sarah's his girlfriend, they seem SO fake, with the "Hi, honey" and the kiss. If I were Papa B, I totally wouldn't have bought that. And yet, it's actually the truth...

Okay, I have to be honest, when the CIA guy gave Ellie the speaker, I was expecting it to be something more dramatic. I didn't buy the "it blocks listening devices" explanation - in fact, it occurred to me that maybe it was actually a way of planting a bug in Ellie and Awesome's apartment, but I was also kind of expecting something like a bomb. When it turned out to be a gun, it was a little bit of a letdown. But then she clocked Casey with the frying pan Anya-style and it was all worth it. :)

Hahaha, Casey torturing Sarah and Chuck with details about her and Shaw. And Chuck's "Objection! Relevance?" Hee!

I got a chuckle out of the sitcommy setup where Ellie is getting more suspicious of Casey, just as Casey promises Chuck he'll be Ellie's shadow. On most shows, it would be too cheesy to take seriously, but Chuck manages just the right level of cheese that you snicker and go OF COURSE. I also enjoyed the misunderstandings that came out of it (especially everyone thinking Ellie's having an affair, lol). I also appreciated that we're seeing the softer side of John Casey, who not only respects Chuck, but cares enough to make sure his family is safe. It's nice foreshadowing for the next episodes, when Casey's trying to protect his own family.

"You threw a knife at my face!" Heh, reference to the Buffy movie? I'll take it.

You know, the first time I watched this episode, I didn't notice how many times Chuck calls himself special, but after having seen the finale (where it turns out he really IS special), I picked up on it in this episode.

Papa B: "Does she have the Intersect, too?"
Chuck: "No, Dad, that's all her."
Awwwww! Also, can I say again how much I love kickass!Sarah? I missed her in the first arc of this season.

Lester has the hips of a six-year-old girl! lol

Chuck vs. the Subway

Okay, I have to admit, when I saw the title of this episode, I thought it was going to involve Chuck's most prominent sponsor. But this is good, too.

Haha, so as soon as Chuck saw Shaw on the subway, I thought, "If this were 24, Jack would call Chloe and have her use the security cameras to find him." And then Papa Bartowski did just that, lol! He's Chloe to Chuck's Jack Bauer. Hee!

Drunk!Awesome! I noticed there were multiple plays on the name joke this episode, first with Devon realizing Morgan's serious because he called him Devon, and then Morgan saying, "Awesome," to the Buy More guys and Devon thinking he's talking to him.

"Our mission is to grab Shaw, or kill him, whichever's quicker." Heh, Casey says that with just a little too much glee.

Can I just point out that Zachary Levi looks really hot in these episodes? I love him being all confident as a spy, and for some reason, that black jacket really does it for me.

Hahahahaha, I love Awesome blurting out the truth to Ellie. The look on his face when he realizes she didn't know about Chuck is priceless. The poor guy has been struggling to keep this secret all year, and he thinks it's finally okay to talk and he just gets in more trouble. And Ellie trying to get information out of him and Morgan! "I have pockets of missing knowledge." "You need to find me somebody who knows a lot more than you do." Loved Morgan's description of the Ring, "a nefarious criminal organization hellbent on world domination."

LOL, Casey in the diner, communicating only in grunts. Also, now I want pie.

So, the bit where Chuck says he's choosing to protect Sarah by running away pinged me because of the patronizing tendency of guys to protect girls who don't need it (see also: Angel). But it didn't bother me this time because Sarah can take care of herself, and moreover, Chuck knows that, so it's not about her being weak or incapable or anything. It's about not wanting to be the cause of bad things happening to the people he loves. Of course, it's also portrayed as the wrong thing to do, since Chuck and his dad are doing a U-turn (to a very nice song, btw) in no time.

Haha, Alex really takes after her dad, doesn't she? "I got an A in my self-defense class!"

"This is the last time I'm gonna walk away from you." Um, yeah, could we be a little less obvious here? Although, for some reason, my first thought was that Ellie was going to die, and then I realized that was pretty unlikely.

Dammit, Shaw made me laugh. I'm still determined not to like him (he's so painfully wooden), but his deadpan "muhaha" after explaining his evil plan got me.

"Don't know when it happened, but our boy became a man. Bartowski's a spy. You picked a good one, Walker. Finally." AWWWWWW. And also hee!

Noooooo!!!! They killed Papa Bartowski! ...right outside a room with a cellular regeneration machine, so who knows, maybe he'll come back. It's like Buffy. No one ever really dies on this show.

