'Chuck' recap: An old friend drops by for a visit

Season 2’s “Chuck Versus the Seduction” was one of my favorite episodes of that season and maybe one of the best episodes “Chuck” has ever done. The sense of fun that emanated from that episode helped make the second season of “Chuck” feel like a show that was finding its voice, with charm to spare.

Yet the episode was so much fun that when I learned John Larroquette would be reprising his role as Roan Montgomery, the master spy and genius of seduction, I wasn’t sure the episode would have anything new to add to the story of Roan as already established, at least not beyond the very basic idea of him as someone who could teach Chuck a thing or two about love. (And could he? Chuck’s in a very happy relationship now.)

Bringing back a beloved guest character is always a problem on a TV show. Very often, that character is specifically designed to last just one episode, and any attempts to extend the story beyond that one episode can fall flat.

But although “Chuck Versus the Seduction Impossible” wasn’t as good as the original, it was a solid stand-alone episode of the show, a nice way to ease us back into a story that seemed like it might be closed off forever just a week ago.

Larroquette can play a role like this in his sleep, really, but he’s very, very fun as a smooth, suave man who’s somehow able to seduce a femme fatale not once, but twice. And the second time, she’s got a good idea he’s a U.S. spy, no less! He doesn’t have nearly as much to do in this episode as he did the last time around, but it would be hard to top his lessons to Chuck in the art of being a suave man’s man. Instead, he becomes the reason for the mission, not the man trying to help send Chuck out on that mission.

The writers cleverly spin off a gag from the original episode to kick this one into gear: Roan and General Beckman have a history together, and though she seems a little embarrassed by it, he’s still got her number (and she his). They first got together in Germany, right around the fall of the Berlin Wall, but they vowed to leave their relationship to the side, getting together for good in 20 years if nothing else had intervened in the meantime. Naturally, it’s 2011, and Beckman’s not married, much less to Roan, so we know something happened here. But what? The episode has great fun playing around with the idea of the normally straitlaced Beckman thrown off her game by the fact that her great love is both being held prisoner by the wicked (and gorgeous) Fatima and the idea that these two wouldn’t know what to do in a relationship anyway. Plus, having Chuck and Sarah get to be exasperated by someone else having relationship troubles in the middle of a mission was a nice change of pace.

'Chuck' recap: A satisfying ending to a lumpy story

I’ve had my problems with the first section of "Chuck’s" fourth season, but I didn’t have many problems with the way the story wrapped up. “Chuck Versus the Push Mix” was a very fun episode of television, taking nearly every element of the show that works and blending them together into an hour that kept things zipping right along, even if some of them were wildly improbable. (Sure, you’ve got a giant ship, Alexei, but man, does it cross oceans quickly!) It was just "Chuck" doing what it does best, a good reminder that even when this show isn’t clicking along as well as it can, it’s pretty darn good at the finale thing.

In a way, "Chuck’s" hand has been forced these last two seasons, and the series has responded by doing effectively two season finales. Heading into both seasons, the show’s producers worried they might only get 13 episodes (actually, heading into Season 3, there was no good reason to think they’d get more until the abrupt move to January from March). This has meant the show would be well into production on a 13th episode meant to function as a season—and possibly series—finale before ending up with more episodes to fill. This has created a structure that’s weirdly endearing, sort of like what they used to do on that old cop show "Wiseguy," where the storytelling was serialized, but each season featured two or three different story arcs, the better to keep the stories tight. (All fans of serialized TV would do well to check out "Wiseguy" on DVD, even if music rights issues have led to some of the episodes not being as good as they were in original broadcast versions.) It’s a model that more serialized shows should borrow, and I’m pleased to see it turn up on "Chuck," even if it made some of the last few episodes a little too dense with incident.

That said, “Push Mix” was very good throughout. The episode parallels two stories, and they finally make a certain kind of sense as parallels (for once this season). In the one, Chuck and Morgan take matters into their own hands to save Chuck’s mom and Sarah from the clutches of Volkoff. In the other, Ellie and Awesome deal with the impending birth of their daughter, Clara. Now, these two stories don’t exactly parallel each other on a thematic level, not really (though I guess you could argue that the two both involve major life events), but they do have one thing in common: stakes. Lives hang in the balance as Chuck and Morgan embark on their solo mission. Ellie and Awesome’s lives are going to change utterly once they have their baby. The two storylines aren’t united by a common purpose, but they are united by a common sense of drama, something you couldn’t say about most of the B-stories this season, when compared to the A-stories.

