Chuck – Episode 2-14 Review

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I found the last couple episodes to be a bit underwhelming. Fortunately, “Chuck vs. The Best Friend” was able to break that streak and signaled a return to the Chuck we all know and love.

Perhaps one of the most refreshing things about “Chuck vs. The Best Friend” is that it was about Chuck having relationship angst with someone other than Sarah for a change (minus that brief moment at the end of the episode).

Season one made good use of Chuck having to let down his friends and family so that he could help save lives. We haven’t gotten nearly as much of that in season two, and I think this is the first time where Chuck had to deliberately hurt someone in order to save them. I would like to see more episodes where Chuck struggles to balance the obligations of friends and family with his Intersect duties.

Chuck probably was a little over-dramatic over having to betray Morgan in this episode. He was all worried about Morgan finding out he was spending time with Anna and her boyfriend when he could have easily played it off like he was just going undercover to get information on the guy for Morgan’s benefit. Granted, that cover story wouldn’t have held up so well after Chuck accused Morgan of being a pathetic stalker (to stop the Triad from killing Morgan), but it should have been enough to calm Chuck down in the first half of the episode.

This was also another episode where we got to see how Chuck is becoming more and more proficient at the whole being a spy thing. Granted, he ultimately bungled his attempt to plant a bug by pulling on cable and setting up a Rube Goldbergian level of reactions, but the very fact that Chuck tried to plant the bug in the first place while Sarah was busy with Anna is a sign of how far he has come in the last season and a half.

The Buy-More b-plot of the week was excellent this week as well. At times, Jeff and Lester can be more annoying than entertaining, but I really enjoyed the Jeffster plot. Everything from trying to win Ellie and Awesome’s approval, to Lester’s panic, to Jeff’s pleading, to Jeffster’s big musical performance just worked. And provided much laughter.

The only weak spot of the episode was the car explosion sequence. I was rolling my eyes from the moment the camera showed a close-up of the bomb on the seat of the Nerd-Herder car. They made a point of introducing a remote control for the car just moments earlier. Of course, Chuck wasn’t going to be in the car; why bother insulting our intelligence by trying to act like he was?

And why would he have been hiding while he driving it? He knew that Casey was right there and he must have been able to see Sarah arrive. There was no reason for him to hide wherever the hell he hid (and at the same time make it harder to see where the car was going). The only reason he was out of sight was so that everyone could see that Sarah would be upset over Chuck’s death. That’s not exactly breaking news.

Complaints about the car scene aside, “Chuck vs. The Best Friend” was a great episode. More episodes like this please.

Trevor MacKay is the sci-fi/horror/fantasy/cheesy/random geeky stuff guy. If something is geeky and/or unbelievably cheesy, he’s there.