Chuck Vs The Fear of Death

Intersect 2.0 encountered a serious error. If this is the first time you have seen this screen, restart your system.

Photo Credit: Joel Warren/NBC

  At the end of the last episode, which feels like an age ago, Mama B seemed to de-Intersect Chuck. However, all is not lost, as it appears that it was merely suppressed.

 Cue a team of scientists working for a month to try and restore our hero to his full spy potential and lift the ‘psychological rock’ off the Intersect.

 Follow this with the most bizarre Psychological Operations agent I have ever seen, Agent Rye, whose methods are less than conventional.

  This episode, like many others has a dual meaning in its title. The fear of death is supposed to be the thing that coaxes the Intersect into working again, but it is also Chuck’s fear that his spy career will be ‘dead’ without it.

 Sarah also has a fear that Chuck cannot function as a spy unless he regains the Intersect, something she makes clear to him when he decides to do whatever is necessary.

 Both of them seem to have forgotten the number of times he’s managed to save the day without using the Intersect. Even before the upgrade to 2.0 he was capable of great things, and I’m sure he must have learned something from having used Chuck-Fu a number of times now. He even took that online Gemology class on the flight over to Gstaad and thought to bring the loop for studying the diamonds.

 It seems that General Beckman has become a lot more emotionally attached to the team. Not only does she allow Chuck to use the ‘But my mom said..’ excuse, but when Sarah is anxious about finding where DeSmet has taken Chuck, she tries to calm her down by using her first name rather than Agent Walker.

 “Sarah, he’s out there, we’ll find him.” – Gen. Beckman.

The idea of the slightly crazy PsyOps agent helping Chuck was a good one, but I felt that the spy story swung between serious and funny without really finding enough of a balance. I also found the fact that 'Chuck Bartowski is the Intersect' seems to be an open secret now a little odd, unless they have a team dedicated to it, possibly trying to recreate it for use in more agents.

 The story in the Buy More worked a lot better, with Jeff and Lester on the verge of uncovering the secret of ‘Greta’ and the fact that the Buy More is actually a CIA/NSA substation. Quite frankly, if they worked anywhere else, they’d have been fired by now.

 We learned a couple of new things about Jeff this week. Firstly, his damaged brain makes him see things like people having tails and turning into woodland creatures, something I’m sure a psychiatric team would have a field day with. The second thing we found out is Jeff’s second skill (after Missile Command) – he can identify the ingredients in a Subway sandwich from a distance, and possibly by smell if you watch that scene again – how can he see it?

 Since Summer Glau was appearing in this episode, I’m sure many of us were expecting a Firefly reference. It was fleeting, likely to have been missed by anyone not familiar with the show, but if you listen carefully it’s there.

 Who else liked the fact that Greta growled like Casey at Casey? Worthy of a little smile at least.

 I should point out that I liked the opening sequence with the scientists, although how watching YouTube clips of kittens and people having skateboard mishaps would work is anyone’s guess. That skateboard fail was quite funny though!

 I'm looking forward to next week's episode and the resolution of the cliffhanger we were left with. I'm hoping that Chuck will learn during this Intersect-less story, however long it lasts, that he has abilities outwith the computer in his brain and doesn't need to rely on it to be a real spy.

 Next episode: Chuck Vs Phase Three, which, from the promo photos, looks to have some serious Sarah Walker in butt-kicking mode in it!