Chuck season 2 episode 4 review

Chuck…this show cracks me up!

When you think they’ve exhausted the dumb spy concept they come along and throw a narrative curve-ball the likes of which defies predictability.

Sarah is a sexy minx now, but she wasn’t always called ‘Sarah’, and in 1998 she wore braces and was picked on by the more attractive girls at her high school. That would be fine as history, until one of those women walks into the Buy More and recognises her!

It gets worse for Sarah when Chuck discovers her real name –  ‘Jenny’ – and invites Heather and her hubby Mark to a dinner date after his intersect power flashes on her spouse.

Meanwhile Big Mike has gone on a fishing trip from Buy More, leaving Lester and his Bay City Rollers hairstyle in charge. He decides to deploy a radical sales ploy where they’ll accept almost any offer for the most expensive goods. It doesn’t take an economics degree to work out how badly this will end, but it’s fun watching his empowered sales-staff in action.

Sarah (err…Jenny) isn’t keen on people knowing her past, especially a dark secret about her father – he’s in prison.

But Chuck is a show about crazy stuff and, once dinner gets served, the insanity is unleashed. Mark Ratner’s a defence contractor who’s about to be killed by Russian mobsters in the gents when Chuck walks in. Ratner hides in the stall while Chuck (ok, it’s Casey) deals with the thugs. But now Chuck is playing his alter ego, Charles ’mad-dog Carmichael, while Sarah is playing her real personality….confused yet?

Sarah then has to deal with her own nightmare scenario, attending her High School reunion! Here she bumps into school bully Dick Duffy, an idiot who sells fake watches and smuggled Vodka from his car trunk. Sarah gets to work out some childhood issues there. I don’t recall my school days were remotely as interesting as hers!

But Dick Duffy wasn’t the only bane of her life at school; so was Heather, and she’s also working for the Russian mobsters. Or is it that they’re working for her? More issues get resolved for Sarah, and it’s all rather cathartic.  

I won’t even describe how Lester’s stupid plan to fix the huge amount of money missing from the Buy More sales implodes, but it’s a party.

Next time Chuck takes on Tom Sawyer, whatever that actually means….

Here’s this episode’s full-on geekness from Chuck.

• Big Mike’s big fish gets damaged (eeek..)
• Sarah and Heather have a huge punch-up to “Smack My Bitch Up” by The Prodigy
• There is a ‘Tron’ shot near the end (see it and you’ll know)
• Jenny isn’t Sarah’s real name either
• Roboraptors can survive by scavenging cold Pizza
• Sarah once owned a yellow Golf GTi Cabriolet (or Rabbit as it was called in the USA).
• Casey has a gun in his barcode reader
• Captain Awesome and Ellie only appear on a TV monitor in this episode

Check out Billy’s review of episode 3 here.