The Chuck, Morgan, and Sarah storyline is just packed with great little moments this week, whether it’s Morgan working his way through the hallway of lasers that could slice him in two by using his yoga skills or the anguished look on Chuck’s face as he’s forced to race away from his mom, who’s taken Volkoff hostage so her son, future daughter-in-law, and, uh, Morgan can make a break for it. Plus, it concludes awesomely, with Chuck setting up a really smart plan (involving adopting Orion, the spy identity of his deceased father, as his own) to lure Volkoff into a place where he can take him out. Now, it was fairly obvious that Chuck was the one using the Orion identity, but I was just grateful the show didn’t go back on Steve’s death, as Chuck losing his dad was one of the show’s emotional high points. The rest of that scene made up for the obviousness of that twist in spades, particularly with the moment where Volkoff realizes the gun Chuck used has no bullets. The sinking look on Timothy Dalton’s face was enough to convince me he needs to come back for another stint as the main bad guy and soon. (Also awesome: Volkoff saying Chuck would need an army to defeat his minions and Chuck opening the door to reveal … Gen. Beckman, who had, indeed, brought the U.S. military to the show.)

The rest of the storylines took place in the hospital, cutting between Alex’s attempts to stand vigil at the side of her dad’s bed and Awesome’s attempts to gear up to be a dad. There are places to quibble with both of these storylines. It’s a little difficult to feel much about the Alex and Casey storyline because, well, we haven’t spent a lot of time with these characters together. (I haven’t counted minutes or anything, but I’d wager we’ve spent more time with Morgan hanging out with both characters separately than with the two characters hanging out together.) But Casey taking out the man sent to kill him with a potted plant? That worked. The same goes for Awesome suddenly becoming un-awesome in the face of being a dad. It felt more like a stalling tactic than anything else, but Casey telling him to go be a father and the tears in Awesome’s eyes as he held his child for the first time made up for it. 

So if I have my problems with "Chuck" here and there, I’m usually content to spend time with the show because I still enjoy the characters, and I still want them to reach a happy ending point. “Push Mix,” which seems more like a series finale than a season finale (making the next 11 episodes extra awkward), offered a big moment for nearly every character you could think of, a good place to leave them, just in case this had been the show’s last hurrah. (Well, everybody except Big Mike, but he hasn’t had a lot to do this season anyway.) Morgan gets to be a hero. Chuck and Sarah finally get to go ahead with their engagement (in a nicely shot, wordless sequence). Beckman gets to save the day. Casey gets to beat up a guy while lying in a hospital bed and tighten his bond with his daughter. Ellie and Awesome become parents. All in all, it’s a nice place to leave these people.

But I still want to know what comes next.

Some other thoughts:

• --I haven’t liked Jeffster! nearly as much the last few times I’ve seen them as I did when they performed at Ellie’s wedding. (To be fair, it was a tough moment to top.) But tonight’s performance by them, of “Push It,” over the hospital’s PA system, might be my SECOND favorite, particularly when Jeff began dancing with the pregnant woman.
• --Nice musical choices throughout the episode, but I particularly liked the ending tune, “Young Blood” by The Naked and the Famous.
• --Favorite Volkoff moment: The dude licking an ice cream cone in the bowels of his ship o’ evil. I like ice cream too, evil guy!
• --"Rusted Root's rad, right?"
• --"I'm like a seal that does yoga. Yoga seal!"
• --"It's a quote from my favorite poet and humanitarian: Josef Stalin."

--Todd VanDerWerff (follow me on Twitter at @tvoti)

Photo: Chuck (Zachary Levi) has to infiltrate Volkoff's ship, the Contessa, to take down the bad guys. (Credit: NBC)

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'Chuck' recap: Let's change some things around here

'Chuck' recap: Too soon, too soon!

