“Chuck versus the Tango”; Did You Learn the Girl’s Part of This Dance?

Week of 3 of the “Chuck” re-watch project finds us at “Chuck versus the Tango”. This episode is not only a lot of fun, but also the point where I think the show really established its tone and character motivations. Not surprisingly then, I think very highly of the episode as a whole. I’ll get to that shortly, but first let me explain our modification to the blog this week. Readers of the blog know that we traditionally rank the elements of the show (comedy, action/scenery/special effects, story/suspense, and romance) using playing cards, with a “2” being the lowest score and an “ace” being the highest score an element can achieve. This week, at the suggestion of my inventive (if not punctual) co-blogger, we’re going to switch things up by having categories of “ace”, “king”, “queen”, and “9” and speak about the moments of this episode we felt fit into each of these categories. With that said, let’s get to it.

Aces

   

I’m going to start my aces section broadly by saying anything that involved the tango was outstanding. The way the show used the dance and associated music to link multiple plots, characters, and moments together was a great touch. Of course, this linking of elements with a common motif would have been fine enough on its own, but the fact that all of the scenes were excellent in their own right made this full aces for me. There’s a lot of wonderfully awkward comedic moments throughout these scenes, starting with Chuck’s reluctant participation in a man-on-man tango with Captain Awesome himself, Devon Woodcomb. I get the sense that the writers initially wanted Awesome to be an unlikable, smarmy, overly successful counterpoint to Chuck’s lovable loser persona (particularly with the line about using the tango to sleep with women), but it’s just impossible to dislike the guy, something the writers seem to have also honed in on as the season wore on. His awesomely-enthusiastic dancing and unintentional teaching of the woman’s part of the dance to Chuck were some of the funniest moments of the episode. Likewise, Chuck’s later usage of these gender-inappropriate dance skills with La Ciudad (which incidentally apparently means “The City”) was just outrageous and they even managed to work in a flash after Chuck is dipped by La Ciudad. One of my favorite moments in the episode is Chuck’s look of intensity as he pulls the old reach around on Ciudad as they dance was absolutely hilarious. Actually, most of his facial expressions, right down to the classic early Chuck post-flash face of terror, were quite humorous.

In addition to the tango bits, the comedy here in general was top-notch stuff. As with last week’s effort “versus the Helicopter”, much of my enjoyment came from the small, subtle moments the writers worked in. The exchange between the Nerd Herd as Chuck struggles to come up with a group term other than “guys” to accommodate Anna was not only funny (“the Lesters”?), it also added detail to the personality of these characters in a very time-efficient way. Other small moments that really had me laughing include Chuck referring to the painting as “Bob Rossian”, Morgan slyly placing his hand around Ellie’s waste as he exits the kitchen (with accompanying disgusted reaction from Ellie), and Casey tenderly nipping off a branch of his Bansai tree. These comedic moments may not stand out as particularly spectacular, but because they add so many nice little details to the characters, they have a lot more value as a result in my opinion.  

The other element of the show that really worked well this week is the romantic side of things. I said in my review of last week’s episode that I wasn’t expecting fireworks this early, but they definitely came out in this episode. Chuck getting to kiss Sarah at the start of the episode, the inspiring words Sarah gives to Chuck at the episode’s end, and Sarah’s admission that she, too, wouldn’t mind kissing Chuck sowed the seeds for where their relationship would go over the course of the rest of the season in a big way. It really is remarkable the level of chemistry that exists even this early on between Zachary Levi and Yvonne Strahovsky when they alone occupy the screen together. It doesn’t hurt that the dialogue between the two is heartfelt and clever without sounding overly scripted. Chuck and Sarah’s conversation outside the Weinerlicious is a nice example of this, where we get the final aces element of my review, which is the all-important introduction of Chuck’s spy alias, Charles Carmicheal.

Kings

    

I don’t have a tremendous amount of things to include in the king category, as I felt most of the episode was worthy of the aces ranking or something lower than a king. I will, though, include a couple of things I liked a lot that just didn’t quite make it to full aces for me. First, I think La Ciudad is the first villain the show gave some real personality to and I enjoyed her performance a lot. Lorena Bernal, who plays Ciudad, does a nice job of shifting her emotions and personality, starting out as an innocent stranger at the auction, moving to a seductive interrogator in her hotel room, and finally closing out the episode as a ruthless killer as she dukes it out with Sarah on the Weinerlicious rooftop. It doesn’t hurt that she’s pretty easy on the eyes as well.

The other element I’m going kings with is the episode’s ode to “The Shawshank Redemption” with Morgan locked in the cage. The moment was a nice comedic showcase for Joshua Gomez and the curled up fetal position in the corner of the cage really had me chuckling. I also enjoyed Chuck waking him with a slice of pizza.

Queens

    

This episode did a nice job of illustrating how the writers put a “Chuck” twist on traditional action sequences. Casey’s fight in the Buy More, as well as his completely ridiculous heaving of a microwave into Ciudad’s goon’s face, were definite highlights in terms of action. Likewise, Sarah’s fight with Ciudad, while not overly long, was also nicely done. I mentioned at the start of my review that this episode is the first where the show really sets the tone for what it will be going forward and I think fights involving refrigerators, microwaves, and girls in skimpy costumes are all good examples of that in the action department. None of the sequences, however, were particularly outstanding in their own right, and thus, I’ve relegated them to the queens category of the review.

9’s

   

I thought the overall story that this episode told was excellent and as with the previous two episodes, managed to work a tremendous amount of progression and dialogue into a tight 40 or so minutes. Nevertheless, there were definitely some clunky elements that didn’t quite work and it’s these moments I’m including in the 9 section of the review. First, we establish at the beginning that no one has ever seen Ciudad (or at least seen her and lived to tell about it), yet Chuck is somehow still able to identify her. It doesn’t really make sense and it’s one of those instances where the writers use the Intersect to cover a plot hole.

The other story element I didn’t enjoy was the separation of the episode into what were essentially two acts, the first taking place at the auction and the second at the Buy More. The auction scene stretched a little too long for my taste and the moment with the British MI6 agent felt too long, since it’s only purpose was to separate Chuck from Sarah and Casey. I also didn’t really understand Ciudad’s motivation to kill Chuck. As Casey points out the next day, they were able to obtain a photo and a blood sample, so her identity is no longer a secret, thus the desire to kill Chuck is motivated strictly by revenge, which is fine, I guess, it just seems a little unrealistic given how important it would be for Ciudad to get out of the country to avoid being captured.

The last thing I’m going to throw into the nines category are the scenes involving Chuck’s old friend from Stanford. There wasn’t anything terribly wrong with them, they were just a little too slapstick-y for my taste. That was especially true of far too coincidental to be realistic moment of Ciudad jumping down to his balcony and breaking through the window.

Overall

“Chuck” continues its run of strong performances as we work our way through Season 1. As can be ascertained by reading the above review, I had a lot more to say about this episode that fell into the aces category than anything else and I think that speaks volumes about the quality of this episode. More importantly, as I mentioned at the start of my review, this episode really feels like the first time “Chuck” hit its stride in terms of what direction it wanted to go, particularly with the interweaving of spy and Buy More plot lines, as well as with Chuck and Sarah’s relationship. For those reasons, this is another great episode well-worth checking out.