Hooray, Fall TV is coming back! Other than the stellar Mad Men season currently underway and a few pleasant highlights (like Huge), I am more than ready to hand over a summer of kicky, fluffy, brightly lit USA procedurals and derivative reality shows for a solid TV schedule. Here are some of the releases circled on my September calendar:

Sons of Anarchy – I’ve been waiting to write this post for a while, and could conceivably have put it up several weeks ago as release dates became available, but I decided it would just be too painful to anticipate all of these shows and then have to wait forever. But I’ve waited long enough, because FX’s amazing Sons of Anarchy returns tonight! There’s an interesting NYTimes piece which suggests that Sons of Anarchy is the show that best tackles the current American tendency toward fringe politics, and while that isn’t the show’s primary source of interest for me, it is a prominent feature. Neo-nazis and anarchists aside, Sons of Anarchy is a fabulous Shakespearean drama disguised as a biker fantasy and peopled with murderers, gun runners, the ghost of King Hamlet in biker manifesto form, and some fantastically powerful women. Long live SAMCRO.

Boardwalk Empire – Easily the most anticipated release this fall, Boardwalk Empire is HBO’s next major must-watch production. The setting is Prohibition Era Atlantic City, and the show centers on the early gangsters and politicians who made the city into a capital of crime and hedonism. It features Steve Buscemi as the main character Nucky Thompson, it also stars Michael K. Williams of The Wire fame, and Martin Scorsese directed the pilot. It also premieres on September 19^th, which means Sunday nights are soon going to be very, very busy for me.

Chuck – Okay, we all know I have a strange and powerful weakness love for Chuck, and am thrilled it’s getting an early fall premiere date rather than being pushed to mid-season. As with any season of Chuck, this one may well be the show’s last, so treasure it for all it’s worth.

Undercovers – At the Visionaries panel at Comic-Con this year, JJ Abrams worked to characterize what he hopes will be a healthy balance between episodic and serialized plotlines for his new spy show, which premieres September 22^nd. I don’t know. On one side, I see a show like Fringe, which became quite interesting and worthwhile at the end of last season, and which has almost certainly managed to survive because of its commitment to episodic storytelling. On the other side, it’s clear to me that Fringe only became compelling once it managed to walk away from the straight up Monster of the Week format and throw itself full force into Crazy Doppelganger Land. I’m sympathetic to the desire for seriality and the need for something like an episodic show’s accessibility, but I almost always feel that shows trying to be both things end up doing neither of them well.

Law and Order: LA – Law and Order is dead, and yet, like a zombie apocalypse’s Patient Zero, its progeny live on, beginning September 29^th.

The Walking Dead – This one’s cheating, because it doesn’t come out until the end of October. For now, watch the trailer and marvel at how awesome it will be.

At long last, I got around to watching the Chuck finale yesterday. As I’d hoped, it was full of all the things Chuck does when it’s at its best – lots of spy silliness overlaid onto more meaningful emotional revelations, lots of good protagonist development, plenty of family bonding, and a hearty side of Buy More hilarity. Shaw is much better as an out-and-out villain than he ever was as an ambiguous good guy, so his not-so-shocking return provided a strong forward-momentum for the two-hour episode. I thought the plotline with Casey’s daughter was nicely balanced between anxious emotional stakes and humor, particularly the moment when she manages to knock him silly. It’s a relief that Ellie is no longer the one odd woman out of Team Bartowski, but I can anticipate some carry-over resentment at being left in the dark for so long.