Complete Show Tracker 'Chuck' coverage

'Chuck' recap: Let's change some things around here

I realize this isn’t exactly a terribly new and original thing to say, but I think “Chuck” could stand to streamline itself quite a bit. It increasingly feels like it consists of two entirely separate, half-hour shows that NBC has edited together for no real reason. And it’s not like the Buy More stuff provides a comic relief from the spy stuff that the show can’t get in any other fashion. Morgan’s a funny enough character and has a funny enough relationship with Chuck, Sarah and Casey that the show gets plenty of laughs on the spy missions without trying too hard, even in an episode where the spy mission is fairly dark, like tonight’s mission was. Where once the Buy More or Ellie/Awesome B-plots were oblique commentaries on what Chuck was going through in the spy world, they’re now mostly gentle workplace or domestic story lines that have only the barest of connections to everything else. 

It pains me to say this because Ellie and Awesome are among my favorite characters on the show. Where I would have been fine with the show ditching the Buy More from Day One (though I’ve enjoyed several plot lines there), I’ve always thought Ellie brought a certain soul to the show, a sense of the life that Chuck had before his spy life and a sense of the family history that made him the slacker guy he was when the show began. Chuck and Ellie only had each other, really, and that made their relationship (and the fact that both found love as the series went on) that much more moving. But now, after the show took the potentially huge step of having Ellie find out that Chuck was a spy before immediately reversing that step, Ellie and Awesome just don’t have the meaning to the storyline they once did. It doesn’t mean they can’t share nice scenes with the other characters, but they seem trapped in the same two or three story lines with every episode.

Part of this is the fact that “Chuck” has gradually pared its mission statement down to the central idea of being a spy action-comedy. When the show started, it was a spy show, sure, but it was also a romantic comedy AND a workplace comedy AND a story about best friends AND a dramatic series about a brother and sister dealing with their screwed-up family. Gradually, the show has wrapped more of these stories into the spy stuff. Chuck and Sarah are dating and are more or less equals at work now. Morgan knows about the spy stuff and is starting out in the CIA. Really, this leaves the Buy More staff and Ellie and Awesome on the outside looking in.

'Chuck' recap: Too soon, too soon!

Doesn’t it seem a little soon?

I mean, I love Chuck and Sarah together like nobody's business, but it sure seems like these two crazy kids should be taking a little more time to figure out their relationship before jumping straight into marriage. Maybe it's because the producers feared the first 13 episodes of this season were all they would get to close out the story line, but it's sure seemed like the two have been embarking on a new, relationship-altering path in every other episode this season, like they're in a little car game-piece in The Game of Life and they keep rolling 10s. Next thing you know, Sarah's going to be popping out twins in every third episode, even as Chuck will be worried that she doesn't really love him for some asinine reason. 

So what I'm saying is that it's bizarre to have Chuck and Sarah suddenly be on the eve of getting engaged when just a few episodes ago they were much less confident of this prospect but the show still sort of made it work. The scenes in which Chuck and Morgan were trying to plan out the perfect proposal on the fly were fun, and the scenes in which Sarah secretly took charge of the operation were amusing, largely because Sarah knocking Morgan around will never not be funny. And the scene in which Chuck launched into a speech about how much he loved Sarah and wanted to spend his life with her -- after a few high jinks, of course -- was nicely done and true to the spirit of the relationship. But then the CIA swooped in, took Sarah down and arrested her for being a traitor. What?

'Chuck' recap: The leftovers were better the first time around

Timothy Dalton was going to hold this episode of "Chuck" together with his teeth, if he had to, and, in the end, he was the element that did the most to keep the whole enterprise from falling apart. "Chuck Versus the Leftovers" wasn't a bad episode, but it offered a bad case of ... of, well, the leftovers, as many of the major plot points were either things the show has harped on endlessly this season -- like Ellie not wanting Chuck to get back into the spy game she doesn't know he's back into -- or basic plots the show has returned to again and again and again -- like the idea of the bad guys taking over the Buy More. Heck, the episode's major pop culture references were all to "Die Hard," and the show has made jokes about that movie many times, but, most notably, in the last Christmas episode the series did, "Chuck Versus the Santa Claus."

