CHUCK Season Premiere Recap: ‘Chuck vs. The Zoom’

CHUCK’s back!  It’s been a long wait, but as episode 5.01 proved, it’s been worth it! Plus, geek heaven, Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker of STAR WARS) was only one of the guests in tonight’s premiere. The only question is: Can Schwartz, Fedak et al keep it up through 12 more episodes? The bar is high, gentlemen!

THE MISSION – Carmichael Industries is Team Bartowski’s new “spy for hire” business. They’re not having too much success, as the opening sequence with Mark Hamill indicates, but they seem to be good at grabbing defeat from the jaws of victory.  Morgan is still Morgan, despite being the intersect, and as such is still the weakest link in the Chuck-Sarah-Casey-Morgan chain. However, Morgan’s first fight as the intersect was impressive. He really gets into the Kung Fu thing. 

The “Zoom” of the title is Morgan’s new word for the intersect flash. Chuck is finding it hard to take and he seems to have regressed to season 1 when he was relegated to “stay in the car!” By the end of the episode he’s begun to deal with not being the Intersect, but being the team’s leader. As Casey said during “Chuck vs. The Other Guy,” “You were always smart.”

The writers had some fun tonight with the subplot of Chuck wanting to buy a dream house for Sarah as a surprise. Operation Toes In The Sand (was there ever a better acronym?) plays through the hour with Sarah trying to worm the secret out of Chuck.  If you saw the clip Zachary Levi (Chuck) showed on THE TONIGHT SHOW WITH JAY LENO last week, you’ll know that she’s a very persuasive wormer.

It was a surprise to see Sarah, the apex of action figure, as a “bean counter,” worrying about the cash flow and how expensive Morgan’s shrimp were. Even though their mission turns out costing them the remaining 2+ million they had left (thanks so much, Clyde), the realization that the Buy More is the answer to their prayers will set up some interesting possibilities in upcoming episodes (look for Awesome to be a part of this).

Clyde Decker, the C.I.A.’s nastiest agent, is back proving that payback is indeed a bitch.  The end of the episode has Decker meeting with a group of agents, setting them after Chuck in a continuation of the conspiracy theory first voiced on the S4 finale.

MISSION ANALYSIS – As always, the production was great.  Lots of funny bits (Chuck with the oily door handle, Morgan dancing with Sarah, a la Bryce), but by far the best bit was the scene with Chuck trying to calm Morgan down by talking baseball (while the Cardinals were hammering the Rangers over on FOX in game 7) and Morgan going “Baseball is SOOOOOO boring…” Priceless.

The music for this episode was up to the usual high standard of composer Tim Jones, combining some classic CHUCK score with some edgier new creations. “‎’I’m excited about Season 5,” Jones wrote on Facebook earlier this week. “The music has a new twist. Morgan’s intersect… I’ve tried to score his scenes in a way that accents the swagger Morgan brings to the intersect. It has elements of analog synths and is funky in an old school, Beastie Boys kind of way. It has been a lot of fun to support Josh Gomez as he presents an entirely new Morgan.”

POINTS TO PONDER –

*Sarah’s dream house

*Jeff and Lester’s ‘Save Jeff Barnes’ scheme

*Yvonne in a teddy and fishnets

*Chuck’s plan to get everyone out of Bale’s Party.

YOUR INPUT – Your turn!  What were your favorite parts of the show?  Did you like the way season 5 has been set up?