“Chuck versus the Wookiee”; Are You Pulling The 4-Leaf Clovers Out Of The Rotation?

This week, we’re taking a look at the 4^th episode of Season 1 of “Chuck”, “Chuck versus the Wookie”. In keeping with our recent trend, this week’s review is going to be different in format than previous ones. Specifically, we’re going to identify one thing from each element of the show we review (comedy, action/special effects/scenery, story/suspense, and romance) that we felt stood out from everything else and discuss why we felt it was so outstanding. In keeping with our playing card theme, the moments we select are automatically given an ace ranking, so you can think of this as “aces week” for the blog. With that said, let’s get to the standout moments from this episode.

“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.

“Chuck versus the Helicopter”; Do You Kid About Quiche?

The second week of our “Chuck” re-watch projects finds us at “Chuck versus the Helicopter”. In truth, I’ve always considered it one of the weaker episodes of the early series. I say early series because I’ve always felt that seasons 1-3 were vastly superior to 4-5, even though I did largely enjoy seasons 4-5. So, while I might be a little harder on this episode than some from the season 5 reviews that are already up, keep in mind that I hold it to a much higher standard, especially after taking in that spectacular pilot episode last week.

As I said in my review of said pilot, my partner and I have decided to play with the format of our reviews week to week to keep things interesting and that starts this week. Instead of our normal section by section review of the article, this week you’re getting an essay-style look at the episode as whole from us. The card ratings will still be a part of the review, they’ll just be placed up front for you to see, independent of the text. Let us know what you think of these format changes and with that, let’s get to the review.

“Chuck versus the Intersect”; Are You Thinking Pancakes?

After a lengthy hiatus filled with a lot of reflection on “Chuck”, my fellow blogger and I have decided to keep this thing going by starting from the show’s beginning and working our way up to Season 5. Could this be seen as a shameless attempt to soak up any fanfare we can get long after our blog’s original purpose has been fulfilled? Sure, but “Chuck” was a great show from start to finish and we both enjoyed the process of blogging on it so much that we couldn’t resist. Going forward, we’re going to make some structural modifications to our format each week (after this one anyway) that should hopefully keep things interesting. We’d love to read and respond to any comments you the readers have if you’re making the journey from the start with us or just happened to catch whatever episode we’re currently discussing around the same time we did. With that said, let’s get to this week’s review of the show’s pilot, “Chuck versus the Intersect”.