So we’re watching Chuck last night, and the going gets pretty rough. The plot holes are so enormous, you could set up camp and build a small colony of frontierspeople inside of them, except they are barren wastelands of plot uninhabitable by even the heartiest frontiersperson. I’m feeling pretty nervous about it because I know it’s a very thin line, and when he picks up the iPhone and spends the rest of the episode reading it rather than watching the TV, I know what’ll be coming once the episode ends – my husband is no longer interested in Chuck. You are a quitter, I tell him, a narrative deserter, and just because a show has gotten bad (as, oh boy, Chuck certainly has recently), it does not mean it can’t get better. His counter argument is that once most shows get bad, they do not come back, and there’s no use waiting around on the barest hope of a brighter future to come.

There are obviously examples of shows that get bad and for whatever reason, do not recover. We all know the tragic stories, the sad shambling corpses of formerly entertaining programs lingering on long past their prime like miserable shark-jumping zombies. Gilmore Girls season seven. Prison Break, Heroes, Alias, Entourage. There are a number of reasons things can go wrong, including changes in the creative staff, pressure from networks, a resistance to imaginative or risky storytelling, a concept that’s meant to be small saddled with the burden of far too much time (oh, Prison Break, you poor bastard). But I would argue that some shows can and do get better, even in the face of some dismally low points.

Friday Night Lights – This is obviously the premiere example of how rough things can get on a show and still come back for an amazing third and fourth season. It’s also a good example of how quickly terrible subplots can completely derail the rest of a show (see also: the Coma Baby plot of Veronica Mars season two). The Landry/Tyra murder plot is so, so awful and was so thoroughly panned as soon as it happened, FNL spent much of the rest of the season trying to get through that damn subplot as quickly as possible and then force everyone involved to forget it ever happened. Not only did the show manage to exit out of that dark hole of implausible violence as gracefully as one could imagine, the show has since had the excellent judgment to avoid anything similarly out of character.

Battlestar Galactica – Sure, sure, it’s great when you can get a science fiction show to speak to topical issues of morality and terrorism in a way that forces people to talk about the intellectual potential of pulp genres. But for the most part, Battlestar’s New Caprica episodes were just treading water until the characters could get back into space (and back into shape, in the infamous case of Tubby Apollo). Even worse, although the explicit references to insurgency, colonialism and prisoners of war brought the show attention for being so politically relevant, it was some of Battlestar’s most heavy-handed thematic work. Those New Caprica episodes were about as subtle as poking out an eye (whoops, sorry Colonel Tigh), but once the show got back into space and Lee Adama lost all that weight, things were back on track.

The West Wing – This one is a complicated example, but worth thinking through. The show suffered one of the worst, most irrevocable changes a show can experience – the departure of its idiosyncratic, driving creative force – and that kind of departure is almost a self-fulfilling prophecy. It’s a change any fervent fan will declare to be the End of the World, and when a show then immediately proves to be much worse than it used to be, it’s easy to write off the show entirely. I understand the argument, and I also believe that post-Sorkin West Wing never reached the same heights as it did in the Sorkin years, but I also think season seven of that show was a vast improvement. It could never go back to being a Sorkin show, but it did grow into its new identity as the Santos-Vinick race overtook the final Bartlet years. It would never be as fizzy or fascinatingly idealistic as the first few seasons, but it was still miles better than the dark days of Leo’s heart attack and the overt Macbeth references, and it was entertaining television.

Dollhouse – A different kind of improvement narrative from the previous examples, but one that probably happens more frequently. Shows begin, and they’re bad. Gradually, with practice and hindsight and feedback, they get better, and the change can be so drastic that the show is nearly unrecognizable. Dollhouse falls in this category, though like so many shows, the change came too late. I’d also list Cougar Town here, as well as Parks and Recreation, Community, Fringe, Sons of Anarchy, and of course, the troublesome Chuck.

