Devon (Ryan McPartlin) was kidnapped by the nefarious Ring organization last week, who it's revealed here have mistaken him for a spy. Quite why this has happened is one of the episode's biggest holes, as it's inferred the Ring have simply assumed Devon's the most likely undercover spy of those involved in last week's adventure. Devon finds himself the target of Ring operative Sydney (Angie Harmon), who intends to change his allegiance and make him one of her organizations latest recruits. To do this, she gives Devon a booby-trapped earpiece and feeds him instructions, guiding him through an assault on a CIA building to assassinate its occupant, Agent Daniel Shaw (Brandon Routh). No, it doesn't make much sense how forcing someone to kill a fellow agent is going to make them agree to join you. Shouldn't Sydney instead have been brainwashing Devon to alter his sense of patriotism, or something?Okay, ignoring all the flaws that tripped up this episode, "... Versus Operation Awesome" was actually a bundle of fun, mainly because it was great to see Devon being thrown into the deep-end and partnered with Chuck (Zachary Levi), who tagged along to help Devon accomplish Sydney's demands using his Intersect 2.0 skills. The scene where Chuck takes out a corridor full of bad guys[*], firing twin guns, was particularly enjoyable. Chuck rarely gets much credit on missions, so it made a nice change to see Devon in awe of his brother-in-law's abilities[**], and for Sarah (Yvonne Strahovski) and Casey (Adam Baldwin) to actually trust Chuck's aptitude for the job now. We've come a long way from Chuck being constantly asked to wait in the van...
The week's big guest star was the aforementioned Brandon Routh (Superman Returns) as Daniel Shaw, whom we've seen previously this season off-camera playing with a cigarette lighter in General Beckman's (Bonita Friedericy) office. He makes his real debut in this episode, and proves to be quite an intriguing addition to show's list of second tier characters brought in for plot arcs. Routh's not the greatest actor in the world, but he has a compelling mix of strength and intellect, feeling very plausible as a hunky, loyal CIA agent who's the antithesis of Chuck in terms of attitude. Shaw sees friends and family as nothing but weaknesses the enemy can exploit, whereas Chuck gets a lot of his strength from his relatives. Interestingly, even Sarah admits to Shaw that she agrees with Chuck's sentiments, which highlights the evolution of her character. Sarah and Chuck started the show at opposite ends of the spectrum, but they appear to be slowly meeting in the middle now.
Second of Strahotness: dinner's up!
Over at the Buy More, well, I grow increasingly exasperated and bored. After Chuck finds himself compelled to wheelhouse kick Lester (Vik Sahay) to the ground when Intersect 2.0 perceives a threat, he unwittingly sparks an interest in physical aggression amongst the staff. It's not long before the workforce have created their own "fight club" and are holding electrified cage-fights during office hours. This proves to be a problem for Morgan (Joshua Gomez), who has been promoted to Assistant Manager by Big Mike (Mark Christopher Lawrence) and is tasked with sorting out the unruly behaviour. Firstly, doing a pastiche of Fight Club is infertile ground for comedy these days, unless you do something fresh and very surprising with the idea. Unfortunately, this subplot didn't find anything funny or interesting to do within simply evoking the film's idea, although it came as mild relief that the resolution (Morgan finding the courage to threaten his bruised friend Lester with the sack) kind of worked.
The big problem I have with the Buy More -- beyond the fact I don't find any of the characters there especially funny -- is that there's never any sense of development. As Chuck himself grows and changes, his colleagues at the Buy More are still stuck in their cartoon world doing variations on the same basic things every week (usually finding a way to buck authority, or generally act like infantile dorks.) The disparity is getting to big nowadays that it's sometimes difficult to see the Buy More as relating to Chuck's universe, as Chuck himself looks misplaced amongst its menagerie of grotesques these days. There's a scene where Morgan's trying to get advice from Chuck, and Chuck had a general air of disinterest about him (too busy working on a piece of Ring hardware), and that spoke volumes to me. I know the Buy More is Chuck's established cover (not to mention the backbone aesthetic of the show), but I hope we get less of it this season.Overall, "Chuck Versus Operation Awesome" was a very entertaining episode, thanks to the fun of the titular mission, the introduction of Shaw (his first scene, asking Chuck to shoot him in the chest to help fake his death, was fantastic), and the general feeling that this episode heralds the true beginning of season 3's spy drama. Its many plot holes were unfortunate, the Buy More blather always regrettable, but there was more than enough good to outweigh the bad.
18 January 2010
NBC, 8/7c
written by: Zev Borow directed by: Robert Duncan McNeill starring: Zachary Levi (Chuck), Yvonne Strahovski (Sarah), Adam Baldwin (Casey), Bonita Friedericy (General Beckman), Ryan McPartlin (Devon), Sarah Lancaster (Ellie), Brandon Routh (Daniel Shaw), Angie Harmon (Sydney), Bonita Friedericy (General Beckman), Scott Krinsky (Jeff), Vik Sahay (Lester), Joshua Gomez (Morgan) & Mark Christopher Lawrence (Big Mike)
[*] Well, until you remember that those "bad guys" were actually good guys. Chuck was only firing tranquilizers, right?
[**] I keep forgetting that Devon may know that Chuck's a spy, but he's unaware of the whole Intersect thing. So he truly believes Chuck's skills are down to years of CIA training. I guess Chuck isn't keen to let Devon know the truth, because he's secretly enjoying Devon's admiration?
