It boils down to seeing Casey forced to go up against his mentor (the man who taught him everyone he knows, blah-blah-blah), although beyond inevitable flashbacks to a Casey in a bad wig, doing karate kicks to the sound of pan pipes, it's impossible to get any sense of the relationship between Casey and Bennett. In fact, the whole storyline never coalesces, as Lumbly's playing a can-crushing cipher and the threat he poses never really comes across.
Casey himself is often written too thinly to elicit our sympathy, which is a shame because Baldwin's capable of more range than the scripts for his grouchy spy tend to deliver. Here, Baldwin does his best with the constraints placed upon him, but it's ultimately quite a hollow performance because we're never appreciative of Bennett's significance in Casey's life, or particularly care about the mission to stop him.
Elsewhere, Ellie (Sarah Lancaster) prepares for the arrival of Captain Awesome's (Ryan McPartlin) parents, who missed last week's Thanksgiving dinner but now arrive to wish their prospective daughter-in-law well. A perfect piece of casting finds Bruce Boxleitner (Tron, Babylon 5) playing Awesome's fitness fanatic dad Woody, while Morgan Fairchild is sparkly mom Honey -- both appropriately likeable, but meddling, exasperating and slightly scary (they've glued headshots of Ellie into a scrapbook of bridal dresses). It's just a shame that, after a great introduction, the rest of their scenes aren't very memorable and the characters lilt. But I'm hoping future episodes will give them the attention these actors undoubtedly deserve.
Second of Strahotness: sittin' pretty; courtesy Strahotski.com
At the Buy More, Emmett (Tony Hale) implements an "Employee Of The Month" scheme, with the incentive being a mystery prize for whomever gets the best customer feedback. However, Morgan (Joshua Gomez), Lester (Vik Sahay) and Jeff (Scott Krinsky) make a pact to get the worst customer feedback possible, because they disagree with Emmett's scheme on principle. Cue comic scenes of the trio becoming intentionally useless, rude and hostile to customers, then wondering why their behaviour provokes Emmett into threatening them with working an extra day at the weekend.
As usual for me, I just don't care about the silly Buy More, particularly when everything feels so extraneous to the main plot. Annoyingly, the first scene hinted that this episode will find a fun way to mirror Casey's martial arts training with the rigours of working in an electrical store, but that never comes to pass. Seeing the reverse of Chuck's situation (highly-trained, professional secret agents forced to stack shelves) would have actually been insightful, if handled correctly. Maybe next time?
Chuck (Zachary Levi) devolves to his season 1 persona here, laying on his bumbling clown act and giving us reactions that (while funny because Levi's expressions are killer) just make him look like an idiot. More than ever this season, Chuck was back to being a liability who keeps unraveling everyone's good work or making bad decisions that puts Sarah (Yvonne Strahovski) and Casey at risk, or jeopardizes the mission. Even his successes, like giving Casey a pep talk that enables him to get the better of Bennett in a dojo fight, felt a bit flimsy -- although I do like the prickly relationship between Chuck and Casey, despite the fact it tends to reset itself to square-one every episode.
Overall, a middling episode that could have been so much better if the characters had been written with more depth, and the story fleshed out properly. It got by on its usual good humour and committed performances from Baldwin and Levi, but "Chuck Versus The Sensei" can ultimately be regarded as a misfire.
4 August 2009
Virgin1, 9pm
written by: Anne Cofell Saunders directed by: Jonas Pate starring: Zachary Levi (Chuck), Yvonne Strahovski (Sarah), Adam Baldwin (Casey), Joshua Gomez (Morgan), Scott Krinsky (Jeff), Vik Sahay (Lester), Bonita Friedericy (General Beckman), Ryan McPartlin (Captain Awesome), Sarah Lancaster (Ellie), Tony Hale (Emmett Milbarge), Bruce Boxleitner (Woody), Morgan Fairchild (Honey), John Knox (SWAT Leader), Carl Lumbly (Ty Bennett) & Dwayne Stanbridge (Town Car Driver)