My one complaint about the finale, which I absolutely enjoyed, was that I thought there were some missed opportunities involving Team Bartowski’s newer members. I was so thrilled to hear Beckman inform Morgan that he was their only hope, and loved the set-up with Devon, Ellie and Morgan getting ready to take down the armored van. I was hoping for something a little more involved and less accidental than resolving that plotline with a wayward missile launched from Casey’s headlight, though. Now that they’re all in the know, the best way for these characters to remain relevant, functional members of the team without transforming into punch lines is for them to occasionally provide legitimately helpful contributions. This has happened several times with Morgan, and some of my favorite parts of this season have been watching him become more than a video game-loving nerd who can’t even tie his shoes. The fact that he actually broke his thumbs, for instance – even though that sequence ended abruptly in a joke, I don’t think it undermined Casey’s subsequent praise of Morgan’s actions. Maybe it was enough at this stage for Ellie, Awesome and Morgan to just roll into action, but in the light of someone who’s willing to literally break his own thumbs, the headlight missile was funny, but I would have liked to see those characters get to do a little more.

Still, there will be plenty of time for that, as we were all able to watch this season finale comforted by the knowledge that there will be a season four – such a luxury. The revelation of his father’s lair makes it look as though Chuck’s being positioned to take over another, different type of ultra-secret mission, possibly outside the knowledge of the CIA. While I’m sure there are interesting stories to tell, I do worry about the way that story will get framed for Chuck’s personal life. He’s just spent three seasons slowly coming out of undercover for all the people he cares about, and it would be so frustrating to have finally reached this point only to shove him back into secrecy. Maybe there’s something about Chuck’s character that needs some disconnect between his private and professional self, or maybe the show’s structure really requires two adjoining worlds with restricted boundaries. Whatever the case, Chuck is almost always better when he’s not acting on his own, and the last thing I’d want to see is him falling down into a superhero spiral of lonely responsibility.

I’d like to end with a plea. We don’t know what will become of the Buy More, or its now unemployed workers. But please, for the benefit of all of us. Free Jeffster!

Last night was the last hour of Chuck before the actual season three finale next week, and like last season, it featured the return of Father Bartowski and some escalating Intersect concerns. Also – Shaw is still alive (and maybe has an Intersect in his brain now)! Ellie is being recruited by a Ring agent! Big Mike is the new manager of Jeffster!(!) General hilarity and ratcheting tension ensue!

I do wish that more of these plotlines weren’t so reliant on simple communication problems. Couldn’t Chuck have just told Sarah and Casey that he thinks Shaw is still alive right away? Why not tell Sarah about his dangerous mental status? It probably should have been the most annoying, but I was actually okay with Chuck feeling reserved about telling his Dad about the new Intersect – or I would have, if it hadn’t gone on for quite so long. The most annoying of these has to be the Ellie/Ring plot, if only because it’s been established for so long that Ellie and Awesome are the least sneaky, least deceptive people on the planet. No one who’s been around Ellie in the last two episodes could ever believe that she’s okay, and the idea that she’s cheating on someone based on that message alone was so absurd as to be laughable. Besides, she would tell someone she’s being recruited. C’mon now.

Essential communication issues aside, I’m a fan of the double-Shaw reveal. “He’s dead! He’s alive! He’s dead! He’s alive!” has to be done pretty carefully for it to be at all effective, and I thought last night’s attempt was remarkably successful. By the time we reached the end, the final reveal was hardly that surprising, except that it had the added bonus of taking place at the moment Shaw was downloading an Intersect. Separately, those two events would have felt fairly ho-hum; together, they were worthy of a second-to-last episode. It was also a canny way to avoid having to pay Brandon Routh for that episode – did you notice that even after he placed his hand on the pad and we got his “Identity Confirmed” image, we still didn’t get a shot of his face?

My other favorite moment from last night (second, of course, to everything to do with Jeffster!) were some throwaway lines from Chuck and Chuck’s dad. With Shaw, we now have the third handsome white dude to line up for an Intersect download, and while that’s not so many, it would be really nice for some superspy diversity to eventually have a presence. In the mean time, though, we have Sarah, who as Stephen Bartowski points out, is so impressive all on her own that she doesn’t even need a computer in her brain.

Next week: season finale, which according to this teaser, will include many very exciting things.

