Chuck season 2 episode 18 review

Chuck Versus The Heartbreak initially contains the usual elements we’ve come to expect from this show. But they throw a spanner in the well oiled mechanism early on when the avarian General Beckman calls a 49B down on Chuck’s dual existence.

This protocol is designed to assess if Sarah’s emotional involvement with Chuck is impairing her performance, and they dispatch steely agent Alexandra Forrest to evaluate her. Alex is played by the stunning Canadian actress/model Tricia Helfer (Battlestar Galactica), who’s presented as a singularly more attractive, but female, version of Casey.

As with most Chuck adventures, this plotline is required to mesh seamlessly with the insanity of the Buy More, where Jeff and Lester have become fixated with being invited to soon-to-be-married Devon “Captain Awesome” Woodcomb’s bachelor party.

This is initially unconnected, but as the story progresses a mission arrives where Chuck must infiltrate the hospital where Devon and Ellie work to find a terrorist with a heart complaint. The spies decide to place a tracker in the pacemaker this man will have fitted, but to do this they’ll need Devon’s security pass, which is where the world of spycraft crashes headlong into the bachelor party fantasies of Jeff and Lester.

The party is held at the Buy More, unsurprisingly, and this is the best part of this story by far. After a few drinks the dry ice appears, and three ‘exotic’ dancers appear from it. I say ‘exotic’, but horrific would actually be a better description, one – although we’re not told which – is actually Jeff’s sister. Chuck always makes me laugh out loud at one point, and this was it in this story.

However, the assembled men are in for a bigger shock when agent Forrest arrives, in her plastic sexy cop outfit. She drags Devon into the seclusion of the HiFi room before tranquilising him when he won’t bend to her impressive assets. Chuck’s mortified; shooting his friends with a dart gun isn’t a line they’ve previously crossed.

Having got the card, they return to the Castle to be told that Sarah is no longer on the case and Agent Forrest is the replacement handler. Sarah empties her apartment and heads to Langley. She can’t have much stuff, because she drives it away in her Porsche, but before she goes she starts a search for Chuck’s father, something he’d asked her to do.

On the road this search completes and she writes the information in a letter and goes to Ellie’s pad to drop it off. There she finds Chuck’s iPhone, which he’s never without, and realises that Chuck’s been abducted by the terrorists who think he’s the doctor who put the bug inside their associate.

The final action act takes place in a bank vault where Chuck is told to operate and remove the bug, or face the consequences. With him inside and Casey, Sarah and Alex outside, things look desperate, until Chuck uses a nitrous oxide cylinder to defend himself and releases large amounts of laughing gas. It’s slapstick stuff, but engagingly presented.

It all gets a little too soppy after that for my liking, as it’s determined that Sarah’s involvement with Chuck has actually benefited the mission, and Alex’s lack of concern for him was almost fatal. Sarah’s back and she then takes Chuck to a trailer home where his father lives, and leaves us with a slightly limp cliff-hanger.

Is Chuck’s father inside the mobile home, and if so who is it?I know, but I’m not at liberty to say. What I will say is that in Chuck Versus The Dream Job we discover that Chuck’s father has a strong Trek connection, but he’s not the most famous guest starring actor in that story.

Look’s like Chuck‘s going to pull out all the stops to hook another season, if that’s possible.

Check out Billy’s review of episode 17 here.