I’m not trying to argue that Chuck may not be in trouble – from what I’ve seen so far this season, things look dubious. But the beauty of television’s episodic structure is that new beginnings and fresh starts happen all the time, and no matter how serialized or intricate a show may be, the very concept of an episode promises that things can change. It’s a whole new show every week, with different writers and directors, different guest stars and returning characters, new plots and character arcs. It seems to me this is a reason fans hold onto television shows even after they’re long dead (oh Smallville, you keep on keepin’ on), because the distinct separation of each piece of narrative means it’s easier to believe that the start of the next episode is also the start of a different, better version of the same show you’ve been watching for so long.

I don’t want to chide my husband if he doesn’t want to watch Chuck any more. Maybe it won’t get better, and he’ll have saved all of that time for Boardwalk Empire or The Walking Dead or (one day, because he loves me) Veronica Mars. But I do want to explain why I’ll keep watching, and why that choice makes sense to me.

Chuck has been kind of…odd lately. Any show that builds its major conflict around a will-they-won’t-they relationship and then resolves that conflict has to find a new way to create forward momentum, and for a while, Chuck was floating around in a giddy honeymoon period. I’m thinking in particular about the train episode from last season, when the fight sequences were all about taking advantage of two prime fighters working in sync, and the whole thing was fueled by happiness.

The interactions between Chuck and Sarah lately has lost some of that giddiness, which is perfectly fair, but it’s been replaced by My Silly Boyfriend Thinks We Should Read This Stupid Self-Help Book bad-sitcom level comedy. It’s as though having put Chuck and Sarah together, the only thing the show can think to do is pluck at the superficial flaws, unwilling to either push them forward meaningfully, break them apart irrevocably, or just leave them alone for a while.

It’s not as though last night’s episode fell flat, especially with Armand Assante and an enormous marble Captain Awesome statue – something about the absurd affairs of Costa Grava appeal to me, as does the opportunity to say the word Generalissimo as often as possible. Still, it’s frustrating to see that the most creative thing Chuck has been able to do with its two main characters now that they’re in a relationship is reduce them to awkward miscommunication humor. It’ll be Mr. and Mrs. Smith but without the exciting assassination plotline, and what is the point of that?

Step back for a moment. These are two characters who have both experienced an immense amount of familial trauma relating to unreliable or absent parents, and that has to affected both of their perspectives on monogamy and trust. I know this is a spy caper. It would be unrealistic and inappropriate to watch Chuck and Sarah sit down and have a thoughtful, heartfelt conversation about their mutual abandonment issues. Because they have both completely sidestepped any kind of acknowledgment of those issues, though, all of the practical emotion (anger, concern, nostalgia, regret) gets funneled onto poor Ellie, who comes off as nearly schizophrenic in her attempt to encompass the show’s immense untapped reserve of every emotion that is not a direct byproduct of cute relationship ineptitude.

It’s the beginning of the season, so I haven’t given up hope that things will pick up, but at the moment, it’s weird to feel like Chuck and Sarah are the immature, emotionally under-evolved representatives of Buy Moria.

Last week I felt it was important to write about Lone Star before I no longer had a chance, and sadly, that fear has turned out to be well founded. Goodbye, best pilot on network television this fall. We hardly knew ye, mostly because too many of us are idiots who picked crappy programming over actual intelligent drama. As Dan Fienberg said, “this is why we can’t have nice things.”

In any event, the result of choosing to write about Lone Star last week was that I didn’t get to the season premiere of Chuck, a show certainly not unfamiliar with the prospect of imminent cancellation. The first two episodes did exactly what they were supposed to – after a brief flirtation with solo spy work, Chuck and Morgan are back on the job with the CIA, Sarah and Casey are on board with the season arc to find Chuck’s mother, the Buy More has been rebuilt, Ellie is pregnant, and as of last night, Jeffster is back in the house. In addition, Chuck has promised Ellie that he’s retired from the spy business, which means his reinstatement with General Beckman also rebuilds the necessary secrecy shenanigans. So yeah, it’s the opposite of Mad Men: everything falls apart at the end of the season, and the beginning of a season is all about putting it back together. The only element missing is Big Mike, who must surely be right around the corner.