It seems inevitable that after two relatively light-hearted, standalone episodes, Chuck would have to return to a darker, multi-episode plotline format for the final few episodes of the season, and it also seems appropriate that the groundwork for that plotline would be a focus on Chuck’s mind. The ultimate goals of this show have always been about that uncomfortable computer lodged in Chuck’s brain – either he wants it out, or he needs to put it back in, or he can’t control it. It makes sense that now Chuck is finally in a place where the Intersect is almost fully integrated into his life, it becomes a threat to his mental stability. And, as it’s nearing the end of this season, the rhythms of this show dictate that we return to Chuck’s brain as the primary battleground. The premise of the plotline is also respectably plausible inside of a show where plausibility has remarkably little traction. I can well believe that the presence of an incredibly powerful computer that can control both your thoughts and physical actions would eventually require some serious mental gymnastics to try to stay sane.

Still, the lead up to this revelation about the potentially threatening Intersect seems way too sudden, and I’m sure it’s a result of this bizarre, abbreviated season arc. Maybe a minute or two of Chuck waking up from a disturbing dream would have been a better use of time in the previous episode than watching Ellie and Awesome hang out with Evil Justin in Africa. The tone of “Chuck vs. the Tooth” also felt oddly equivocal – this is scary, and the moment when Chuck walks into that mental institution is meant to be honestly frightening. But as soon as we begin to actually worry that Chuck is going crazy, we get a jolt of funny from Merlin or the other spy-crazies. The conversation with Casey and Sarah was a great example of this unevenness. When they sit down to talk with Chuck at the hospital, he immediately launches into his whole spiel about the tooth, and plays the Insane Conspiracy Theorist role for laughs. The gravelly voice, the desperate request for Sarah to give him her hand, the silliness of hacking up the tooth, “the truth…is in the tooth” – all of these are meant to be funny, and they are funny as long as we believe that Chuck isn’t actually unbalanced. Except, as Sarah’s subsequent concern and Christopher Lloyd’s dour therapist make clear, we are supposed to be worried for Chuck. Either we can laugh at the hilarity of Chuck playing the role of a crazy spy, or our fear that Chuck is in danger of losing himself is legitimate, but it’s hard to keep them working at the same time. “Chuck vs. the Tooth” tried to have it both ways, and I don’t think it really clicked.

All that said, when tuxedo-clad Morgan was the recipient of the objectifying Buy More slo-walk, I almost spit out my iced tea.

After a productive and successful break, I’m happy to be back. Also happy to report that it looks like this whole TV business is going to be in my life for a while, so this blog becomes an increasingly useful place for keeping track of gut reactions, first impressions, and the occasional Dickens musings. For that reason, the List of Giant Things will probably be a continuing presence, and in the absence of interesting new episodes to talk about, I anticipate doing more casually analytic thinking about shows on a broader scale.

In the immediate and more extended future – it’s sweeps season! Final episodes of Lost! Mad Men returns July 25! Wacky summer TV season is nigh!

And, of course, the long coda to Chuck season three, which is currently well under way. Both last week’s “Chuck vs. the Honeymooners” and last night’s “Chuck vs. the Role Models” were a welcome return to that joyous, fizzy, spy-thriller romp mode that Chuck stand-alones do better than most other shows on TV. My question all along has been how Chuck would transition out of a pseudo finale and then back into an abbreviated six-episode arc, and the answer so far appears to be, “first we’re going to watch Chuck and Sarah do it on a train, then we’ll get Fred Willard and Swoosie Kurtz to show them the pitfalls, and then we’re going to do an arc about the Ring.” Which is fine by me. After what everyone now agrees was an unnecessarily long WTWT Chuck and Sarah stasis, it felt appropriate that the show would let them revel in it for a while.

The possibilities of a spy couple provide the show with some interesting traction; it’s well-worn territory, but largely because it can work so effectively. The last few episodes have made some explicit references to the healthy tradition of crime-fightin’ lovers, including what I am certain was a reference to The Thin Man’s Nick and Nora Charles in the “Mr. and Mrs. Charles” alias on the train and the Hart to Hart spoof in Morgan’s dream from last night. It may just be me, but I was also feeling some ‘30s screwball comedy vibe from the introduction of the tiger last night – but maybe singing “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love, Baby” only works on leopards. Clearly this screwball/romp/spy-thriller will be quickly modulating into something else, a move signaled by the cute Doctors Without Borders guy whipping out his Ring phone at the very end of last night’s episode.

