Chuck -- Chuck vs. the Gravitron

Chuck

Hermes: Chuck has a bizarre and rather absurd premise -- the titular character has all the CIA and NSA’s secrets downloaded into his head through a series of encoded images, and he has to become a spy because he’s the only one who can recognize that guy over there as a former KGB assassin -- all this while working at a thinly-disguised Best Buy. Despite the bizarre premise (or perhaps because of it), this is a very smart and charming show. It’s an homage and subtle parody of Bond-style spy films, with a lot of very funny stuff interspersed with great action scenes. Plus there’s Adam Baldwin (Jayne from Firefly) playing a very Jayne-like character, and lots of cheesecake shots of Chuck’s hot handler and a variety of femme fatales.

"Chuck vs. the Gravitron"

Hephaestos (Plot): "Chuck vs. the Gravitron" is the last episode in the “Jill” arc. Chuck used to date a girl named Jill. She left him for Bryce Larkin five years before the series. She came back in Chuck vs. the Ex and got back together with Chuck. Then we found out she was a spy working for the evil Fulcrum organization. Is everyone Chuck has ever known a spy? The last episode ended with the Jill reveal, with the implication that Chuck was in terrible trouble -- but it took half this episode to pay off. I was disappointed and a little bored. The side plot of Thanksgiving focused on Morgan and felt forced. The Buy More plots are generally becoming more forced, because Chuck is hardly ever involved in them at all anymore. I want to see how Chuck’s spying affects his work, not how Morgan deals with regular life while Chuck is off getting shot at. Unlike some episodes, the Buy More plot did intersect, with a tripwire Jeff set up tripping a spy and Big Mike fighting the “thieves” (spies). Plot (show): 4. Plot (this episode): 2.5.

Zeus (Character): This is, essentially, a Chuck character episode. Jill, who was spoken about but never seen for a season and a half, has returned, and Chuck has a chance to be happy with a girl. No, of course not, because that would be dull (no matter what Aphrodite thinks). So Jill does a “face heel turn.”

Hermes: Quick interjection. Zeus falsely assumes everyone watches professional wrestling. Wrestlers are known as “face” (good guy) or heel (bad guy), so when a wrestler goes bad, he does a face heel turn. And the other way, when a villain reforms, is a heel face turn. Got it?

Zeus: Then the newly villainous Jill makes a heel face turn, turning good because of her love for Chuck. Then she turns again, revealing that turning good was just a ploy. But maybe she wasn’t all bad… too many turns. You’ve twisted my head, and Heracles is completely lost. I realize it’s a spy show, but take it easy. The sexual tension between Chuck and Sarah is so thick you could cut it with a Spartan dagger, especially since she’s jealous of Jill -- and sexual tension is always interesting. Outside the Chuck/Jill/Sarah triangle, Morgan again shows his blind faith in Chuck when he accepts without question Chuck’s lie that he’s not involved with Jill -- and that level of faith should be reserved for WORSHIPPING ME! Morgan needs more backbone. Ellie gets a chance in this ep to be funny for once, as she nervously prepares Thanksgiving dinner for Captain Awesome’s parents -- but since the Awesomes never arrived, I feel irritated that they built my expectations up so high. Bottom line: Jill went over-the-top, and Morgan felt flat this week. Character (show): 4. Character (this episode): 2.

Apollo (Dialogue): Chuck usually makes me laugh out loud with its witty quips (somewhere between James Bond and Buffy the Vampire Slayer), but vs. the Gravitron was less impressive than most eps. I was particularly irritated by the one-sided phone conversation when Chuck repeated verbatim every single thing he (presumably) heard on the other end, which is a sign of sloppy writing. On the other hand, the callback “devious, aren’t I?” and the repeated line that Chuck “read the manual” (odd how no-one ever does that) felt like regular Chuck. Dialogue (show): 4. Dialogue (this episode): 2.

Athena (Intelligence): A common Chuck theme is that love makes you stupid. The superspies that populate the show’s universe seldom do things so stupid as to make you yell at the screen -- except when emotion is involved. Chuck has routinely screwed things up based on his desire to trust people, or his feelings for Sarah, or.… In this case, it’s his desire to trust Jill that screws him over. Interestingly, though Chuck usually ends the episode with things working out despite/because of the emotional decision, vs. the Gravitron actually forced Chuck to put his logic over his emotion and capture Jill. It was a wonderful character moment for him -- and Dionysos and the other Chuck/Sarah ‘shippers can start up again.
One irritating facet of the Chuck show is product placement. A number of advertisers have their thumbs in the popular Chuck pie, and they work their products into the show. Usually it works, or at least isn’t very noticeable (last week there was a lingering shot of an EA Games sticker, but the company apparently didn’t object to the plot hinging on illegal game-copying hardware, so they must not have any real creative control), nor was it particularly bad tonight -- but it was certainly there. Chuck tells Jill to take his car, the Matrix, and mentions several features of the car -- none of which have anything to do with why it would be a good getaway-mobile (okay, dashboard navigation might be useful, but an iPod jack?), and it was a wee bit awkward.
An odd, and yet interesting, thing about Chuck is how it combines the genres of spy films and the mundanities of ordinary geekdom -- the show could certainly be summed up as “a geek gets to live out his superspy fantasies” -- and since the spy films it homages/parodies are of the Bond variety, one of the dichotomies in the show is how attractive people are. Though Chuck himself is moderately handsome, with a “geek chic” charm, but the other Buy More employees are realistically ordinary in their looks: Jeff is rather hideous, Morgan and Lester are plain at best, Big Mike is a huge fat man, and while Anna is pretty, it’s in a weird geek-girl way rather than a Hollywood starlet way. But everyone related even tangentially to the spy world (that is, everyone else Chuck interacts with) is ridiculously attractive. As we know from the many, many cheesecake shots of Sarah, she’s hot -- as is every femme fatale Chuck encounters. Jill, of course, is no different.
This episode is a fair example of Chuck’s intelligence level. Intelligence (show and episode): 4.

Dionysos (Fun): Merciful Zeus! Chuck is such a fun show! Spy gadgets, witty lines, kung-fu fighting, hot girls getting long, slow close-ups of their barely-covered flesh…
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Excuse me. I’ll be right back. Let me just grab a tissue--
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I’m back, and feeling much better. So. Chuck. vs. the Gravitron. Well, let’s start right there. There’s a fight. In a freaking Gravitron. You know, those crazy centrifuge things they have at carnivals. Awesome scene, something I’ve never seen before. Then they follow it with the requisite hall-of-mirrors scene. YAAWWWNN. I would be happy if I never saw another hall-of-mirrors again. It has been done far too many times, and I don’t care if it’s an homage to spy films who’ve done it before. It’s just dull. As was the beginning of this ep. Last week, we were left with a magnificent cliffhanger as Casey and Sarah raced to tell Chuck that his girlfriend Jill was a spy. vs. the Gravitron starts with Chuck and Jill having a great time together. And he finds out she’s a spy. And does nothing about it for twenty minutes. Not exactly the action-packed episode opening I was promised last week. The carnival sequence and ending made up for it somewhat, but I wasn’t terribly jazzed about Big Mike tackling the big bad rather than more crazy kung-fu. In short, Chuck is an incredibly fun show, but this was an uninspiring episode. Fun (show): 5. Fun (this episode): 3.

Hermes (Overall): I think the consensus is that vs. the Gravitron was an uninspiring episode of a normally much-better program. If this was your first episode, try again next week. Overall (show): 4. Overall (this episode): 2.5.