“Stan Lee’s a spy!?”
—Chuck

These final episodes of Chuck are suffering from something many shows in their final seasons (and with budgets stripped down to being produced for the price of peanuts!) go through: we’ve seen this before. Jeff and Lester unwittingly help the government to avert some huge disaster, check! Ellie wants to replicate something from her childhood, fails, and then the CIA helps, check! The Buy More is in danger, check! And so on and so forth… but like last week, this episode truly did make use of its circumstances where it, thankfully, felt like an episode with its own identity. However, given the circumstances, I think this is an episode where that B storyline was actually a true detriment to the rest of the episode. The Buy More has proven to be a drag in the past when the writers didn’t know what to do with it and basically decided to make Jeff and Lester sexual offenders — and even though season 5 has vastly improved on that and even though there was an actual use for them this episode, their campiness sort of downplayed Sarah’s torturing.

Which, while we’re on the subject, was absolutely fantastic. Brandon Routh may not have been everyone’s favorite character while he was “good,” but most have taken to his stone cold villainous alter ego. Though those same people may have groaned when the NBC promo ruined his return, Shaw had an actual reason to be back (beyond The Omen groan). He and Sarah have some unfinished business that even I forgot about. She killed his wife and he’s not exactly over that… he did try to kill her because of it, unsuccessfully of course. Now, he wanted to let her watch him kill her spouse… unsuccessfully, of course. But regardless, those scenes with Sarah and Shaw were fantastic… especially the fighting scenes (Chuck’s as well), so much so that I think the show might win its routine Emmy yet again for them. It’s not that they were particularly good fighting sequences in a technical sense, just that they were outright intense where other points of the episode weren’t (and a lot of that has to do with the campy B plot). Mostly, however, Yvonne Strahovski brought it again. She made me feel really cold.

(As cold as Brandon Routh’s portrayal of Daniel Shaw in the first half of season three, am I right?)

In many ways these first seven hours of the last season of Chuck could have basically been the end. It may have been just a bit anticlimactic, I suppose, but technically Charles Bartowski doesn’t have a greater arch nemesis than Daniel Shaw. Shaw is Chuck gone wrong, if he didn’t have a moral compass or whatever makes him Chuck-like. And so when Shaw disappeared after season three, there just had to be a final showdown (then came word of the final season). So it’s fitting that Shaw pulled the strings on this whole operation, maybe even got Chuck booted from the CIA, and that he’s now closed the arc (plus, Team Bartowski has been asked to join the CIA again). Looking from a step back, it’s probably a way to wrap up the arc quickly so that we can move on to the final six hours and have an arc that satisfies the series’ end, but it was was a wise narrative decision nonetheless. And the final showdown, as I’ve mentioned, was fantastic.

Especially the part where Chuck had a thorough plan, unlike last week. (Even if Ellie had to use her hit-someone-on-the-head-with-something technique.)

But back to the B plot: excited as I always am when Mo Collins is guest starring on something, I was a bit disappointed that her scene was just that… one scene. Whether or not her comedic talent felt out of place in this episode as aforementioned didn’t exactly bother me since she was so great as the drunk and alone co-worker. I admit, I was a bit fearful that her color of comedy wouldn’t exactly sit well with Chuck, and I was right… it was a bit on the raunchy side (as this season has so often been)… but hey, I’m not mad.

So now we’re left with the following: Is Chuck and company back in the CIA? Will Chuck be Intersected yet again? What will Intersect 3.0 bring? Who is this baby? I’m not exactly thinking it’s Sarah’s child. Can John Casey for once be the team member that doesn’t get shot? Also, will John Casey’s soft side ever not warm my heart?

So many burning questions! And with each episode I’m getting even sadder that there’s less time to spend answering them. Next Friday, don’t come too soon.