But even inside of a larger save-the-world plot arc, this element of Chuck and Sarah as a couple does have interesting implications for the future of the show (if there is one, fingers crossed, knock on wood). The news hit yesterday that NBC has picked up a pilot from J.J. Abrams called Undercovers, about a husband and wife spy team, and I’ve seen thought about how this might affect Chuck going both ways. On the one hand, it’s obvious that this could work as a replacement show, a fun spy show made by a guy with a big name and a history in this genre. Ditch Chuck, and replace it with something bigger and buzzier. (That is definitely a word.) Conversely, if aired together or marketed as a pair, this could be a boon for Chuck, bringing it an audience it’s been sadly lacking since its premiere. Obviously I’m hoping for the latter scenario, but until NBC gives a firm signal about Chuck’s future, it’s all speculation.

Once again, I’m happy to be back blogging, and am looking forward to filling in the gaps of what I’ve neglected in the past week – most notably, Treme. Before I leave off with the meta-commentary, though, I do want to note that although I anticipate a long life for this blog, its immediate future may continue to be irregular for a little while. The default schedule will continue to be a post every weekday, but with an asterisk that reads, “every weekday, unless I’m driving/flying across the country, or someone is getting married, or I’m moving,” in which case it might be a little hit-or-miss.

I really hope you watched Chuck last night, and not just because it was an incredibly entertaining episode that fulfilled the deepest desires of most Chuck fans. I hope you watched it, because I really hope the ratings will be decent enough to bring Chuck back for a fourth season. Because I want to see more television like that.

As I indicated in my post about Chuck from late Sunday night, I watched the episode in the big hall at WonderCon, which was about as entertaining as you could imagine. If you were choosing an episode to premiere for a giant room full of screaming Chuck fans, last night’s “Chuck vs. the Other Guy” would be a hard choice to beat. It’s just so fun to sit in the middle of a thousand people as they lose their minds when Chuck and Sarah finally get together, and it was only made better when the episode was followed by Zachary Levi walking out and announcing to the cheering masses: “It’s about time. You’re not wrong…We did it. In Paris.” The panel continued with Chris Fedak and Josh Schwartz discussing the difficulties of finishing a season only to discover they needed to tack six more episodes onto the end, Adam Baldwin confirming that there would of course be some resolution to the discovery that he has a daughter, and a suggestion that in addition to watching the show live, audience members attempt to hack the Nielsen ratings. For more about the panel, I’ll refer you to Daniel Fienberg’s coverage of it, which includes Zachary Levi’s pleasure in the obvious choice of background scenery for Chuck and Sarah’s final scene.

“So yeah, man. It all worked out good,” crowed Levi. “And what better place to consummate their relationship. With the Eiffel Tower standing tall. How’s that for symbolism.”

Part of what made “Chuck vs. the Other Guy” such an effective episode to watch immediately before a question and answer session was that the episode answered so many of what would have been the obvious questions about the third season of Chuck. How will Morgan’s character change now that he knows about Chuck? Will Casey return to Team Bartowski? When are we getting ride of that mopey Shaw? Will Chuck ever be able to become a “real spy” by killing someone, or will that always be a line between him and Sarah? Speaking of Chuck and Sarah…I mean come on already! And the subsequent audience response would have been markedly different if “Chuck vs. the Other Guy” hadn’t been such a satisfying response to all of those concerns. Shaw’s gone for good, and gone in a way that managed to both fulfill Chuck’s trajectory toward full spy status while solidifying his newfound honesty with Sarah. Casey’s back, thank goodness, and he thoughtfully brings Morgan into the fold along with him.