Speaking of connections to Buffy, there's been a distinct thread running through this season about emotions being a weakness - Chuck's emotions interfere with the Intersect, everybody says that emotions will get a spy in trouble (which is one of the reasons Sarah was opposed to a relationship with Chuck in the first place), etc. Shaw uses it to his advantage twice in this episode, first by playing on Sarah's emotions to trap her, and then killing Chuck's father in order to make him unable to fight. And I can't help thinking of Buffy's line, "My emotions are total assets." I don't know that we've gotten quite that level of subversion, but since these are our heroes, it doesn't seem like the notion of emotions=bad spy is totally true, either, since our team is pretty successful despite their close personal ties. Even Casey's got some affection for both Sarah and Chuck (and hell, even Morgan) at this point.

Okay, so, the very first scene between Morgan and Alex, I totally started shipping them. And I thought, "Oh, man, Casey would love that." Heh, "You might wanna stand back. This could explode."

I love love love the Team Bartowski second string coming in at the end, just when Chuck's lost all hope. Also, the music in this episode is awesome.

Is it just me, or does flashback!Ellie look like a younger version of Erica's sister Sam on Being Erica?

Heh, Morgan and Awesome. "This is Casey's car!" Yes, it certainly is. The two of them arguing over who has to take the gun, and "You used my missile!" And Casey's reaction when he realizes exactly who saved them, lol.

Okay, when Shaw opened his eyes after the explosion, I seriously for a second wondered if he was supposed to be a robot. That's not even meant as a criticism of his acting (although it is), I legitimately was like, "OMG Shaw's a robot! That explains everything!" Unfortunately, that is not the case.

Chuck vs. the Ring Part II

Zac Levi, still looking hot. Yes, I'm shallow.

Awwww, Chuck and Ellie. I love them as siblings, and I feel like their relationship has suffered from Ellie not knowing - well, obviously from an in-show perspective, but also from a meta perspective. It's been very hard to like Ellie, because she ends up seeming shrill and controlling, and we haven't had a good sense of what Ellie and Chuck mean to each other because of that interference. But these last few episodes are really all about the Bartowski family, and I love it.

Hahaha, Chuck played Perchik in Fiddler on the Roof. (Fun fact: I was in Fiddler my freshman year of high school.)

"Why do you have my daughter's phone number?" Baahaha! Remember how I totally called Morgan/Alex in the last episode? THIS was the scene I was hoping for.

I love Chuck's calm demeanor confronting Shaw, and of course him muhaha-ing back at Shaw (er, even though he wasn't there to hear Shaw say it), which I think goes back to the emotions thing, and shows that he can at least keep his cool when it counts. Even if his brain is completely fried.

"Ellie - she's gonna be so mad at me if I die." Aww, Chuck.

Heh, Morgan dialing the iPhone with his nose. I also love Alan Sepinwall's reaction: "I was skeptical that you could actually work an iPhone with your nose, but I tried it after seeing Morgan do it, and dammit if the buttons didn't respond to the ol' Sepinwall schnozola." Awww, but the poor guy broke his thumbs, only to have Jeff and Lester pull the fire alarm for him. At least he earned Casey's respect for it.

Chuck is now wearing a white t-shirt and... yep. Still hot.

The Intersect-on-Intersect fight to Jeffster's "Blaze of Glory" - OMG. I am loving the show's tradition of having a Jeffster performance coinciding with a big battle in the season finale, though I think the wedding might have an edge, what with the live Jeffster performance and Casey crashing in through the skylight.

Heh, I love Chuck deciding to let Shaw live, and then Sarah braining him with a pole. She is so my kind of girl.

And Morgan blowing up the Buy More! And Jeff and Lester becoming fugitives! I love how they're like, "Did we do that?" This is exactly what I want from a Buy More plot - something totally zany that ends up intersecting with the spy plot in a significant way. Of course, now that the Buy More has been blown to smithereens, who knows what they'll do with the subplots next season. I can't imagine this is the last we've seen of Jeff, Lester, and Big Mike (though that would thin out the cast and give them some wiggle room in the budget).

Speaking of big changes, it looks like Chuck will be a rogue spy, after retiring from the CIA on the goodwill of having saved multiple branches of the US government (hee!), pursuing some of the things his father was working on. I'm guessing Team Bartowski will stick together in some capacity (though I didn't notice that Casey or, more importantly, Sarah got the easy dismissal that Chuck did), and Ellie will again be in the dark about Chuck's extracurricular activities. It's a big change, but I thought they handled the Intersect 2.0 seamlessly, so I trust them to do this, too. It feels a lot like Graduation Day for Chuck, you know? He's finally a real spy, he's outgrown his CIA training, and now everything changes. And I, for one, am very curious who they'll get to play Mama Bartowski - my vote is for Mary McDonnell.

In conclusion? Awesome.