Linda Hamilton and Isaiah Mustafa on Chuck

It is a relief to see Chuck and Sarah happily together, although last night’s comments about a relationship Achilles heel make me fearful that it won’t be allowed to remain cheerful for very long. It was also fun to watch the show deal with its many guest stars from the past two episodes, including Olivia Munn, Isaiah Mustafa, Lou Ferrigno and Linda Hamilton as Chuck and Ellie’s mother. I recognize that there are other opinions floating around about guest stars, but my take is generally that they depend on how open the show is to cast experimentation (Chuck being about as open as one could hope for) and how zippy the guest star makes things (not sold yet on Linda Hamilton, but Mustafa did a nice job last night as a far-too-well-trained Buy More employee). I also feel like it’s a little weird to begin a piece on guest stars by comparing them to bed bugs.

My concern about this season is that its central arc feels pretty derivative of what Chuck has done in the past. The search for Chuck’s father was catalyzed by Ellie’s impending marriage and her desire that her father walk her down the aisle. It worked well, and was a good way to keep Ellie and Awesome in the show’s emotional loop. This new search for Chuck and Ellie’s mother was initiated in a different way – the order came from Chuck’s dad, and Mrs. Bartowski’s associations with the evil Russian weapons organization suggest we may be heading for an Alias-esque questionable maternal loyalties situation. Still, I was disappointed by the subplot last night. I have no problem with watching Awesome freak out over Ellie’s pregnancy; that’s just some good old classic TV-fatherhood cliché material, and I’m all for it. The problem comes with the realization that Ellie’s pregnancy may be inspiring a wistful desire for her mother, which feels a little too close to the previous plotline for comfort. Surely a strong, powerful woman like Ellie can experience major life events without allowing her pining for lost family members to kick off an international missing persons investigation.

Happily, any dissatisfaction was at least temporarily displaced by the triumphant return of Jeffster, featuring an awesome Buy More wind machine sequence complete with Morgan working the fan. Man, I’ve missed those guys.

Hooray, Fall TV is coming back! Other than the stellar Mad Men season currently underway and a few pleasant highlights (like Huge), I am more than ready to hand over a summer of kicky, fluffy, brightly lit USA procedurals and derivative reality shows for a solid TV schedule. Here are some of the releases circled on my September calendar:

Sons of Anarchy – I’ve been waiting to write this post for a while, and could conceivably have put it up several weeks ago as release dates became available, but I decided it would just be too painful to anticipate all of these shows and then have to wait forever. But I’ve waited long enough, because FX’s amazing Sons of Anarchy returns tonight! There’s an interesting NYTimes piece which suggests that Sons of Anarchy is the show that best tackles the current American tendency toward fringe politics, and while that isn’t the show’s primary source of interest for me, it is a prominent feature. Neo-nazis and anarchists aside, Sons of Anarchy is a fabulous Shakespearean drama disguised as a biker fantasy and peopled with murderers, gun runners, the ghost of King Hamlet in biker manifesto form, and some fantastically powerful women. Long live SAMCRO.

Boardwalk Empire – Easily the most anticipated release this fall, Boardwalk Empire is HBO’s next major must-watch production. The setting is Prohibition Era Atlantic City, and the show centers on the early gangsters and politicians who made the city into a capital of crime and hedonism. It features Steve Buscemi as the main character Nucky Thompson, it also stars Michael K. Williams of The Wire fame, and Martin Scorsese directed the pilot. It also premieres on September 19^th, which means Sunday nights are soon going to be very, very busy for me.

Chuck – Okay, we all know I have a strange and powerful weakness love for Chuck, and am thrilled it’s getting an early fall premiere date rather than being pushed to mid-season. As with any season of Chuck, this one may well be the show’s last, so treasure it for all it’s worth.

