ChuckTV.net The CHUCK archive
Written by Lauren LeFranc & Rafe Judkins
Directed by Peter Lauer
Set up in the second episode of the season, Chuck Vs The Suitcase, the show finally caught up to the audience and gave them the Chuck and Sarah engagement. Waiting for eleven episodes was a test in patience, and story pacing, especially after the multiple aborted attempts in Chuck Vs The Balcony. Fortunately when the proposal came it was shot from a distance. No further words were needed because they had all been said before. Much like the pull away shot on the Mexican Beach at the end of The Shawshank Redemption, when Red finally tracks down Andy Dufresne, some things can be conveyed as eloquently by visuals alone. Sarah’s embrace made it quite clear what her answer was.
Viewed as a stand alone episode, Chuck Vs The Push Mix was lot of fun and a great episode. Chuck finally was released from his season long shackles and made a stand. Using his long dormant wits Chuck manuevered Volkoff to the Orion cabin. Here Chuck fittingly used his father’s, aka Orion, tech in conjunction with his brains to bring Volkoff down. No Intersect needed, thank you very much. Showrunner Josh Schwartz trumpeted that the last ten minutes of this episode were the best ten minutes ever done in the series. For my money I will take the showdown sequence in the Orion cabin between Chuck and Volkoff as being more entertaining. But even that sequence would not constitute the best ten minutes of Chuck ever.
Chuck and Morgan had a lot of great scenes from the arming themselves at the Castle with office supplies so they could map out their strategy, to the torture bathroom from hell scenes where the first go around they grabbed the wrong guy, to the scuba suit scenes where Morgan flopped around in his flippers and learned to his chagrin that he should have worn clothes underneath, and to the Morgan laser room scene – even if it was recycled from before and went on a bit too long.
Timothy Dalton as Volkoff continued to delight. His need to talk to MamaB after feeling down about fatally dealing with an unsatisfactory employee and his having an ice cream cone aboard the Contessa was great stuff. Volkoff’s mania and scenery chewing, threat menacing ability shone brightly in the Orion cabin. His ego swagger was great to see quashed when it dawned on him that Chuck had outsmarted him. Chuck duping Volkoff into giving up the password to his Hydra data base was a sweet moment indeed.
MamaB and Sarah had their moments but this was really Chuck’s episode. It was great to see Alex again even though she did not have much to do. Casey gave Awesome some sage words on advice on about being there for Ellie as Clara’s birth became imminent. It was a hoot to see Awesome fall apart when his meticulously planned going into baby hospital run failed out of the gate because the Push Mix CD was missing.
Episode Flashes: Add your own in the comments.
- ‘That is a Casey grunt!’
- Data Flash! Yay!
- CGI Robot Spy. I’m having a Johnny Quest flashback!
- Volkoff iPhone pic! LOL
- The Contessa is ……
- Chuck makes a stand. Finally!
- Office supplies = Chuck plan time.
- Orion is alive? !?!?!?
- Chuck makes Ellie’s Push Mix
- Ellie’s placenta made into vitamin pills? Eww! How are we going to unhear that?
- CIA Hotline 800-555-0149 – for use in Push Mix Loss Emergencies only
- Chuck and Morgan snatching the wrong guy
- …… a ship! Bought on Craigslist Dubai. A floating fortress of fun complete with ice cream parlour
- Morgan with flippers = Yoga Seal – new branch of the Marines perhaps?
- Sarah’s coat fits Morgan fine despite his worry about his broad shoulders
- Devon’s Awesome Baby Run Plan falls about without Push Mix. Plan B = CIA Hotline!
- ‘Death is a solution to all problems.’ Volkoff quotes his favorite poet and humanitarian.
- ‘No one touches my Frost!’
- Chuck(Orion) / Volkoff showdown in the Orion cabin
- Chuck outsmarts Volkoff
- Clara Woodcombe is born!
- Chuck proposes
- Sarah accepts
- Power Sweeper brushes away all the season arc dangling and unresolved story lines.
Turning to the seasonal arc, Chuck Vs the Push Mix, addressed none of the carry forward items. This blunts the payoffs of the season arc. MamaB and Volkoff’s motivations are never clear so there was never any sense of real danger during this arc. Part of the problem also there is no clear story device of tension pushing the main characters. In the first two seasons there was always the threat of Chuck being bunkered. The third season had the tension of Chuck literally losing himself to become a spy. This season the main driving force is Chuck finding a moment to propose to Sarah. Enjoyable for the characters but hardly the story line to place all the marbles on for driving tension.
