7633 Flashes Off and on Again

“Neuroscience hurts.”

A friend of mine once gave me this niblet of relationship wisdom, courtesy of his mother: All men want to feel needed, and all women want to feel special. Chuck is a complex guy, though: he wants to feel both specialâ€"spy-worthy, that isâ€"and needed by Sarah. What Chuck doesn’t understand is that it’s not the Intersect, or his massive brain that can handle the Intersect, that makes him special. It’s his ordinary qualities that make him seem exceptional to her, along with his sweetness and loyalty and humility.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the Theme of the Week is castration, and the Symbol of the Week is Jeff’s tie getting chopped in two. Bear with me: I don’t mean actual castrationâ€"everyone gets to keep his penis! I mean metaphorical castration. Chuck lost his Intersect, Casey lost his missions, Jeff and Lester…well, I won’t wonder what they lost or when they lost it. Both Chuck and Casey struggled with facing the loss of what seemed to define them.

For Casey, that loss was a revelation. For all of his bluster about an itchy trigger finger, Casey was most troubled by what he never thought he would possess, and so could never lose: his friends and family. As always, kudos to Adam Baldwin, who packed a huge emotional wallop into just one line about Afghanistan and Iraq. Just the way he sat up straight and drank his coffee…okay, I’ll stop mooning over him now.

Chuck, though, is stuck between a rock and a hard place: he wants to be a spy, “doing great things, doing them with [Sarah],” and he worries that without the Intersect he’ll lose the new identity he’s been building for the past four years. He worries he will no longer be special, no longer be needed.

We know that’s not really true. Chuck had some good ideas on his mission, even though he’s not an ace fighter. He’s perfectly capable of being a very effective spy without the Intersectâ€"but neither he nor Sarah can see it. When Sarah declared that Chuck isn’t a spy, she hurt him. More importantly, she revealed to us that she doesn’t fully understand just how special Chuck really is.

That tension, between Sarah’s fears and Chuck’s dismay at knowing about those fears, is the real cliffhanger. Sure, Chuck’s been kidnapped by a fake-diamond-buying Belgian (Egad! Belgians!) who wants the Intersect (or maybe the info therein, I wasn’t quite clear on that). I suspect Chuck will survive the kidnapping. But will Chuck and Sarah survive her revelation?

Meanwhile, back at the BuyMore

Dr. Rye (or Rob Riggle, if you’re a Daily Show fan) tried physical, psychological, painful, brutal methods on Chuck, to no avail except comic relief. Jeff and Lester broke Greta almost instantly with their creepy creepiness.

I’d heard in the early part of the season that the writers would be inserting a Greta into most episodes, and that’s why I’ve been referring to the random one-off BuyMorons as Gretas, regardless of gender or nametag. That long, long set-up all led to this moment: Summer Glau. While I love Summer Glau, and I’m incredibly impressed by the way her legs seem to have grown to Amazonian lengths, the BuyMore plot felt sort of empty to me. Funny, yes. Relevant, not so much.

Although we did get a miniature Firefly reunion. That’s worth an entire subplot of set up, isn’t it?

Bytes: (I tried not to go too crazy with the list this time, so if I missed your favorite quote, add it in the comments!)

• Chuck: “Do you ever wonder if this is all life is going to be? BuyMore, Burbank. The best years behind us.”
Jeff: “Whoa, whoa! That sounds like candor.”

• Dr. Rye: “I don’t believe that the psychological rock can be hoisted off the Intersect by watching kittens play with yarn.”

• Chuck: “We are digging deep into his mind right now.”
Sarah: “It looks like he’s hitting you.”

• Chuck: “Aside from the fact the place is populated with a crowd of international psychopaths, the air is fresh, and the chocolateâ€"so milky!”

• Chuck: “I’m not afraid of your phony Russian accent or your finger-gun, okay?”

• Lester: “We won’t be stopped, and we can’t be stopped, and we won’t be stopped.” Did anyone else think of that

• Greta: “The psychotic one follows me with a webcam, narrating the tracking and hunt of the Greta marmot.”

• Dr. Rye: “Are you a spy, or are you a guy with a spy girlfriend?”

• Jeff: “Why did she transmogrify into a woodland creature?”

• Casey: “This is the best damn spy team in the world. We are strong.”

And Pieces:

• I love the blatant Subway product placement. Thank you, Subway, for giving us more Chuck!

• Our tax dollars at work: Spies watching YouTube videos of kittens and idiots.

• Did the ceilings look really low in the scene with Chuck and Dr. Rye at about the 40 minute mark, including commercials? Or am I just not used to seeing ceilings, ever, on TV?

• How brilliant is it that the writers chose to soften Casey up not by giving him a love interest, but a daughter? He took her advice, too, about helping his friends.

A solid episode with lots of great emotional development. Sure, the BuyMore plot wasn’t great (but it had Summer Glau!) and the spy hijinks…well, they weren’t supposed to be important. It’s Chuck’s reactions to them and his situation that matter.

Three and a half out of psychological rocks.

(Think I’ve got it all wrong about the castration theme? Check out more of my egregious errors at billiedoux.com.)

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Source: https://chucktv.net/2010/11/17/7633/

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