Because why the hell not.
My disdain for the fourth season Chuck is no secret. I just found that I couldn’t care less about… well… everything. I seriously began to consider that perhaps it would have been more merciful to have let the show die the first time it was cancelled.
And then came Season Five, and for a spell things were good. Team Bartowski ditched the CIA and began freelancing. They were hilariously bad at it. Morgan was the Intersect and it didn’t suck. Jeff and Lester turned into functional human beings and it didn’t suck. Chuck and Sarah whined about balancing their domestic bliss with the spy life and it only sucked some of the time.
Every episode became a countdown to the end and you know what? It was a little bit sad. I loathed Season Four, but Season Five had been making up for it in spades. It seemed like without the pressure to appeal to the masses or face cancellation; Chuck was fearlessly going in bold new directions and just plain being awesome.
But apparently, in the long run, a little pressure and fear is a good thing.
We start out smashingly enough with Jeff and Lester passed out in a booze laden car; an accident staged by Casey and Morgan to convince the demented duo that their discovery of Castle beneath the Buy More was a chemically induced hallucination. The plan backfires when Lester, still functional after Captain Awesome’s therapy a few episodes back, is smart and sober about to figure things out. He and Lester spend the rest of the episode in a Memento-esque state of re-discovering the secret spy lives of their co-workers, only to be knocked out and left in the desert again, though each time with cryptic notes written on their arms. It’s the best part of episode.
Admittedly, overall, Chuck Versus Bo is not a bad episode. Since the demise of Decker, I distinctly get the feeling that we’re just killing time until the series finale, but it hasn’t all been aimless wandering and guest spots by the greatest hits of 70s sci-fi.
This week, a message recorded by Morgan when he was all hopped up on Intersect and ego reveals that a second pair of Intersect glasses are floating around. Since Morgan doesn’t remember anything from that time, it takes a bit of detective work to retrace Captain Douchebag’s steps…which ultimately lead to a close encounter of the sexy kind with none other than Bo Derek.
I’m sure it was entertaining, but all I really took from the episode was that women in their 50s who wear hot pants and turn every fifth word into an innuendo really freak me out. This isn’t a new lesson. My eyes go temporarily blind every time Madonna gets forward with a stripper pole.
But it’s fine, really. Chuck has been milking the best-of-the-B-genre guest stars for awhile now and it’s one of those silly, quirky, and endearing traits of the show that makes me smile, even when I’m rolling my eyes.
No, things don’t take a turn for “are you kidding me?” until the end, when cornered by our new big bad’s legion of doom, Sarah sees no other option than to whip out that random second pair of Intersect glasses and download the computer into her head. Because that’s how the Intersect works.
You know, for being some super-secret, ultra-specialized tool, the Intersect certainly makes the rounds. Remember the good old days when Chuck was supposedly “special” because the thing didn’t melt his brain? Remember when Fulcrum/the Ring/who-the-hell-ever inevitably attempted to download it into their lackey’s heads and melted their brains? Remember what a big deal that was? That was the whole point of the thing.
C’mon, Chuck, surely you can maintain your own mythology for two more freaking episodes.*
*Yes, I saw the preview where Sarah’s brain is apparently melting in response to the Intersect download. I’m still not amused.
Some stats and info about Chuck, “Chuck Versus Bo”
TV SHOW – Chuck
SEASON/EPISODE – Season 25, Episode 10
AIRED ON – January 13th, 2012
NETWORK/STREAMING SERVICE – NBC/Peacock
GENRE – Comedy, Spy Shows, Office Culture
CREATED BY – Chris Fedak, Josh Schwartz
CAST – Zachary Levi, Yvonne Strahovski, Joshua Gomez, Vik Sahay, Scott Krinsky, Sarah Lancaster, Adam Baldwin, Ryan McPartin, Mark Christopher Lawrence, Bonita Friedericy
This review originally appeared on TV Geek Army.