Chuck season 4 episode 15 review: Chuck Versus The Cat Squad

Chuck finds that reuniting Sarah's old team is a perfect recipe for a catfight…

This review may contain spoilers.

4.15 Chuck Versus The Cat Squad

Chuck makes me smile. The veritable insanity of this story is the excuse for a wonderful pastiche of Charlie’s Angels that’s entertaining for the whole running time and had me chuckling throughout.

They threw in every Angels cliché they could, from the mix of personalities in the C.A.T. Squad, being blown up by an exploding car, to the wholesale ass kicking that everyone who meets them gets.

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The plot, for what it’s worth, is also exactly the sort of thing that was paraded in theseventies, where Chuck tries to reunite Sarah’s old team of the implausibly perky Amy, the seductive Carina, and feisty Zondra.

But what Chuck doesn’t know is that the team previous broke up under a cloud. One of them is a double agent and hunting down their nemesis Alejandro Gaez, played by special guest star, Lou Diamond Phillips, is bound to reveal which one.

All the CAT Squad are gorgeous women, but like the Angels before them, I can’t help but have a soft spot for one. In this case, it’s Carina, played pitch perfectly by Swedish model, producer, actress and host, Mini Anden.

This is her third outing in Chuck, as Carina appeared in two previous stories, Chuck Versus The Wookie and Chuck Versus The Three Words. And her appearance is the basis for most of the humour here, as somewhat unbelievably, she had a relationship with Morgan previously. How he reacts to her and the issues it causes with Alex are both touching and funny, and provide a nice counterpoint to all the ass kicking.

I’m really not sure what Lou Diamond Phillips is doing in here, other than taking the cheque, but he makes a mildly convincing villain, I guess.

The story was relatively reference light, if you remove those to the Angels, and the opening Hart To Hart voiceover. However, there were some that even this geek didn’t get. At one point Chuck broke a DVD to use as throwing stars. It was called ‘Kyoto Snow’. Other than possibly a very obtuse reference to Kill Bill, I’ve no idea why it was called that, and if anyone knows, please mention it in the talkback.

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Overall, this episode was pure hokum, refined on the same backlots that inspired it, but I enjoyed it from beginning to end.

But I have one complaint. No Jeff, Lester, Big Mike or Captain Awesome this week. I’m beginning to miss those guys, and they need to come up with some Buy More-related fun to get them involved again, because they’re at the very heart and soul of this show.

I should also mention that episode 14 didn’t score well in the number of viewers it attracted, for no obvious reason. I’m hoping the Cat Squad will reverse that, because any more drops like that and Chuck could be destined for retirement this season.

Next week, because TV show creators aren’t so hot on chronology, is a Valentines story and takes place in England, I’m told. Spiffing!

Read our review of episode 14, Chuck Versus The Seduction Impossible, here.

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