Undercovers – At the Visionaries panel at Comic-Con this year, JJ Abrams worked to characterize what he hopes will be a healthy balance between episodic and serialized plotlines for his new spy show, which premieres September 22^nd. I don’t know. On one side, I see a show like Fringe, which became quite interesting and worthwhile at the end of last season, and which has almost certainly managed to survive because of its commitment to episodic storytelling. On the other side, it’s clear to me that Fringe only became compelling once it managed to walk away from the straight up Monster of the Week format and throw itself full force into Crazy Doppelganger Land. I’m sympathetic to the desire for seriality and the need for something like an episodic show’s accessibility, but I almost always feel that shows trying to be both things end up doing neither of them well.

Law and Order: LA – Law and Order is dead, and yet, like a zombie apocalypse’s Patient Zero, its progeny live on, beginning September 29^th.

The Walking Dead – This one’s cheating, because it doesn’t come out until the end of October. For now, watch the trailer and marvel at how awesome it will be.

At long last, I got around to watching the Chuck finale yesterday. As I’d hoped, it was full of all the things Chuck does when it’s at its best – lots of spy silliness overlaid onto more meaningful emotional revelations, lots of good protagonist development, plenty of family bonding, and a hearty side of Buy More hilarity. Shaw is much better as an out-and-out villain than he ever was as an ambiguous good guy, so his not-so-shocking return provided a strong forward-momentum for the two-hour episode. I thought the plotline with Casey’s daughter was nicely balanced between anxious emotional stakes and humor, particularly the moment when she manages to knock him silly. It’s a relief that Ellie is no longer the one odd woman out of Team Bartowski, but I can anticipate some carry-over resentment at being left in the dark for so long.

My one complaint about the finale, which I absolutely enjoyed, was that I thought there were some missed opportunities involving Team Bartowski’s newer members. I was so thrilled to hear Beckman inform Morgan that he was their only hope, and loved the set-up with Devon, Ellie and Morgan getting ready to take down the armored van. I was hoping for something a little more involved and less accidental than resolving that plotline with a wayward missile launched from Casey’s headlight, though. Now that they’re all in the know, the best way for these characters to remain relevant, functional members of the team without transforming into punch lines is for them to occasionally provide legitimately helpful contributions. This has happened several times with Morgan, and some of my favorite parts of this season have been watching him become more than a video game-loving nerd who can’t even tie his shoes. The fact that he actually broke his thumbs, for instance – even though that sequence ended abruptly in a joke, I don’t think it undermined Casey’s subsequent praise of Morgan’s actions. Maybe it was enough at this stage for Ellie, Awesome and Morgan to just roll into action, but in the light of someone who’s willing to literally break his own thumbs, the headlight missile was funny, but I would have liked to see those characters get to do a little more.

Still, there will be plenty of time for that, as we were all able to watch this season finale comforted by the knowledge that there will be a season four – such a luxury. The revelation of his father’s lair makes it look as though Chuck’s being positioned to take over another, different type of ultra-secret mission, possibly outside the knowledge of the CIA. While I’m sure there are interesting stories to tell, I do worry about the way that story will get framed for Chuck’s personal life. He’s just spent three seasons slowly coming out of undercover for all the people he cares about, and it would be so frustrating to have finally reached this point only to shove him back into secrecy. Maybe there’s something about Chuck’s character that needs some disconnect between his private and professional self, or maybe the show’s structure really requires two adjoining worlds with restricted boundaries. Whatever the case, Chuck is almost always better when he’s not acting on his own, and the last thing I’d want to see is him falling down into a superhero spiral of lonely responsibility.

I’d like to end with a plea. We don’t know what will become of the Buy More, or its now unemployed workers. But please, for the benefit of all of us. Free Jeffster!