The episode did an impressive job of moving swiftly but thoroughly through all these necessary developments, hitting all the perfect audience pleasure buttons along the way. It was chock full of reference, as the best Chuck always is, sliding through several John Hughes references and building up to Josh Gomez’s hilarious reading of “…there is another,” before concluding with a warm homage to James Bond. The episode was also quite funny – my favorite was the lovely cut from Chuck’s drunken ninja flash to Morgan on the floor, incapacitated by video controllers. (This scene did elicit some concern from the panel’s moderator, IGN’s Eric Goldman, who was worried that Sarah cut through all of the controller cables, which would mean they all would need to be replaced.)

No question, the episode was a deeply satisfying season finale, but I’m now fascinated by the problems it presents for the show’s future. It’s going to be tough to shift down from this giddy conclusion-induced high in order to ramp Chuck back up for its actual season finale. I could easily see these being a tricky, uneven next few episodes – they’ve got to move forward and set a lot of plot in place that will need to be resolved much faster than the usual thirteen-episode timetable. Still, even if they are uneven, these next six episodes are such a cool opportunity for this show. Television rarely ties all of its loose strings into a lovely little bow, and it certainly never builds a blockbuster ending like this, only to return a few weeks later and have to cope with the consequences of that resolution. The questions that “Chuck vs. the Other Guy” answered were satisfying, but pretty easy to predict. Yes, Chuck and Sarah get together; yes, Casey comes back; yes, Shaw dies. The next questions are much harder, and potentially more rewarding. What will Morgan’s role actually be in Team Bartowski? How will this relationship work, now that Chuck and Sarah are a couple?

I’m so looking forward to finding out, and I really hope that the answers will be able to continue beyond the next six episodes.

P.S. Sepinwall often includes a “Plot Hole of the Week” in his Chuck reviews, and I was bugged enough by one thing about this episode that I can’t resist. So, Shaw leads Sarah into a giant empty warehouse set up with an elaborate monitor system and a thoughtfully remixed version of the video of his wife and Sarah’s red test. Chuck comes crashing in with the tanks and the air support and what have you, and it turns out Shaw was just trying to tell Sarah he understands? Come on. What’s with the elaborate monitor set-up? The emo surveillance footage remix? The enormous white stage with a camera on it?

Chuck has been strong these last few weeks, and all signs point to next week’s episode as a real fizzing whizbang. Some of this has to do with the usual things that make for good television – the acting is well done (for the most part, although last night Shaw yelled “NOOOOOO!” and it was his own little “KHAAAAN!” moment), the plots are moving swiftly and taking risks, character development is working well. That aside, though, it’s pretty obvious that what’s happening on Chuck lately is unusually epic for a show that’s twelve episodes into its nineteen-episode season. As I mentioned briefly last week, there’s a really good reason for that. Chuck was initially given a thirteen-episode order for this season, and then several months into production, that order was extended to nineteen episodes. Last night’s “Chuck vs. the American Hero” was to have been the cliffhanger that leads into the season finale. Instead, we get this oddly climactic mid-season huzzah, and then what will be a really interesting transition between next week’s ersatz-finale and the group of new extra episodes.

This is what the run-up to the end of a season looks like

There are several odd things about this, but one of the biggest is just how obvious it is that something out of the ordinary is going on. The appropriate tempos, tones, plotlines, the special momentousness of a season finale is so well established now that you can see it a mile away, even when it’s hidden in the middle of a season. Last night’s episode was laden with “This is a Big Deal” cues, mostly to do with the ongoing evolution of Chuck and Sarah’s relationship and the standard end-of-season revelations (in this case, that Sarah was the one who killed Shaw’s wife). But there was also plenty of smaller stuff falling into place – Casey donning a ski cap to join Devon and Morgan in Operation Charah is a classic humorous, worlds-colliding, lead-up-to-the-end shenanigan, as is Jeff and Lester being the ones to successfully stalk Shaw. Even the musical cues were operating at full finale throttle. Chuck has a special, eighties techno-esque theme that it reserves for particularly epic moments on the show, and there were plenty of teases of it in last night’s episode.

Also this

It’s hard to see clearly because it’s just a matter-of-fact aspect of television, but it’s actually quite astonishing that premieres and finales have become such patterned, familiar, known objects. Because the marketing and production obstacles of making television are so visible underneath the surface of a show, we see quite easily why finales are such reliable Game Changer or Cliffhanger or Major Character Deathtrap or OMG They Finally Kissed episodes, and we accept the rules for How You End a Season and expect them to be followed. And yet, the whole thing is actually completely bizarre. Major network television shows are unwieldy, unbalanced things that resemble a piece of clay you’ve rolled only in the center. The ends are enormous, heavy globs of Relationship Drama and Suddenly a Shot Rang Out! and the middle is barely thick enough to hold them together. Shows with seasons that run for twenty episodes often have a mid-season hiatus, which follows the same rules as a season break, except in miniature. When a major character’s life is in mortal peril at the end of an episode in December, you know you’re going to have to wait three or four weeks until you find out if they died.

And this

Which is why it’s so refreshing and strange to see this big epic lump of Eventful Things in the middle of this season of Chuck. I’m really, really curious to see how they’ll knit together what’s obviously an ending with the remaining six episodes, but for now, I’m mostly just enjoying my unexpected plot windfall at the end of March.

After yesterday’s absurdly long post, today I’m sticking with brevity.

Did you know that Daylight Saving Time screws with television ratings? It’s true! Maybe!

Or at least, that’s the meme going around the internets today, and I’m inclined to believe. First, evidence: across the board last night, television ratings were down. Data stolen from TV By the Numbers, my go-to source for this sort of stuff, says that viewing numbers were down 4% in the 8pm slot and 2% in the 9pm slot, compared with numbers from a week ago. Sadly, this seems to have been particularly true for Chuck, which dropped 17%.

Second, wild conjecture: when it’s light outside for more of the day, people stay outside longer, or are more likely to go out some place, or are generally less inclined to fall into a snuggly warm stupor in front of the flickering, undemanding TV screen. The discrepancy in the 8pm and 9pm numbers might back this up a little bit, because at least where I live, 8pm is now significantly brighter than it used to be, but by 9pm, it’s fully dark. Weather certainly has some measurable impact on TV ratings, which is why summer television is so dominated by re-runs and low-budget reality projects, so it’s not too crazy to look to DST as a source for changing viewing patterns.

It’s a huge downer for Chuck fans, who have just started to hope they could be getting another season, thanks to NBC’s universally poor performance. I can only cross my fingers that the all-around drop will lessen the blow of the 17% plummet, but even still. Yeesh.

While Chuck vs. The Beard might not have been the deepest, darkest, most thought provoking or daring episode of Chuck, it was so undeniably fun that I just found myself grinning throughout the whole thing. Chuck vs. The Beard, in list form:

1)    I think it’s going to be great for the long term Chuck Bartowski character development that Morgan finally knows his secret. The pleasure and challenge of this season has been Chuck’s sudden character shift and all the resulting reverberations in his private life. In the spy world, he’s much more awesome now – he’s intelligent and skilled, and he comes with a sweet instant-Ninja feature (even if it is pretty buggy). It’s entirely reasonable that his relationships outside the spy world would begin to disintegrate now that his identity is aligned in a new way. Still, the audience misses what Chuck once was, and Sarah misses him as well. Morgan is a great way to keep Chuck grounded in both places, and his eternal adoration of Chuck’s abilities make it completely acceptable to him that Chuck would get picked by the CIA. He immediately sympathizes with how tough Chuck’s life has been these past few years, but he also frames Chuck’s life in terms of the same familiar relationship they’ve always had (which is why it’s so nice that Morgan complains about Chuck flashing on Duck Hunt).

This shot made absolutely no sense in the context of the scene. It is a Jeffster! glamor shot, plain and simple, with no explanation or apology. And it is excellent.