Now, "Santa Claus" is still my favorite episode of the series, so if the show has to emulate an episode, I don't mind it choosing that one. And "Die Hard," of course, is one of the all-time great movies to watch at Christmas that has very little to do with Christmas (a list that also features that other '80s classic, "Gremlins"). Plus, it's not as though the episode has very much to do with the holidays at all. Heck, it's more of a delayed Thanksgiving episode. There are certainly original elements here, but the overall effect is very much like loading up a plate with stuff you just enjoyed at Thanksgiving dinner and tossing it in the microwave. Everything still tastes good, and it's ultimately satisfying, but a lot of that comes from your warm memories of the original meal, rather than any particular excitement from reheating that meal.

'Chuck' recap: Sarah Walker will have her revenge

"Chuck" has a relatively large ensemble, but the name of the lead character is right there in the title. It'd be hard to do an episode of "Chuck" without the main guy around to keep things humming, yet the series sets up as a challenge for itself to do a virtually Chuck-less hour of the show. What it ends up with is a very good episode of "Chuck." At the end, it maybe avoids some of the stakes it set up a little too neatly, and the comic relief subplot doesn't amount to much, but there's a real sense of these characters as people who care about each other in this episode, as all of the CIA gang decides to rescue Chuck from the Belgian before the Belgian can get the Intersect and do awful things to our hero. It's an episode full of great Morgan lines, some nice moments under pressure from everyone in the crew, some appropriately creepy dream sequences, and Yvonne Strahovski kicking people in the face.

If nothing else, in fact, this episode cements Strahovski's ability with a fight scene. There are a bunch of them, and she makes every one feel more than believable. Indeed, they're downright visceral. Sure, we've known that Sarah can fight before this (and that Strahovski can fake-fight), but in this episode, that gets taken right up to the next level. This is a woman who's not about to consign her boyfriend to death, particularly when she finds out he was about to propose. Sarah's fighting skills have a tendency to get a little lost in the shuffle on the show, so this is a great episode to remind us all that she's probably the best one in the whole gang when it comes to fisticuffs. In particular, that fight against the champion in Thailand, the fight she very well could have died in, has a thrilling quality to it that some of the action sequences this season have lacked.

'Chuck' recap: Scared yet?

After two episodes filled with pretty exciting, emotional twists, "Chuck" seemed to be getting back to basics with a solid, if not spectacular hour, that then redeemed itself with another gut-punch of an ending. The central idea of the episode -- Chuck has to remove the psychological block his mother placed on the Intersect at the end of the last episode by trying to send every inch of his body shivering with the fear of death -- was a pretty good one, and I liked the way the episode tied this in to a more prosaic fear of death, the fear that you'll die and realize you haven't really accomplished anything meaningful or even interesting with your life. Rob Riggle was a lot of fun as the psychological expert called in to help Chuck dislodge the block, and Summer Glau had her moments as the latest Greta (though she was underused). And, as mentioned, that final act was terrific.

'Chuck' recap: The big twist

Warning: Pretty major "Chuck" spoilers appear after the jump.

'Chuck' recap: Scary monsters and super creeps

When “Chuck” is at its best, it’s a show about how its characters’ job –- trying to keep ahead of the bad guys in the international world of espionage –- conflicts with its characters’ personal lives. It’s one thing for Chuck and Sarah to argue about how they’ve never had a real conversation about their relationship or something. It’s another thing for Sarah to directly cause the event that rips apart Chuck’s family yet again. My favorite episode of the show is still “Chuck vs. the Santa Claus” from back in Season 2, and that episode features the famous moment where Chuck sees Sarah kill a man without blinking. He’s a bad guy. The world of “Chuck” is better off with him out of the picture. But it’s still a hard thing for a goofy guy like Chuck to see the girl he’s in love with do. The show is better when it pits its light, frothy comedy side against its hard-boiled action side.

To be fair, I wasn’t sure “Chuck vs. the Aisle of Terror” was going to get to this point. And that’s fine. It would have still been an enjoyable episode of the show without that gut-punch of an ending. There were plenty of things to chortle at here, and I was impressed with the show’s ability to create a spooky episode while remaining vaguely true to its family-friendly trappings. Plus, the Buy More action dovetailed with the spy action in a way that any viewer should have been able to see coming from a mile away –- once you introduce the concepts of Jeff and Lester building an “aisle of terror” and a neurotoxin that makes people see scary hallucinations, you KNOW the show’s going to mix those two elements somehow –- but in a way that was still largely satisfying. Plus, Robert Englund, as always, makes a great bad guy.

