Chuck changes the entire game, though not in Lexington

    I won't rehash my complaints about Lexington's WLEX18 NBC.  You can read them here.  Needless to say, Lexington residents were cheated out of a truly memorable, game changing episode of NBC's Chuck.  I urge you to immediately go to hulu.com or nbc.com to catch up, as you are going to want to watch it before reading the rest of this article.

     Last night's Chuck, "Chuck vs. the Other Guy", reported to be one of the best of the series, lived up to the hype.  And that's not to be taken lightly, even though this is the third time in recent memory that I could have stated the last sentence and been right.  The show that started out only o.k., but found it's footing in season two, has somehow taken itself to yet another new level and is staying there.

     For one thing, balance has been restored.  With the gripping conclusion of Agent Shaw's (Brandon Routh, Superman Returns) plot, he is gone from Team Bartowski, and not only is Casey (Adam Baldwin) fully back, but there is a new member.  Recently brought into the the secret circle, Chuck's (Zachary Levi) best friend, Morgan (Joshua Gomez) is now in completely!  Casey coming back seemed inevitable and necessary, but the fact that he will be taking Morgan under his wing and making another geek a real spy will send shivers through every fan of the show.


     Bigger than that, though, is the coming together of Chuck and Sarah (Yvonne Strahovski).  It has taken nearly three years to get them to couple status.  First, she couldn't be with him because he wasn't a spy.  Then, she thought that he was too much of a spy, believing he had killed someone.  When she found out that he hadn't, it looked like she might finally get with Chuck, but the pair would never be on equal footing.  However, by Chuck finally killing someone who was trying to kill her, she can overlook the darkness that will surely be seen in him, and be with him as an equal.  Both are spies, neither like to kill, and it will probably take a lot for Chuck to kill again.  However, in the only way it could have gone down, she loves him for taking another man's life.  Brilliant writing!

     Last night also brought back my favorite guest star, who seems to be in every great action series of the past decade, Mark Sheppard.

     Chuck is off the air for three weeks, but when it returns, we will get to see Casey training Morgan, Chuck and Sarah together, the return of Chuck's father (Scott Bakula, Men of a Certain Age), and even Anna Wu (Julia Ling) coming back for Morgan!  Chuck airs on NBC Mondays at 8pm.