By Buzz Byrne

As goofy as CHUCK is, to make it work there needs to be some danger, some real risk, some real threat to these fun cartoon-y characters that make us smile. In other words there needs to be at least some wadding pool depth or no one would care and in the second episode of the CHUCK sandwich delivered by NBC we got just that: pathos.

The Buy More is under surveillance. There are bugs in the place and the most likely suspects are Fulcrum, the rogue group determined to find The Intersect (the computer program running in Chuck’s head that gives him his spy smarts). If Fulcrum learns that Chuck (Zachary Levi) is The Intersect his life is over. He will be quarantined to a government facility for the rest of his, never to see his friends or family again. Sarah (Yvonne Strzechowski) and Casey (Adam Baldwin) get orders from their bosses at the CIA and NSA respectively that if they can’t find the enemy bugging the Buy More in forty eight hours Chuck’s fate is sealed in the Super Max for good guys.


To amp up the tension my newest most favoritest fictional character on TV, besides a lucid Paula Abdul, Captain Awesome (Ryan McPartlin) wants to ask Ellie (Sarah Lancaster) to marry him. Chuck gives his blessing and Awesome makes him hold on to the ring for no other reason than for Chuck to obviously lose the ring. I love this show but the plot twists are announced like train stops on a commuter rail.

Sarah and Casey orchestrate a complete robbery of everything in the Buy More so they can find the transmitter that assists the eavesdropping bugs and learn the identity of who is spying on them. They don’t find anything because they didn’t get the stuffed marlin hanging over Big Mike’s (Mark Christopher Lawrence) desk. That was the location of the transmitter and the fish was stolen by a drunken Lester and Jeff (Vik Sahay and Scott Krinsky) who then stashed it in Chuck’s apartment. The agents also didn’t have the ring because that was boosted by Morgan (Joshua Gomez) who mistakenly thought it was destined for Sarah so he went crying to Ellie thinking he was losing his best friend to marriage, stuffed the ring in the marlin and stashed the marlin in the freezer at the Weinerlicious. Though convoluted and much of it unnecessary, it was fun to see this stuff told in an homage to of all movies RASHOMON. The makers of this show do love movies.

The hot delivery girl from Pita Parlour is revealed as the spy. Hot girls always mess things up in this shows, it’s just a running motif along with the movie references and bad things happening to Casey when his pants are off. Fearing that Chuck’s cover has been compromised, the higher ups in DC order him brought in and the timetable off. His life is over.


Sarah and Casey save the day at the last minute. Big Mike gets his marlin back, Awesome gets the ring back from Chuck and says, “I always knew you could handle my family jewels.” He pops the question to Ellie who says yes and all is well.

And yet…

The ending was a little dark. As Chuck and Sarah watched Ellie and Awesome celebrate and hug, a cloud was cast over it. The music signaled what Sarah was saying with her eyes, that they barely avoided the inevitable and that if Chuck does somehow manage to stay out of lifelong detention it will only be because he is dead. Good for the writers and producers for taking the risk of keeping an edge to this otherwise enjoyable romp.