Zachary Levi Puts on his Director’s Cap and Saves Chuck

Tonight’s Chuck was by far the best of the season, though that’s not saying much. It was funny and earnest and actually had something resembling a plot. All of that may be due in no small part to the fact that Zachary Levi himself directed the episode, a first for him. I always thought that Levi was probably a very smart and talented guy who was at the mercy of sub-par writing and journeymen tv directors. I always thought that if he could have a little more creative power on the show, things would be better. Now I know I was right.

Levi may be in control of the episode, but as it begins, Chuck is certainly not. Sarah and Shaw are concerned that he has not been flashing for weeks. It seems that the Intersect is on the fritz, and consequently, Chuck gets benched from active duty. This especially stings when he has to watch Sarah and Shaw embark on a mission together, posing as newlyweds. Chuck has to stay at the Buy More while they go to some posh Burbank resort. Their goal is to intercept some Ring baddies who are there to turn a good agent into one of their bad ones. The catch: the agent they plan to turn is Captain Awesome (a.k.a. Ellie’s nimrod squeeze)! I guess they think Awesome is a spy due to the mission he had to team up with Chuck on earlier in the season. He and Ellie are at the resort as well, trying to rekindle…whatever the hell it is they want to rekindle.

The mission gets complicated though (doesn’t it always) when Sarah, Shaw and Casey realize that the Ring sent them on a wild goose chase so that they could find Chuck (a.k.a. Agent Charles Carmichael) and the secret base underneath the Buy More and the yogurt shop. Now Chuck is alone and he must protect the Buy More from the bad Ring agents posing as staff efficiency expert dudes. Lester, Jeff and the rest of the Buy More gang think that their jobs are at stake…but they don’t realize that their very lives are as well. Hey, that almost sounded like a tagline!

I was so happy to see no residual Hannah mess. She was briefly mentioned, but she’s out of the picture. Then, I couldn’t believe what I was watching: the show did what I have been saying it should do all season long. This episode was nothing short of a game changer. It let Joshua Gomez have the spotlight and brought Morgan into the fold in a major way. The fabric of the show has been changed irrevocably, and I can only hope that it will be for the better. This is the kind of risk the show should have been taking a long time ago.

Bonuses: watching Lester bastardize CCR’s “Fortunate Son,” a tantalizing cliffhanger involving Casey, and, best of all, a shout out for that NES classic Duck Hunt. Here’s hoping Zachary Levi gets to direct a lot more in the future.

Season 3, Episode 9: Chuck vs. The Beard (originally aired March 8, 2010)

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Mondays at 8/7C on NBC

Photographs courtesy of NBC Universal and Justin Lubin.