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So, Was It Daniel Shaw? We've Got the Answer

By Dustin Rowles | TV | May 18, 2010 |

By Dustin Rowles | TV | May 18, 2010 |


Things are moving a little too fast on “Chuck” now not to strain credibility, but it’s forgivable at the moment because it’s apparent they’re trying to hastily set up the season finale to season 3.5. And since it was written and filmed before it became official that “Chuck” had been picked up for a fourth season, I’m curious to see how much resolution that final episode will offer. It’s a two-parter, so my guess is that it could’ve doubled as a series finale, which means that Chuck and Sarah may ride off into the sunset together. For the summer, at least.

Back to last night’s episode: It had something of a false start. Chuck’s Dad, Steve, made another welcome return, bumbling and brilliant as ever. The first half of the episode, however, played with the ridiculous notion that Chuck — whose brain is being demented by the intersect — wouldn’t want his father — the man who created the intersect — to know that he was a spy and had downloaded intersect 2.0. Once that was revealed, however, the episode kicked into gear, if you can forgive the hugely fortuitous coincidence that Chuck connected with his father for the first time in over a year, right after the intersect started fucking with his head, and that his father just happened to have a fix for that in the form of the Governor. That subplot led up to a nifty little action sequence at Steve’s cabin, where Chuck got to impress his Dad with his Intersect 2.0 moves, while Sarah got to impress Steve’s Dad with some plain fucking awesomeness.

The big arc, however, involved the juxtaposition of Chuck and his search for the presumed dead Daniel Shaw (who Chuck is seeing in his intersect tainted dream-life) and Ellie’s own brush with the spy-life in her interactions with Justin and The Ring, who is using Ellie to get to her father. Casey, meanwhile, who was spying on Ellie, mistook her interactions with Justin as an affair, but after Awesome’s banality erotica speech to Morgan, there’s no way anyone should believe that Ellie is cheating on Awesome.

Alas, all three arcs — Ellie’s work with Justin, Chuck’s relationship with his Dad, and Chuck and Sarah’s search for Daniel Shaw — culminated in a nice little cliffhanger. Casey, after he got beat in the head with a frying pan by Ellie, is lying half-conscious on the floor. Ellie is in the custody of Justin and The Ring, and someone — either Shaw someone posing as Shaw — has downloaded The Ring’s version of the Intersect, setting up what could be a cool supervillain for Chuck, either for just the finale or, hopefully, well into next season.

If you want to know the answer to whether that actually was Shaw, here’s a preview of next week’s episode, which was not included after last night’s airing (spoilers abound):

Finally, I should note that there was a small tacked on subplot involving the break-up of Jeffster — Lester has apparently taken the -ster, and we learned that Big Mike was once the Rain in Earth, Wind, and Fire. It was an amusing subplot, but for what it exposed about the show: “Chuck” has little use for the Buy More anymore. Now that Morgan has been brought into the fold, the Buy More staff is amusing but extraneous. How they work Jeffster into the show more next season is something of a mystery to me. (Scenes from next week reveal that the Buy More may not actually have much of a role in next season, after all).