Last night was the last hour of Chuck before the actual season three finale next week, and like last season, it featured the return of Father Bartowski and some escalating Intersect concerns. Also – Shaw is still alive (and maybe has an Intersect in his brain now)! Ellie is being recruited by a Ring agent! Big Mike is the new manager of Jeffster!(!) General hilarity and ratcheting tension ensue!

I do wish that more of these plotlines weren’t so reliant on simple communication problems. Couldn’t Chuck have just told Sarah and Casey that he thinks Shaw is still alive right away? Why not tell Sarah about his dangerous mental status? It probably should have been the most annoying, but I was actually okay with Chuck feeling reserved about telling his Dad about the new Intersect – or I would have, if it hadn’t gone on for quite so long. The most annoying of these has to be the Ellie/Ring plot, if only because it’s been established for so long that Ellie and Awesome are the least sneaky, least deceptive people on the planet. No one who’s been around Ellie in the last two episodes could ever believe that she’s okay, and the idea that she’s cheating on someone based on that message alone was so absurd as to be laughable. Besides, she would tell someone she’s being recruited. C’mon now.

Essential communication issues aside, I’m a fan of the double-Shaw reveal. “He’s dead! He’s alive! He’s dead! He’s alive!” has to be done pretty carefully for it to be at all effective, and I thought last night’s attempt was remarkably successful. By the time we reached the end, the final reveal was hardly that surprising, except that it had the added bonus of taking place at the moment Shaw was downloading an Intersect. Separately, those two events would have felt fairly ho-hum; together, they were worthy of a second-to-last episode. It was also a canny way to avoid having to pay Brandon Routh for that episode – did you notice that even after he placed his hand on the pad and we got his “Identity Confirmed” image, we still didn’t get a shot of his face?

My other favorite moment from last night (second, of course, to everything to do with Jeffster!) were some throwaway lines from Chuck and Chuck’s dad. With Shaw, we now have the third handsome white dude to line up for an Intersect download, and while that’s not so many, it would be really nice for some superspy diversity to eventually have a presence. In the mean time, though, we have Sarah, who as Stephen Bartowski points out, is so impressive all on her own that she doesn’t even need a computer in her brain.

Next week: season finale, which according to this teaser, will include many very exciting things.

It seems inevitable that after two relatively light-hearted, standalone episodes, Chuck would have to return to a darker, multi-episode plotline format for the final few episodes of the season, and it also seems appropriate that the groundwork for that plotline would be a focus on Chuck’s mind. The ultimate goals of this show have always been about that uncomfortable computer lodged in Chuck’s brain – either he wants it out, or he needs to put it back in, or he can’t control it. It makes sense that now Chuck is finally in a place where the Intersect is almost fully integrated into his life, it becomes a threat to his mental stability. And, as it’s nearing the end of this season, the rhythms of this show dictate that we return to Chuck’s brain as the primary battleground. The premise of the plotline is also respectably plausible inside of a show where plausibility has remarkably little traction. I can well believe that the presence of an incredibly powerful computer that can control both your thoughts and physical actions would eventually require some serious mental gymnastics to try to stay sane.

Still, the lead up to this revelation about the potentially threatening Intersect seems way too sudden, and I’m sure it’s a result of this bizarre, abbreviated season arc. Maybe a minute or two of Chuck waking up from a disturbing dream would have been a better use of time in the previous episode than watching Ellie and Awesome hang out with Evil Justin in Africa. The tone of “Chuck vs. the Tooth” also felt oddly equivocal – this is scary, and the moment when Chuck walks into that mental institution is meant to be honestly frightening. But as soon as we begin to actually worry that Chuck is going crazy, we get a jolt of funny from Merlin or the other spy-crazies. The conversation with Casey and Sarah was a great example of this unevenness. When they sit down to talk with Chuck at the hospital, he immediately launches into his whole spiel about the tooth, and plays the Insane Conspiracy Theorist role for laughs. The gravelly voice, the desperate request for Sarah to give him her hand, the silliness of hacking up the tooth, “the truth…is in the tooth” – all of these are meant to be funny, and they are funny as long as we believe that Chuck isn’t actually unbalanced. Except, as Sarah’s subsequent concern and Christopher Lloyd’s dour therapist make clear, we are supposed to be worried for Chuck. Either we can laugh at the hilarity of Chuck playing the role of a crazy spy, or our fear that Chuck is in danger of losing himself is legitimate, but it’s hard to keep them working at the same time. “Chuck vs. the Tooth” tried to have it both ways, and I don’t think it really clicked.

