“I think you are uniquely wasteful and destructive.” – Jeff
It was a glorious day when my brother and I realized that we share the same taste in television. Mostly. He has this Jersey Shore obsession that I just don’t get and he won’t touch Gilmore Girls with a steel pole, but Chuck was always something that we could agree on.
We live 500 miles away from one another now, but the great thing about modern technology is that it lessens the impact those miles can have. So I wasn’t at all shocked when the texts started rolling in after 8 o’ clock. Nor was I shocked when one of them said, “This is getting unwatchable.”
“Unwatchable” in the television sense can have a couple of different definitions. There’s the unwatchable that I apply to any reality show that consists largely of following stupid people to the bar. There’s the unwatchable that applies to Dirty Jobs because I like to not throw up while I’m watching TV. There’s the Gregory Allen unwatchable where I’m not sure what’s going on but I suspect that it might be offensive. And there is the “what-are-you-doing-to-this-series” unwatchable, which is the one that most accurately applies to Chuck in its current state.
Sarah downloaded the Intersect in the last episode. She utilizes it to rescue Chuck this episode, but gets herself kidnapped and brainwashed by Quinn in the aftermath when, surprise surprise, the defective Intersect starts melting her brain.
I will admit that the end of Chuck Versus the Bullet Train makes me excited for next week, with Sarah basically rebooted to her Pilot mindset, given the mission to kill Chuck Bartowski and completely ignorant of their last five years together. I’m holding my breath because the whole thing has a nice full circle feeling and if executed well, could be legendary. I just wish we didn’t have to get stuck on this runaway train to get there.
My issues this week are nearly identical to last week, just a little streamlined:
1. Sarah has always been portrayed as the Agent 99 to Chuck’s Maxwell Smart. She’s a capable agent and was the de facto asskicker on Team Bartowski until Chuck mastered the Intersect and later, learned a little kung fu of his own. Sure, the Intersect gives her an edge, but it’s not like she’s useless without it. When she admits to flashing forty times during the rescue of Chuck, all I could think was, “WHY?” And based on his facial expression, clearly, so was Chuck.
2. I just can’t take Quinn seriously as a threat. I feel that, going into the final episodes of the series, the final villain should be significant and as hard as the writers try to shoehorn Quinn into the Chuck mythos, the fact remains that he just wasn’t there for the past five seasons. His quest for vengeance comes off as a child throwing a tantrum. Is it a big deal? Maybe, but we’ve never heard about him before. Not even in passing. Don’t you think we should have heard about the originally intended recipient of the Intersect before this? You know, if he was so important and/or deranged? I might have gotten sick of Shaw’s cycle of death and resurrection, but at least he had history with the show.
So, yes, this was painful to watch, and not in that good “rip-my-heart-out-while-I-cry-into-this-bottle-of-chardonnay” way, but more in the “I-could-be-doing-so-much-more-productive-things-with-this-hour” way. Next week is the big finale though, so here’s hoping the payoff eases the pain of these past few weeks of mediocrity.
You’re looking for a bang, Chuck, not a whimper.
Some stats and info about Chuck, “Chuck Versus the Bullet Train”
TV SHOW – Chuck
SEASON/EPISODE – Season 5, Episode 11
AIRED ON – January 20th, 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.