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| Photo Credit: Matt Kennedy/NBC |
This episode marks the third time that Zachary Levi has sat
in the director’s chair. It was a little different, thematically, from the
previous two – ‘Leftovers’ and ‘Beard’ – which both had bad guys taking
hostages at the Buy More and a secret about Chuck revealed.
Well, actually there was a secret revealed in this episode.
After five seasons we suddenly found out that Chuck used to be a super-hacker,
nicknamed ‘The Piranha’. So it seems that the men-folk of Carmichael Industries
are amongst the top in their league; Casey being one of the world’s best
snipers and Chuck being one of the world’s best hackers.
I’m sure that few people will complain about the amount of
skin on show in the episode, but this being NBC and not HBO, we had the use of
pixelization to protect the actors modesty (a little) and eventually the robes
although we did get an amusing comeback of the pixelization when Colin’s robe
bunched up when Verbanski tranq’d him!
There was an amusing little exchange between Verbanski and
Chuck after he and Sarah had stripped off. I noticed that Sarah had a couple of
glances down at Chuck’s, ahem, ‘self esteem’, as he and Gertrude were talking
about how he had ‘nothing much to see/nothing to be ashamed of’. I wonder how awkward
all of that was to film; they certainly wouldn’t have been able to film that
outdoors in the UK!
Sans-Intersect, Chuck was a little cocky getting back into
his hacker routine which he and Morgan cleverly used to call “The Routine”! A
little bit of chardonnay and some fast fingers gave us an incredibly quick hack
of the ‘Omen’ code to get the coder’s name, and later, Chuck was able to
manipulate The Collective’s security systems allowing Sarah and Verbanski to
grab the modified USB drive, put in a temporary kill switch and get free flat
screens from Buy More.
Carrie-Anne Moss showed that she has great chemistry with
the principal cast, not just with Adam. Her use in this episode was an amusing
throwback to the first season when Casey hadn’t warmed to Chuck and was
distrustful of Sarah.
Gertrude Verbanski is very much an equal and opposite to
Casey. They work well off each other and have similar traits. As Chuck says
following her comment about the ‘filthy hippies’, “It’s like Casey never left!”
Nice B-story this week with both Casey and Lester locked up
in the same prison. There was a funny role reversal with Casey trying to keep
his nose clean and Lester using his Buy More skills to become the big dog in
prison.
Casey was prepared to wait it out in prison until Chuck and
Sarah could find out what Decker’s angle was. Although he admitted that he was
using a lot of restraint to not crush Lester.
Amusingly, his connection to the ‘shorter, feminine version’
of Victoria Beckham paid off when Lester saved him from a gang of thugs by
threatening to “pull their plugs”.
There was a nice bit of subversion early on when an inmate
told Lester he had the 12 gauge he wanted. Of course, we all thought he was
talking about a shotgun, but oh no, this is Lester. It turned out that it was
12 gauge wire that had come in for him and that he was using his tech skills to
get free cable and internet for the inmates.
In an attempt to convince Lester to see the error of his
ways, Morgan and Jeff showed him his ‘competition’, guest star Danny Pudi.
However, he wasn’t the only ‘Community’ star to get in some time at the Buy
More. Kudos to NBC for managing to keep Yvette Nicole Brown’s cameo a secret.
Usually that kind of stunt casting gets leaked, but it made it even better the
fact that it was a complete surprise.
A few weeks ago Ryan McPartlin had a cameo on Community, so
there’s a lot of shared love between the casts. Hopefully the cameos will
convince any Chuck fan who hasn’t cheeked out Community to do so, and who
knows, we might see more Chuck stars guest on Community (as long as NBC doesn’t
cancel it!)
The final scenes were rather interesting. Decker had used
Chuck to grab the virus so that he could frame him for releasing it. Hopefully
he had that footage on him as Verbanski pulled the old lift and switch routine,
planting a bomb in Decker’s jacket that turned him, an possibly the goons
behind him, into chunky kibble.
Alas with Decker blown to smithereens, there’s a lack of a
middleman to hint at who’s behind all of this. If you watch the promo for the
next couple of episodes, there might be a clue as an old face makes an
unwelcome (for most) comeback.
Next time: Chuck Versus the Curse
A CASE OF MISTAKEN IDENTITY GIVES ELLIE AND AWESOME A
DATE NIGHT THEY WILL NEVER FORGET — REBECCA ROMIJN GUEST STARS –Chuck (Zachary
Levi) and Sarah (Yvonne Strahovski) race against time to take down a dangerous
computer virus, pitting them against Robyn Cunnings (guest star Rebecca
Romijn), a ruthless spy who will stop at nothing to get what she needs.
Meanwhile, Ellie (Sarah Lancaster) and Awesome’s (Ryan McPartlin) date night
takes a dangerous turn and Morgan (Joshua Gomez) is sent on a special mission
to recover Chuck’s P.A.N.T.S. Adam Baldwin also stars.
Here’s the trailer, take a look:
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