All that said, when tuxedo-clad Morgan was the recipient of the objectifying Buy More slo-walk, I almost spit out my iced tea.

After a productive and successful break, I’m happy to be back. Also happy to report that it looks like this whole TV business is going to be in my life for a while, so this blog becomes an increasingly useful place for keeping track of gut reactions, first impressions, and the occasional Dickens musings. For that reason, the List of Giant Things will probably be a continuing presence, and in the absence of interesting new episodes to talk about, I anticipate doing more casually analytic thinking about shows on a broader scale.

In the immediate and more extended future – it’s sweeps season! Final episodes of Lost! Mad Men returns July 25! Wacky summer TV season is nigh!

And, of course, the long coda to Chuck season three, which is currently well under way. Both last week’s “Chuck vs. the Honeymooners” and last night’s “Chuck vs. the Role Models” were a welcome return to that joyous, fizzy, spy-thriller romp mode that Chuck stand-alones do better than most other shows on TV. My question all along has been how Chuck would transition out of a pseudo finale and then back into an abbreviated six-episode arc, and the answer so far appears to be, “first we’re going to watch Chuck and Sarah do it on a train, then we’ll get Fred Willard and Swoosie Kurtz to show them the pitfalls, and then we’re going to do an arc about the Ring.” Which is fine by me. After what everyone now agrees was an unnecessarily long WTWT Chuck and Sarah stasis, it felt appropriate that the show would let them revel in it for a while.

The possibilities of a spy couple provide the show with some interesting traction; it’s well-worn territory, but largely because it can work so effectively. The last few episodes have made some explicit references to the healthy tradition of crime-fightin’ lovers, including what I am certain was a reference to The Thin Man’s Nick and Nora Charles in the “Mr. and Mrs. Charles” alias on the train and the Hart to Hart spoof in Morgan’s dream from last night. It may just be me, but I was also feeling some ‘30s screwball comedy vibe from the introduction of the tiger last night – but maybe singing “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love, Baby” only works on leopards. Clearly this screwball/romp/spy-thriller will be quickly modulating into something else, a move signaled by the cute Doctors Without Borders guy whipping out his Ring phone at the very end of last night’s episode.

But even inside of a larger save-the-world plot arc, this element of Chuck and Sarah as a couple does have interesting implications for the future of the show (if there is one, fingers crossed, knock on wood). The news hit yesterday that NBC has picked up a pilot from J.J. Abrams called Undercovers, about a husband and wife spy team, and I’ve seen thought about how this might affect Chuck going both ways. On the one hand, it’s obvious that this could work as a replacement show, a fun spy show made by a guy with a big name and a history in this genre. Ditch Chuck, and replace it with something bigger and buzzier. (That is definitely a word.) Conversely, if aired together or marketed as a pair, this could be a boon for Chuck, bringing it an audience it’s been sadly lacking since its premiere. Obviously I’m hoping for the latter scenario, but until NBC gives a firm signal about Chuck’s future, it’s all speculation.

Once again, I’m happy to be back blogging, and am looking forward to filling in the gaps of what I’ve neglected in the past week – most notably, Treme. Before I leave off with the meta-commentary, though, I do want to note that although I anticipate a long life for this blog, its immediate future may continue to be irregular for a little while. The default schedule will continue to be a post every weekday, but with an asterisk that reads, “every weekday, unless I’m driving/flying across the country, or someone is getting married, or I’m moving,” in which case it might be a little hit-or-miss.

