Chuck Vs. The Tooth

Chuck Vs The Tooth was everything I thought it would be and more. I am really excited to see the finale now. The storm is gathering and it’s both exciting and frightening to see these portents.

To quote Christopher Lloyd from Back to the Future; “If my calculations are correct …you’re going to see some serious shit.”

Let’s start, appropriately, right at the beginning. “Monday nights can be a bit of a wasteland.” In a few weeks that is set to be pretty accurate with three episodes left, the last two being shown as a two hour finale. It’ll be even more accurate if Chuck doesn’t get picked up for a fourth season (which isn’t going to happen – they’ll renew it, dammit!)

Spies Like Us was not only referenced, but also got some screen time. I detailed some of the references to that film from previous episodes in an earlier post. We had the phrases ‘spies like these’ (during watching Spies Like Us) and ‘spies like me’ (at the CIA psychiatric facility) so it got a good run this time out!

Other fun-to-spot items included: Morgan referencing Dune when talking to Devon: “Fear is the mind killer”, the Rorschach test images on the TV’s at the Buy More and, of course, Chuck calling Christopher Lloyd’s character ‘Doc’ on more than one occasion.

Somehow during the scenes at the mental institution, I kept expecting to see Hurley’s ‘friend’ Dave – note that this will only make sense if you’ve seen the Lost Season 2 episode ‘Dave’.

There were a couple of sweet ‘Awwww’ moments during the episode, most notably when Sarah is pleading with Dr. Dreyfus and it turns out that Casey is already there; he really does care a lot about Chuck, the big softy.

In terms of sinister plot developments; trouble is brewing for the Bartowski family. Ellie has been unwittingly recruited by The Ring in order to gain access to her father. What dastardly plans they have for him other than forcing him to build yet another Intersect is anybody’s guess – apart from the people who work on the show and those ‘In The Know’.

The only real problem I had with this episode was the bouncing between the quite dark moments and the light, and sometimes goofy, humour. While it was nice to see most of the cast on screen, and the return, albeit briefly, of Anna Wu, it felt as though some of the lighter scenes were there just to have those characters on screen. I really do hope that in the coming season (fingers crossed) that they do address the Intersect insanity problem, as I’m sure this story would have made a great two-parter.

Next Sunday (16^th May) NBC will announce the decision to renew Chuck – at least that’s what we believe and certainly what we hope. That might affect how we feel when watching the episode that airs the next night, the penultimate week of this season.

As usual, check out ChuckYouTuesday’s podcast – remember, it contains strong language.

Next week - Chuck Vs The Living Dead, which from the promos, looks set to be a scream!