"Chuck" - "That's us in 30 years"

Hooray! Finals are over and I can get back to focusing on what really matters: great TV. (I've got a lot of blogging to catch up on. I'm the catch-up girl. Not to be confused with the ketchup girl. [I love you Lorelai Gilmore]). "Chuck vs. the Role Models" was a nice break from studying. Some might call it a filler episode, as it was part of the additional episode order when they had to stretch out the season (you know, when NBC realized it was screwed and needed at least one show with a solid fan base). But I don't care - not every episode can be as pivotal as the last few. And at the end of the day, I just want more "Chuck." It's one of those shows I can just sit back and relax with. This week's fun guest stars were Fred Willard and Swoosie Kurtz. As a big fan of "Pushing Daisies," I loved hearing Kurtz say things like "don't be a booze snob." Along with the fact that Willard was just on "Modern Family," all I could think is "in 30 years, Sarah and Chuck are going to turn into Aunt Lily and Phil Dunphy's Dad."

The set-up of shadowing the almighty spy couple was a tad contrived, as was the General ordering Morgan trained, but I'm willing to overlook that. This is the kind of show where you suspend your belief and I think these things were completely within the show's established boundaries of craziness. You just knew something was up when the veteran spies "screwed up" the mission early on. You knew some sort of double-cross was going to happen and I initially thought they really had triple-crossed Chuck and Sarah in the end. It seemed logical: pretend to betray your younger partners, coax the bad guy out of hiding and into the open where you can nail him, then admit that it was the plan all along. But no, it was just a double-cross, but then they had a change of heart. I wasn't completely satisfied with the wrap-up of that conflict and I felt like Willard and Kurtz were a little underused, but it was still incredibly entertaining so I won't bother nitpicking here. In the end, Sarah and Chuck moved in together while getting a little warning from their would-be mentors: "The CIA has a way of breaking young idealists. Especially if they're in love."

Meanwhile, Casey and Morgan are going through their spy training, which was also pretty funny to watch. If nothing else, Morgan can BS his way out of a lot. And run. Is it weird that I was really really hoping "Wipe Out" would play as Morgan ran from the tiger, a la "The Sandlot?"

I'm liking how they're handling Ellie and Awesome. I thought their leaving would mean less of them, because I couldn't figure out how they would tie in an Africa storyline to the main stuff in Burbank. I'm assuming that maybe they were meant to be in Africa over the summer break, but when they got the additional episode order, they wrote in a storyline for them? Either way, I'm happy with how they handled it. Although I was really nervous they were going to work some sort of love triangle there after focusing on that one guy. It's hard to pull off love triangles, (Sarah-Chuck-Bryce=compelling, Sarah-Chuck-Shaw=meh) and even harder to do when the core couple is so...excellent. I'm ready to see where this dastardly plotline goes. Although, wouldn't Awesome and Ellie have been taking malaria pills and known that it was weird to get malaria anyway? Or does that just happen sometimes anyway? I'm no doctor. It's just wonderful to see Ellie and Awesome together and happy for the most part. (Sidenote: Awesome looked very nice in the rain. Can it please rain more on this show?)

Random other thoughts:

• Ellie, with all your concerns about Africa and Doctors Without Borders, have you never seen "ER?"


• Morgan's dream sequence. Absolutely loved it.


• It's fun to see how much better Chuck has gotten at extemporaneous lying on a mission, but he's still the same old Chuck, evidenced by moments like....


• ...the ordeal with the tiger. "I am not letting you shoot a tiger. They are endangered and majestic."


• Did Sarah and Chuck really think handcuffs would hold two seasoned CIA agents? The second I saw that I was waiting for the moment they would escape.


• Awesome's nickname from the native people, which translates loosely to "Doctor Super-Fantastic White Person." Genius.


• And randomly, "Friday Night Lights" is still on? I kept seeing commercials for it during the break and was really surprised. If they can manage to keep that show on the air, surely they can keep "Chuck" around too.