Last night saw the return of Chuck for the 5th and final season. Although we ended the last season on quite a game changer, it appears that the writers had a little re-think on hiatus.
We still have the same team, but ‘Cliffhanger’ left the dynamic changed enormously. Chuck had the Intersect suppressed by Decker, became super rich thanks to Volkoff, now he owns his own company and Morgan has the Intersect.
The season opens with Chuck having ploughed through most of his fortune on start-up costs for ‘Carmichael Industries’; equipment, a private jet, servicing the private jet, and Morgan’s penchant for eating fresh shrimp on said private jet. By the end of the episode, Decker has frozen the teams’ assets, leaving them with only the Buy More as a source of income until they find another spy contract.
This works quite well for me; given millions of dollars, Chuck would effectively have been Bruce Wayne, with a gadget for every occasion, which is not where the show lives. With the money inaccessible, they are being forced to survive on their skills and wit, which can make the show much more dramatic than it may otherwise have been.
Morgan’s entrance as the Intersect was typically Morgan. A ridiculous entrance in the opening gambit showed that despite having gained a supercomputer in his head, he is still the slightly bumbling guy he has always been. The fight scene was pretty good, with Morgan becoming like a bearded Jackie Chan, complete with comedy kung-fu cries. However, in my opinion, that scene also showed that Morgan may be more like the Gretas, in that the Intersect largely dictated his response, not as with Chuck, where he impacts on the Intersect. It didn’t seem to allow Morgan to be Morgan, whereas Chuck still managed to be funny whilst kicking butt.
Of course, as soon as the fight was over, Morgan went back to hilarious ineptitude and broke the vase they were trying to steal. Doh!
The dance scene between Morgan and Sarah also confused me slightly. After ‘zooming’ on dance skills, Morgan seemed to mainly be standing about whilst Sarah did all the work. It could be that Gomez is not that good a dancer and it was choreographed to compensate for that, because, out of all the dance scenes over the course of the series, I think this one involved the least actual dancing.
(Sorry Josh, if you are a good dancer, the scene didn’t allow that to show through!)
I noticed that Morgan doesn’t seem to have a ‘zoom’ face. Whereas Chuck had the whole flickery eyes thing going on when he flashed, brilliantly lampooned by Sarah last season, Morgan has nothing. Minor point, moving on….
With Sarah and Casey still being brilliant spies and Morgan now having the Intersect, this leaves Chuck at a bit of a loss. You can see each time it’s mentioned, how much Chuck misses being the centre of the team. He may be the leader of the group, but he feels he’s lost his usefulness, gone from being Batman to being Alfred.
Morgan having the Intersect worked best whilst showing how out of place Chuck feels without it. We know that Chuck is still brilliant without it, but I think having it for a few years, he’s learned to think of it as part of him, rather than a burden he has to carry.
Chuck’s plan to save his team and get out alive showed the kind of outside-the-box quick thinking that has served them so well, with or without any superpowers. I’m hoping that he gets it back since, as I mentioned in both my ‘Cliffhanger’ post and a little earlier, Chuck’s Intersect was suppressed, not removed.
It seems the Buy More will be playing an integral role this season, being the primary source of income for Carmichael Industries until they get their feet on more solid ground. The thin-as-tissue scene with Jeff and Lester trying to scam money only really served to remind us that, as they are spending so much time being spies, Chuck and Morgan are hardly spending any time in their cover at the Buy More, which is tricky as Morgan is supposed to be the manager.
It was nice to see that Ellie is behind Chuck when it comes to his chosen path. It was quite nice to see a scene between the siblings which would normally have taken place in the house, taking place in the Castle 2.0 room, showing that, whilst not involved in the danger, Ellie is part of the team.
‘Operation Toes In The Sand’, despite it’s awkward acronym, gives us a sensible goal to aim towards for the end of the series. Rather than finding Sarah’s mother, or having another baby Bartowski on the way, it should be setting up a lovely happily ever after payoff for the final episode (although this being Chuck, there may be a twist at the end anyway!)
* I also enjoyed Casey being dismissive of their client as being ‘an ambulance chaser’ and ‘scum of the earth’ until he mentions that Bale stole $2m from Rush Limbaugh, at which point Casey wants to know “everything you know about this animal”. Nice little bit reminding us of the parallels between Casey and Adam Baldwin when it comes to political affiliation!
As you will all know by now, Chuck ended up scoring a series low of 1.0 last night, although it was up against the behemoth that was Game 7 of the World Series. Other channels balked and decided to air repeats rather than get low ratings; NBC stood firm, possibly because they weren’t expecting massive ratings anyway.
Next week: Chuck vs. the Bearded Bandit
Take a look at the trailer for the upcoming season:
