Chuck 4.15 Episode Review

This week’s Chuck introduces us to a riff on Charlie’s Angels: Sarah’s old spy team, the Cat Squad, in all their campy awesomeness (at least in Morgan’s brain). “I don’t even want to think about what goes on there,” Chuck admits, while trying to find said team to invite to the impending wedding. It’s a big sign of what’s to come when they arrive by helicopter, rather than, y’know, using cars like normal people.

The following morning, with their guests passed out on the floor of Chuck’s apartment (except for Carina, who’s trying to get back with Morgan), Sarah fills Chuck in on history, including the one-time suspicion that one of the Cat Squad was a mole. Really awkward breakfast ensues, including the unexpected arrival and quick departure of Alex, and Amy stirring up old memories. As if that wasn’t enough, yay for car bombs that cause Chuck to flash on Lou Diamond Phillips. I mean, Augusto Gaez. It’s up to Chuck to bust the bad guy and find out if Zondra really is a mole.

That’s how we end up in Rio (setting of my favorite obscure Hugh Laurie film), where the girls get to mingle and the guys sit in the van (except for Morgan, who continues to unintentionally dig his own grave), and everyone ends up in a trap. Or a job proposal. Or a combination of both. A catfight (pun intended) ensues between Sarah and Zondra, before Chuck falls through the skylight and causes everything to become a melee. While Gaez is captured, they’re not able to get him to tell who the mole is, putting Sarah in a bad mood. She tells Chuck to stop helping and boots him from Castle, just before Zondra challenges her to a fight, and a large portion of the show’s male audience has heart palpitations. Yet neither of them win: Amy reveals herself as the mole just before knocking out her colleagues.

Amy and Gaez escape into the Buy More, and Chuck, thinking quickly (maybe too quickly) locks himself into the store with them and proceeds to use a waffle iron to make projectiles out of compact discs. How awesome is that? I’ve finally found a use for Yanni CD’s! Once the bad guys are defeated, everything falls into place, giving us another happy ending. While Chuck and Sarah make up after their latest disagreement, Alex and Morgan reconcile at the engagement party, and there’s even some Sarah and Ellie bonding when Sarah asks Ellie to be her maid of honor. The show touches all the bases.

Maybe it’s me, but I felt like Lou Diamond Phillips was almost overacting (though thankfully not on the level of Tia Texada) in the villain role; I just couldn’t take him all that seriously. I also was sure from moment one that Amy was the mole; my TV cynic brain figured it was the person we were supposed to least suspect. Because of that, this episode wasn’t nearly as interesting to me as the ones before it; I get a little bored when I know everything coming. I forgive the episode its campy feel, though, because that was the point. It was a fun riff on the Charlie’s Angels-type action shows of the past, and it certainly succeeded in having the same tone and plenty of girl power. I don’t think it was necessarily the episode for me, but Chuck knows how to have fun, if nothing else.

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