Given the track record of the past three seasons, and as painful as it is for a big fan of serialized storytelling as myself to suggest, the show would do better to switch its focus to stand alone episodes. Or very short story arcs of two to three episodes. The power sweeper in the last shot gave me an unexpected chuckle. Look! There goes all the unresolved season story threads! The inability to hold and satisfactorily answer story threads of longer arcs this season, and previous ones, offer ample evidence that a switch in story telling gears should be tried.
Chuck Vs the Push Mix offers a lot of entertainment as a stand alone episode. Many great moments as we have come to expect from this fantastic cast spiced up by the superlative work of Timothy Dalton and Linda Hamilton.
It bears repeating. The episode ended with the perfect proposal scene.
I don’t see the “main driving force” to be the proposal, but rather to find out the truth about Mom, then save Mama B and bring her home. The proposal seemed to me to be story line B. An episode flash I had was when Casey told Morgan he would push his own wheelchair, but then he let Alex push him when she came back. It was touching.
Saving MamaB was the Season McGuffin.
But even if it were the driving force it was not a very compelling one because her character was kept too ambiguous for too long to care about plus she was saddled with an implausible back story.
Agreed, Russ. Rescuing Mama B, and by default taking down Volkoff, was the driving force for the season IMO.
What does that say – when dedicated Chuck fans can’t even agree about the main theme of the story over 13 Episodes?
I’m not sure that single episode stories, or short arcs are the answer – but I would certainly suggest that they go back to simplifying some of the elements within the show. There was a time, when they were successful in creating parallel stories which involved similar themes attached to different characters. ~ but ~ I don’t think they have been able to match those efforts for some time lately…. Why does it seem like they start something, [ usually very creative and interesting]- only to change their mind and patch something together as an after thought… and seemingly abandon the original plan or direction altogether?
I also agree that the main story line was Volkoff/ Mama B. The proposal and the birth of baby Awesome were secondary story lines.
I also had no problem with the pacing of this story arc. So far S4 has been my favourite season and the Mama B/Volkoff the best story arc, with the Orion arc of S2 being a close second.
I also don’t see how you can think of this episode as a standalone. I thought it wrapped a lot of things up quite nicely.
At this moment, Push Mix is my new all-time favourite episode. Although, I anticipate that it will remain in that lofty position for only a short time, because they keep getting better and better.
Probably would have been better to establish early on in the arc that with the death of Orion, Mary needed to come out of the woodwork and seek help from Team Bartowski to bring down Volkoff to protect her family. It could have helped explain the implausible aspect of the 20 year mission and tension could have been set up that a mistake meant exposing Mary to Volkoff as a double agent. It would have eliminated unecessary elements such as the PSP and laptop.
I still think one of Gene Simmons’ Runaway robots would have been better than the Jonny Quest spider.
Ah yes! Good one. That was with Tom Selleck too.
Runaway also came out in 1984 touted as the sci-fi event of the year but got stomped in the box office by some low budget sci-fi b-movie with relatively unknown actors such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Michael Biehn, and Linda Hamilton.
I got “Minority Report” from the little spider spy guy.
Those robots in Runaway where just slow and horrible this one was wickedly smooth. But also dont forget that film had Smart bullets that would follow its target was much better than a GPS bullet.
Yea that was the weak link. GPS bullets the target would need a GPS receiver to home in. The Heat signature tracking of the smart bullets in Runaway was what I was thinking about when watching the episode
Boy, oh boy, do I disagree with this review. Face it, all the speculators, shippers, and spy action fanbois were played, pwned,and served with this episode; which I believe was the best episode since the Pilot. The resolution with Chuck and Volkoff was the perfect payoff, and it reminded me about what attracted me to this show in the first place.
This show has heart, this show is about a young man, who didn’t have the guidance to get to where his talents should have taken him. He was a genius, who didn’t know it. And now because of his parents, his friends, and his fiance (now), he is now able to get to the point where he is indeed, his own man. This was his mission from the get-go, and it was his plan that pulled it off.
Chuck wasn’t shackled, he isn’t James Bond. He’s the brains in the outfit and this episode showed that brains will always win out if used correctly. This is the man, that Sarah Walker fell in love with. This is the man, that Orion and Bryce knew could handle the Intersect. This is the man, who has become Agent Bartkowski, not Chuck the Intersect. Great episode, and yes, the perfect proposal for this couple.
Pretty sure I said this was a great episode too.
The way, I read your review it seems that you say it has some great moments but then you have some complaints about arcs and other things. I don’t read anywhere in the review, where it is clear that you think that this is a great episode. That is what I disagree with, overall, it was the best episode since the pilot. Arcs, character lack of development, and pacing do not detract if the overall show came off as great. If indeed you believe it was a great episode, then say it. Please, I’m not that smart. ‘… a lot of fun’ isn’t the same thing.