I really hope you watched Chuck last night, and not just because it was an incredibly entertaining episode that fulfilled the deepest desires of most Chuck fans. I hope you watched it, because I really hope the ratings will be decent enough to bring Chuck back for a fourth season. Because I want to see more television like that.

As I indicated in my post about Chuck from late Sunday night, I watched the episode in the big hall at WonderCon, which was about as entertaining as you could imagine. If you were choosing an episode to premiere for a giant room full of screaming Chuck fans, last night’s “Chuck vs. the Other Guy” would be a hard choice to beat. It’s just so fun to sit in the middle of a thousand people as they lose their minds when Chuck and Sarah finally get together, and it was only made better when the episode was followed by Zachary Levi walking out and announcing to the cheering masses: “It’s about time. You’re not wrong…We did it. In Paris.” The panel continued with Chris Fedak and Josh Schwartz discussing the difficulties of finishing a season only to discover they needed to tack six more episodes onto the end, Adam Baldwin confirming that there would of course be some resolution to the discovery that he has a daughter, and a suggestion that in addition to watching the show live, audience members attempt to hack the Nielsen ratings. For more about the panel, I’ll refer you to Daniel Fienberg’s coverage of it, which includes Zachary Levi’s pleasure in the obvious choice of background scenery for Chuck and Sarah’s final scene.

“So yeah, man. It all worked out good,” crowed Levi. “And what better place to consummate their relationship. With the Eiffel Tower standing tall. How’s that for symbolism.”

Part of what made “Chuck vs. the Other Guy” such an effective episode to watch immediately before a question and answer session was that the episode answered so many of what would have been the obvious questions about the third season of Chuck. How will Morgan’s character change now that he knows about Chuck? Will Casey return to Team Bartowski? When are we getting ride of that mopey Shaw? Will Chuck ever be able to become a “real spy” by killing someone, or will that always be a line between him and Sarah? Speaking of Chuck and Sarah…I mean come on already! And the subsequent audience response would have been markedly different if “Chuck vs. the Other Guy” hadn’t been such a satisfying response to all of those concerns. Shaw’s gone for good, and gone in a way that managed to both fulfill Chuck’s trajectory toward full spy status while solidifying his newfound honesty with Sarah. Casey’s back, thank goodness, and he thoughtfully brings Morgan into the fold along with him.

The episode did an impressive job of moving swiftly but thoroughly through all these necessary developments, hitting all the perfect audience pleasure buttons along the way. It was chock full of reference, as the best Chuck always is, sliding through several John Hughes references and building up to Josh Gomez’s hilarious reading of “…there is another,” before concluding with a warm homage to James Bond. The episode was also quite funny – my favorite was the lovely cut from Chuck’s drunken ninja flash to Morgan on the floor, incapacitated by video controllers. (This scene did elicit some concern from the panel’s moderator, IGN’s Eric Goldman, who was worried that Sarah cut through all of the controller cables, which would mean they all would need to be replaced.)

No question, the episode was a deeply satisfying season finale, but I’m now fascinated by the problems it presents for the show’s future. It’s going to be tough to shift down from this giddy conclusion-induced high in order to ramp Chuck back up for its actual season finale. I could easily see these being a tricky, uneven next few episodes – they’ve got to move forward and set a lot of plot in place that will need to be resolved much faster than the usual thirteen-episode timetable. Still, even if they are uneven, these next six episodes are such a cool opportunity for this show. Television rarely ties all of its loose strings into a lovely little bow, and it certainly never builds a blockbuster ending like this, only to return a few weeks later and have to cope with the consequences of that resolution. The questions that “Chuck vs. the Other Guy” answered were satisfying, but pretty easy to predict. Yes, Chuck and Sarah get together; yes, Casey comes back; yes, Shaw dies. The next questions are much harder, and potentially more rewarding. What will Morgan’s role actually be in Team Bartowski? How will this relationship work, now that Chuck and Sarah are a couple?

