Chuck vs. The Fat Lady

Chuck picks up this week by continuing with the completely unnecessary Jill arc.  Jill, Chuck’s college girlfriend who dumped him for friend-turned-nemesis Bryce Larkin, has finally returned to our his life.  Sarah and Chuck are no more (why is that again?) and after one week, Jill is in love with our hero and everything is perfect!  Well except for Casey and his dogged insistence on spying on Chuck in his private moments with Jill.  You can’t have everything.

Espionage is required when Casey and Sarah are told that Jill’s boss, who was iced last week for something I already don’t remember, may have left a list of rogue CIA agents-the members of Fulcrum-hidden in his hotel room, which is currently an FBI crime scene.  The spies need to sneak Chuck in and see if he flashes on anything, because apparently the FBI are evil and couldn’t recover the list themselves and collaborate with the CIA on catching the bad guys?

Chuck explains to Jill that he has to go on this mission and that it requires him to spend the night in a hotel with cover girlfriend Sarah.  And poor Jill, even though she had no problems cheating on Chuck and screwing him over five years ago, feels awfully insecure about the whole idea.  Chuck promises that there is nothing glamorous or sexy about being a spy, but when the new couple arrives at the rendezvous point, Chuck opens the door to find Sarah dressed as an escort.  He tries to explain to Jill that it’s just part of the cover, but you know how fragile these romance things can be.  Things get even worse when, while crawling through ventilation ducts with Sarah and Casey to break into the hotel room, Chuck accidentally calls Jill as he and Sarah are discussing their cover story that involves having sex for an hour.  Hate when that happens.

Inside the room, Chuck immediately flashes on an antique box, and the spies escape right before a bad guy kills the agents guarding the outside and comes looking for the box himself.  Phew.  And this isn’t just any box: it’s a puzzle box involving Fibonacci numbers.  Luckily, Chuck is up on his Da Vinci Code lore and solves it.  But the box bursts open and sprays Chuck and Sarah with a red powder.  Casey leaves to get a containment team while Chuck and Sarah start tearing each other’s clothes off and jump into the shower to cleanse themselves.  Uh oh, it sure would be bad if Jill saw this.  But heartbreakingly, there is a knock on the door and Chuck and Sarah answer it in their underwear and it is in fact Jill!  Has Chuck lost Jill forever?

Thankfully no, only for about four minutes.  Chuck explains the fruit punch fiasco to Jill, and not only does she believe him, she suggests that the fruit punch is a clue and volunteers her mad science skills to identify the compound and figure out the clue!  Somehow the clue leads to the opera and another Da Vinci/National Treasure-esque puzzle.  The prize for solving the puzzle is a flash drive with the Fulcrum list on it (I guess like the NOC list from the first Mission:Impossible).  Chuck and Jill smooch nauseatingly while poor Sarah watches from the corner.

The dynamic duo plan a weekend getaway and Chuck successfully ditches Casey and Sarah…but then the evil guy from earlier materializes to capture Jill and hold her hostage until Chuck gives him the Fulcrum list.  Chuck returns to get the flash drive to make the exchange but Casey orders him not to.  When Chuck makes a run for it with the flash drive, Casey orders Sarah to shoot him.  But she can’t because she (yawn) loves him.

One way or another, the spies save the day, nobody dies, and Chuck and Jill finally get some alone time.  The episode ends with what I guess is meant to be a jaw-dropping twist, but the only thing I found jaw-dropping was that the writers thought the idea would actually be jaw-dropping.

Luckily there is nothing from Chuck’s sister Ellie or her moronic boyfriend this week.  We are however treated to another flat, pointless B storyline at the Buy More involving Tony Hale’s Emmett trying to turn Morgan against Chuck.  I have what I think is a strong idea for where the show should go from here that I would like to propose: Casey finally snaps and kills Chuck, Sarah, Ellie, Captain Awesome, and everyone at the Buy More, and the government gives him a medal.  He then proceeds to destroy the Chuck theme song and have his own action-packed show.  What do you think?

Season 2, Episode 7: Chuck vs. The Fat Lady (originally aired November 17, 2008)

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Photographs courtesy of NBC