It’s the final Chuck story before next week’s two part finale, and it’s a good one. Here’s Billy’s review of episode 11, Chuck Versus The Bullet Train…
Warning: this review contains spoilers.
5.11 Chuck Versus The Bullet Train
There are 13 episodes in this final season of Chuck, and the last two will be shown next Friday in a final splurge, making Chuck Versus The Bullet Train the penultimate story, of sorts.
And for once I'm inclined to forgive them for it not being exceptionally funny, because the pace and action made for a pretty engrossing spy outing. This, coupled with their using a track by Kasabian for Sarah's Intersect-driven bout of ass-kicking, and Chuck’s creators had me.
For those of you who decided not to ride the Chuck bullet train this week, this story bounces right off the last, where Sarah ends up with the Intersect, which embittered spy Quinn very badly wants. He's got Chuck on a bullet train, along with Sarah and Casey, while back at the Buy More the Awesomes are trying to work out how to stop the Intersect frying Sarah's brain in the way that it did Morgan's. In some respects, it's a bit of a homage to many spy/train movies, Mission: Impossible or even a classic Firefly episode, where the limitation of being unable to escape is used to full advantage.
Okay, I could point out that bullet trains don't have windows you can open, and hanging on to a train that's travelling at 185mph is an impossibility irrespective of your spy training, and you couldn't detach a carriage while the train was moving. But Chuck has never been realistic, and none of the cast or crew actually travelled to Tokyo at any point in this production, I'm certain.
What I did like was the idea that you could create an Intersect suppressor from a laptop, a Sony PSP and some virtual reality glasses. I mean wouldn't it also require a Subway footlong in there to stabilise the data matrix, too? Apparently not. Another product placement opportunity blown completely, damn it!
Luckily, product placement fought back through the efforts of the Buy More team, who are forced to take on Quinn's minions who've kidnapped Alex so that Casey will follow his orders. And when Jeff and Lester get sucked into the story, it pretty much loses what little credibility it had as a narrative. But by this stage it didn't really matter.
The bit that really threw me was the appearance by Ben Bowder, as a minor heavy who’s given about three lines of dialogue. He was show lead on Farscape just a few years ago, then had a big part in Stargate, and now he's reduced to this? Please tell me he was doing this as a favour for someone in the Chuck team, because there's a worrying five-year gap in his IMDb filmography.
In the end, Quinn is a more determined spy than his stature suggests, and he reprograms Sarah using 'flash cards', ironically. I was sort of hoping the knock at her hotel room door was Bryce Larkin, but sadly it was Quinn. Ho hum. She's now got a new target to eliminate, a man she's never seen before called Chuck Bartowski.
The question the episode cleverly poses is, how will Chuck end? Obviously, Sarah has entirely forgotten Chuck and all those in the Buy More, so even if the Intersect is removed, she'll be back to where the show started. I'm betting on a happier ending than that, because frankly, that's just too depressing for words. The picture that she and Chuck drew will obviously be the prop that's used to connect her back to Chuck because of the way they kept referring back to it.
A long while ago, possibly in season two, I predicated that everyone in the show will end up a spy, and with the possible exception of Big Mike, everyone is. Because of this, I can't see that everything can be undone, and Chuck goes back to working at the Nerd Herd. They have to present a 'spy future' of sorts, because the golden rule of all spy shows is that you can't just walk away, ever.
How's it going to end? My best guess is with a spy baby, but in the very next part Chuck must first address the pressing issue that Sarah has been sent to kill him – and stopping her won't be easy.
You can read our review of season five episode ten here.
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