Chuck vs. The Ex

Chuck continues to rely on the charm of its cast to mask and power through the transparent and artificially-constructed plots and this week, the actors are mostly successful.  Jill, a woman from Chuck’s past – the girlfriend who dumped him for the slimy Bryce Larkin at Stanford five years ago – sets the events in motion.  Chuck awkwardly runs into her at some bioscience convention where she is giving a lecture and Chuck is on tech patrol, dispatched from the Buy More.  As if running into the woman he claims broke his heart (honestly Chuck, get a life) weren’t bad enough, when she introduces him to her boss, Chuck’s Intersect flashes on him!  Uh oh!  Now Chuck must confront his past demons for the sake of national security, just as Sarah had to with the awful high school reunion episode earlier in the season.  Sure is remarkable that both Chuck and Sarah would suffer the same set of unbelievable coincidences at almost the same time.

Chuck is, of course, reluctant to accept this mission, but Casey and Sarah promise that the CIA will make him look good, so he doesn’t have to tell the woman who didn’t believe him when he told her that he was innocent when he got expelled from Stanford that he still works at the Buy More.  They provide him with a Ferrari and fill a restaurant completely with CIA agents who pretend to fawn all over him like he’s a big shot when he walks in with Jill.  Thus the show relies once again on providing a fantasy for the nerd, hoping all the nerds who watch the show will have a vicarious experience and tune in next week.

Of course Jill’s presence also serves as a device to create more romantic tension/love triangle-atronics (yes, that is a word) between Chuck and Sarah, since the nerd and superspy broke up for no real reason earlier in the season (actually, the reason was probably to facilitate this storyline with Jill).  The sparks between Chuck and Sarah was absolutely key to the show’s charm last season, but now it just seems phony and contrived and distracting.  (Bones has also gone way down hill this season for the exact same reason of devoting too much time and artificial manipulations to the romance between Hodgins and Angela.  Maybe this stuff is contagious across the networks.)

The B storyline consists of Arrested Development’s Tony Hale sadistically forcing the Buy More team to learn CPR and emergency preparations, but it all feels rather flat.  On the plus side, Adam Baldwin as Casey is given more screen time and Yvonne Strahovski gets to show off her native Australian accent.  Selling the ensemble and especially devoting more time to Baldwin may be the show’s only hope for improving.

Like I’ve said, there is no artistry to the writing on Chuck.  I’m not saying it’s not effective, but it feels like every week the writing staff is flipping through another chapter of How To Write Successful Dramatic Conflict For A Major Television Show and automatically connecting all the dots.  The plotlines, casting, character beats and interactions are always exactly what you would expect them to be.  There is no attempt to color outside of the lines or inject any nuance or novelty into the proceedings.  I don’t know about other people, but for me, I can only accept that for a certain amount of time, not for the duration of a show’s run.  Last season actually did have a couple of decent twists; I suggest the showrunners should go back and re-watch some of their earlier episodes for inspiration.

Season 2, Episode 6: Chuck vs. The Ex (originally aired November 10, 2008)

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Photographs courtesy of NBC