2)    Triumphant return of Jeffster!

3)    While the whole Buy More plot was basically a set-up for a series of silly sight gags and then Jeffster!, I do think the continuing allegiance to the Buy Moria nation state has a nice role to play in the whole tone of the show. Aside from the lovely flag tableau, my favorite moment of Buy More patriotism came from this week’s bad guys, excellently played by that one dude from The Drew Carey Show and that other guy from Reno 911. “So that’s the sound of liberty” has to be the best blurb Jeffster! could ever hope to get.

4)    As with almost any time I use a list on this blog, this list is just an excuse to post this, which I saw linked around twitter today, and which made me laugh for a very long time.

With the amazing US vs. Canada men’s hockey game, the giant inflatable beavers, and The Marriage Ref, NBC’s Olympic coverage came to a close Sunday night. Which means that on Monday, Chuck came back! As you may recall, Chuck last left its viewers in a hailstorm of shipper-fueled outrage, so returning last night felt a little bit like prepping for a commenter’s remake of The Perfect Storm.

Paulie really hates those will-they-or-won't-they-things. Just do it already!

As expected, it looks like there’s been some shipper grumbling about the episode, mostly focusing on Sarah’s growing intimacy with Shaw, but so far it hasn’t approached the Scorched Earth level of demanding a boycott. Some of that must have to do with the fact that “Chuck vs. The Fake Name” was quite a bit more thoughtful and self-referential about Chuck and Sarah’s diverging paths, even working in some pretty obvious meta-joking: “I hate those will-they-or-won’t-they things,” especially when spoken so earnestly by Paulie from The Sopranos, is a small step away from Liz Lemon turning straight to the camera and winking. There was also some comforting commentary from Big Mike and Jeffster (who are as close as Chuck gets to a Greek chorus) reminding the audience that at least some characters on this show remember that Chuck’s supposed to end up with Sarah. Despite what seems like a more permanent and meaningful bond between Sarah and Shaw, I can only imagine those little shout outs go a long way toward at least dialing back some of the shipper fury.

Best Greek chorus ever. Also, I have this sudden desire to own a Crock Pot...

More important than Big Mike’s classic onion tears cover-up, last night’s Chuck was just stronger than “Chuck vs. The Mask.” Chuck’s development fell a lot closer to that sweet spot of being both entertaining on the surface and compelling for the longer term – he was so funny and good at being a stone-cold assassin, but even without Sarah’s explication later on, it was disturbing to watch him balk only briefly before pulling out Casey’s tooth. Of course the Sopranos goons were delightful, and did a great job of selling my favorite moment from “The Fake Name,” when Chuck eavesdrops on Sarah’s real name and suddenly shifts into telling the baddies all about his fraught personal life. Scenes like that are great at selling the advantages of Chuck 2.0. He’s still himself, falling easily out of the spy role whenever Sarah’s involved, and he’s highly attuned to the absurdities around him, but he’s also much more in control of the situation, and is quickly able to convert his lapse into strategy. It also managed to keep being funny, particularly when Chuck points out that Sarah is the one who pushed him to get better in the first place, while in the context of this scene, Chuck’s job is to be a badass, heartless assassin. Episodes like this are strong arguments in favor of the riskier, more dynamic, more conflicted Chuck this season has been trying to inaugurate with somewhat uneven success.

"Shut up shut up shut up!"

I’m sure there are still plenty of infuriated fans out there, and at this point, it’s without question that Chuck and Sarah need some forward momentum. As Alan Sepinwall wisely suggests, the point at which your show actually throws in a funny “will-they-or-won’t-they” line is the point at which that plotline should probably get resolved post haste. But I can only hope that whatever else Chuck shippers find to feed the rage (SHE TOLD SHAW HER REAL NAME!! BETRAYALL!!!!!), they recognize the groundwork this episode went out of its way to establish and try to clamp down on the instinct to panic. An episode that sparkles and fizzes like “Fake Name” should be cause for pleasure, not uproar.