I’m so looking forward to finding out, and I really hope that the answers will be able to continue beyond the next six episodes.

P.S. Sepinwall often includes a “Plot Hole of the Week” in his Chuck reviews, and I was bugged enough by one thing about this episode that I can’t resist. So, Shaw leads Sarah into a giant empty warehouse set up with an elaborate monitor system and a thoughtfully remixed version of the video of his wife and Sarah’s red test. Chuck comes crashing in with the tanks and the air support and what have you, and it turns out Shaw was just trying to tell Sarah he understands? Come on. What’s with the elaborate monitor set-up? The emo surveillance footage remix? The enormous white stage with a camera on it?

Chuck has been strong these last few weeks, and all signs point to next week’s episode as a real fizzing whizbang. Some of this has to do with the usual things that make for good television – the acting is well done (for the most part, although last night Shaw yelled “NOOOOOO!” and it was his own little “KHAAAAN!” moment), the plots are moving swiftly and taking risks, character development is working well. That aside, though, it’s pretty obvious that what’s happening on Chuck lately is unusually epic for a show that’s twelve episodes into its nineteen-episode season. As I mentioned briefly last week, there’s a really good reason for that. Chuck was initially given a thirteen-episode order for this season, and then several months into production, that order was extended to nineteen episodes. Last night’s “Chuck vs. the American Hero” was to have been the cliffhanger that leads into the season finale. Instead, we get this oddly climactic mid-season huzzah, and then what will be a really interesting transition between next week’s ersatz-finale and the group of new extra episodes.

This is what the run-up to the end of a season looks like

There are several odd things about this, but one of the biggest is just how obvious it is that something out of the ordinary is going on. The appropriate tempos, tones, plotlines, the special momentousness of a season finale is so well established now that you can see it a mile away, even when it’s hidden in the middle of a season. Last night’s episode was laden with “This is a Big Deal” cues, mostly to do with the ongoing evolution of Chuck and Sarah’s relationship and the standard end-of-season revelations (in this case, that Sarah was the one who killed Shaw’s wife). But there was also plenty of smaller stuff falling into place – Casey donning a ski cap to join Devon and Morgan in Operation Charah is a classic humorous, worlds-colliding, lead-up-to-the-end shenanigan, as is Jeff and Lester being the ones to successfully stalk Shaw. Even the musical cues were operating at full finale throttle. Chuck has a special, eighties techno-esque theme that it reserves for particularly epic moments on the show, and there were plenty of teases of it in last night’s episode.

Also this

It’s hard to see clearly because it’s just a matter-of-fact aspect of television, but it’s actually quite astonishing that premieres and finales have become such patterned, familiar, known objects. Because the marketing and production obstacles of making television are so visible underneath the surface of a show, we see quite easily why finales are such reliable Game Changer or Cliffhanger or Major Character Deathtrap or OMG They Finally Kissed episodes, and we accept the rules for How You End a Season and expect them to be followed. And yet, the whole thing is actually completely bizarre. Major network television shows are unwieldy, unbalanced things that resemble a piece of clay you’ve rolled only in the center. The ends are enormous, heavy globs of Relationship Drama and Suddenly a Shot Rang Out! and the middle is barely thick enough to hold them together. Shows with seasons that run for twenty episodes often have a mid-season hiatus, which follows the same rules as a season break, except in miniature. When a major character’s life is in mortal peril at the end of an episode in December, you know you’re going to have to wait three or four weeks until you find out if they died.

And this

Which is why it’s so refreshing and strange to see this big epic lump of Eventful Things in the middle of this season of Chuck. I’m really, really curious to see how they’ll knit together what’s obviously an ending with the remaining six episodes, but for now, I’m mostly just enjoying my unexpected plot windfall at the end of March.