Chuck vs. The Gravitron

Chuck picks up with last week’s obvious cliffhanger that Jill is a Fulcrum agent.  Casey and Sarah have known this for some time, but it doesn’t dawn on Chuck until after his hotel room tryst, when his cunning, evil, manipulative, master of deceit superspy lover gets up to take a shower…and is stupid enough to leave her phone on the nightstand next to Chuck.  Chuck picks up her phone and flashes on the text message Jill just received.  Gee, you’d think she’d have some sort of encryption system to keep her messages from getting into the wrong hands.

Chuck makes something up about going to get coffee and does the first smart thing he’s done in a long time: runs for his life.  Except he is intercepted by Casey and Sarah, who chastise him for going off the grid and implore him to go back in and try to turn the tables on Jill.  See apparently, Jill is working Chuck to get to the Intersect, not knowing that he is the Intersect.  As always, Chuck reluctantly agrees.

Back in romance mode, Jill takes Chuck to a carnival, which is where they had their first date.  She takes him up on top of a Ferris wheel…only to pull a gun on him.  Wouldn’t it have been easier to just shoot him on the ground?  Chuck begs her not to shoot him, and she takes him to some nefarious-looking baldie who smiles at Chuck (just like you’d expect some nefarious-looking baldie to do) and orders Jill to shoot him.  Jill raises the gun…but she can’t do it!  Instead, she shoots the baldie and Chuck runs away.  Except the bullet barely harms the baldie, who gets up, knocks out Jill, and goes after Chuck.

More carnival shenanigans ensue, but suffice it to say that Chuck survives, and Casey and Sarah capture Jill and bring her back to their base of operations for some good old-fashioned interrogation.  They threaten her, hook her up to some new age lie detector, and ask her all kinds of probing questions.  Stupid Chuck however, feels so conflicted and grateful toward Jill for not shooting him.  Jill bats her eyelashes at him and he unchains her so that they can be together.  Then, gasp, Jill pulls another gun on him.  Then, gasp, the baldie materializes out of nowhere and it all comes out: the whole carnival thing was a setup designed so that Jill could get captured and lead the baldie to the CIA base of operations, so that they could use their computers to find the Intersect.  Or something roughly along those lines.

Chuck finally starts to get his act together and locks them out of the system, but when they threaten Sarah and Casey, he gives in.  For some reason I can’t quite remember (I guess I wasn’t paying full attention, but can you blame me?), Chuck convinces the bad guys to go to the Buy More, where they will converge with Jeff, Lester, Morgan, and the B storyline.  Said storyline involves the aforementioned trio being locked into the Buy More on Thanksgiving to guard the store before Black Friday.

That’s it, that’s the whole show.  The Jill-centric plot is maybe the most predictable setup the show has ever employed, and the Buy More antics are flat and underdeveloped.  We’re also forced to endure more cringe-inducing time with Ellie, who is dementedly cleaning house because her nimrod boyfriend’s parents are coming over for Thanksgiving.  Gee, that sure is exciting, witty stuff.  Chuck finally comes around and bests Jill (after almost falling for her yet again).  That’s a fairly satisfying moment, but come on!  No knockdown, drag-out brawl between Sarah and Jill?  The show has pretty much lost me by now, and looking at the Nielsens, it seems to have lost a lot of people.

Season 2, Episode 8: Chuck vs. The Gravitron (originally aired November 24, 2008)

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