NBC picks up 'Chase' and orders more 'Chuck,' while 'Undercovers' gets 4 more chances [Updated]

It's a good time to be a rookie. One day after greenlighting a full season for three upstart shows -- "The Event," "Outsourced," and "Law & Order: Los Angeles" -- NBC has announced that "Chase," its new Jerry Bruckheimer-produced U.S. marshal drama, has been picked up for a full season. The network's action-comedy "Chuck" has also been approved for 11 more episodes.

 “‘Chase’ has introduced an appealing new star to television audiences in Kelli Giddish and we think it has potential to grow,” said Angela Bromstad, NBC's president of primetime entertainment, in a statement on Tuesday. “We also are glad that ‘Chuck’ will be with us for a full season delivering its loyal, passionate audience.” 

The news that Chuck will live to see more episodes might come as a surprise to some. Though it's generated a loyal fan base, the show's ratings have dwindled, causing sites like TV by the Numbers to predict that it would be canceled. But NBC seems to be in a generous mood: It  also ordered four more episodes of their critically acclaimed but commercially struggling drama "Undercovers."

--Melissa Maerz

[Corrected at 3:20 p.m.: An earlier version of this post stated that "Chase" had been renewed for a second season and "Chuck" had been approved for 24 more episodes. In reality, "Chase" got a full-season order and "Chuck" was approved for 11 more episodes, for a Season 4 total of 24 episodes.]

Photo: Kelli Giddish as Annie Frost in "Chase." Credit: Vivian Zink / NBC

'Chuck' recap: the Casey team

I said last week that one of the things "Chuck" could do to return to its previous heights would be to give John Casey more to do. Lo and behold, this week's episode almost entirely revolves around the guy, and it's probably the best episode so far this season. That said, for much of the run time, Casey's just a prop, a big slab of meat that assorted characters haul around. Fortunately, Adam Baldwin is able to be funny even when he's just lying there, and the show figures out a bunch of ways to put him in danger while he's more or less paralyzed. It's a good setup, and it's made better by the way that the show manages to get almost everyone involved organically. Sometimes, you can really feel "Chuck" straining to tell an entertaining story that still incorporates most of the cast. In this one, the seams didn't show. Everything just clicked.

Casey has often been the show's window into action TV's past. Every time we drop into his back story, it's like we're dropping in on an action show from the past, and Monday night, we got to see that Casey spent much of the Clinton era working with a small squad of top commandos, "A-Team" style. It's a good development, not least of which is because the mission-based format of "The A-Team" is the sort of thing "Chuck" would do well to emulate more often. The opening segment, which takes place on the job, with Casey being the only team member who wants to follow the president's orders to cut off a supply of gold that is funding terrorists. Everybody else wants to take the gold, and Casey has to subdue them and turn them in to the authorities. Naturally, they escape from prison, and now the feds want to round them up again. The best way to do that? Chuck surmises it would be to stage Casey's funeral, hoping to draw his former team out into the open.

'Chuck' recap: Love, 'Chuck' style

“Chuck vs. the Coup D’Etat” has me breathing a sigh of relief. It’s the first episode this season that I’ve wholeheartedly liked, with only a handful of minor quibbles. It’s a big bounce back from last week’s boring hour, and it uses one of the best guest stars in the show’s history to great effect. On top of that, it somehow profiles four different relationships at four very different stages –- just starting out, dating for under a year, married and waiting for a kid and married for years –- and doesn’t make the device too cutesy or cloying.

This is a very funny episode, first and foremost, but it’s also one that has some smart stuff to say about what happens when two people are together and having some issues but somehow can’t figure out a way to talk about those issues. The comedy was good, and the action was good, but so was the emotional stuff, and that adds up to a very fun episode. And it prominently featured Casey. Since Casey’s been a little sidelined this season, this was probably music to most fans’ ears.

Let’s look at those four couples one by one, to see what the show did with them.