spoilers abound
The writers of Chuck have proven themselves to be quite good at reinventing the show, especially with the huge move from Chuck-the-geeky-spy-asset who needed to be saved all the time of the first couple of seasons to Chuck-the-suaver-but-still-geeky actual spy and kung fu master of Season Three. This year, Chuck starts out not being a spy, having promised his sister Ellie that he’d get out the dangerous business. However, he also found a spy lair underneath his apartment and evidence his mom was a spy and may not have simply left their family years ago as he and Ellie always thought. THE PLOT THICKENS.
So this season starts, and we’ve got a tantalizing new direction to consider – Chuck as rogue spy, following in his father’s footsteps to learn the truth behind his mother’s disappearance. What we actually get in the episode – Chuck and Morgan floundering around, ending up working the same case that Sarah and Casey are working from the CIA side, and Chuck eventually…tada…becoming an official spy again. Yes, already. no, I’m not really happy about that. I really dislike it when shows set up a big change in a season finale and then use the first couple of episodes of the new season to basically reverse it back to status quo. What was the point?
Anyway, we do get some cool things. Chuck’s mom is Linda Hamilton, which is awesome. And she seems to be awesome, potentially kidnapped by enemy spies, or potentially IN CHARGE OF the enemy spies. Who can say? It’s a bit of an Alias retread perhaps, but we’ll see how it goes. Looks like Chuck’s going to try keeping his being a spy again a secret from Ellie, but I hope that doesn’t last too long – he really ought to tell her. The show thinks it can’t survive without secrets, but I think it can. Look how much more awesome it got after Devon found out about Chuck.
Oh, and the BuyMore is a full-on CIA facility now. I kind of love that. I was wondering how they were going to continue the show with the original main location demolished, but this is definitely a cool direction to go with that. We’ll see how the CIA-ization of the show works, though, because a lot of the fun of the earlier seasons was balancing the CIA stuff with the real-life stuff. And Chuck seems less geeky/goofy this year. NEED MOAR GEEKY/GOOFY CHUCK.
So first episode, a little rocky for me, but I’m still on board. I think they’re just growing into the new situation, but they need to let it be that, a new situation, and not try to pull it back into situations we’ve already seen.
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