It was a great episode – added to the review for clarification.
Wow! Well said! I couldn’t agree more!
Your take on this matches my own exactly. I couldn’t have said it better, so I wont’ try.
I have to agree with the shorter story arc’s. Most of the popular scripted shows have short arcs with a long sub arc. I would like to see ( and I am looking forward to the seduction impossible and CAT squad) spy missions with a subarcs of Chuck and Sarah’s wedding, Morgan and Alex,Casey becoming human and the Woodcombs raising Clara. For some people I speak with, because it is a long story, People can not watch all episodes and loose the track of the story, so the shorter arcs would be fun. However I have to say I never laughed so hard at watching Morgan hopping around like a frog in his flippers.
I felt that Volkov was captured too early in the episode. Getting him a little after the middle point killed the tension. It was a good episode, but not really one of my favorites.
How is capturing him at 34 min into a 42 minute program too early?
The “Main Driving Force” of season 4-A was proclaimed by Chuck himself in the final Episode of Season 3, and that was “Family”. As vague and open-ended as such a pronouncement seems, it was confirmed by Schwedak (at ComiCon?). And so it was various “Family” threads that propelled everything. Ellie and Awesome’s baby, Alex and Casey reconnecting, Morgan and Alex bonding, Chuck and Sarah moving toward betrothal, Lester looking for a wife, and saving Mama B. Even Volkoff’s yearning for Mama B was his attempt at forming what passed for family in his world. So “Family” could and did mean many things. And this all-inclusive approach sort of diluted the impact of each event. And the tension was destined to suffer. After all, how could a proposal of marriage compare with the drama of seasons 1 and 2 (will Chuck be liquidated or taken underground) or season 3 (will Sarah leave Chuck for Shaw)? Especially since we knew many episodes back what her answer would be. The loss of Adler, Rosenbaum and Miller really showed. Myers, Wootton and DeGregorio turned out competent scripts but little else. Newman and Judkins-LeFranc are keepers. Klemmer is coming back, which may or may not be good news, but we need to get back to the old quirkiness, sparkle and tension.
Agree.
I totally agree with you on the writers of this show. I liked this episode but the sparkle and wittiness is not there. The show is going through a rough time, but I hope it makes it to a season 5. I agree with Lou that this show works better with shorter arcs. Maybe it needs just missions and not one overall arc. I’m rewatching Get Smart which reminds me a lot of this show, and overall there are just stand alone missions. Is there a rule that you have to have a season arc? I would like to see them get some more comedy writers. I hope we learn more about Sarah’s past in this back 11 too.
The juxtaposition of the “things” Chuck learned from Orion with the appropriate scenes (Casey bashing Armand with his bonsai, Sarah rescuing Frost, and Volkoff finding out that Chuck’s gun was unloaded) was great. I also liked
Volkoff: You’re gonna need an army to get out of here alive!
(door knock, Chuck opens to reveal General Beckman and other soldiers)
Chuck: Would this suffice?
as well as “When we get back, we need to have a serious talk about the benefits of tranq guns.”
Last but not the least: blonde Sarah, how I missed thee!
To the moderator: Sorry that this post is so long! If you think I should break it up into 2 or 3 posts let me know. Or if you want to do that, or edit it or whatever…. Obviously you can leave this part out:)
I’m sorry, but I have to respectfully disagree with some of what is written here. I think it was made clear from the end of season 3’s last episode and the first episode of this year that this season is/was about the search for Chuck’s mom. Yes a lot was made about the “proposal,†but to me that was the B story and the A story is Mary B. The proposal is a big deal – yes, but Chuck and Sarah’s relationship has always been a big deal right from the beginning. So I think if you look at this season from this stand point and the fact that the writers didn’t know if they would be ending the show at 4.13, they did a great job of bringing everything to a tremendous conclusion.
And I’d like to make one more comment. Maybe some don’t think the last 10 minutes were the best of Chuck. Again I would disagree.
To me, the best part of this show has always been about the relationships of the characters. It’s not necessarily about the action, or the comedy, or the drama, the love story, the “A/B†story line, the theme of the season, the villain…. It’s about how all those different elements come together to make up the main part of the show: the relationships of the characters – The FAMILY. Ellie walks into Casey’s room and tells everyone that Casey is family!
If the writers are saying the last 10 minutes are the best 10 minutes of Chuck, then they nailed it! Think about what we saw in the last 10 minutes. It was about the character’s relationships:
Devon – Mr. Awesome – is losing it right before the birth of his child. And Ellie is telling him to get out of the room and get it together because she “needs†him. She can’t count on anyone else – no one else is there for her – he needs to be awesome!
A way different side of Casey than we’ve ever seen. When they found the eye in his pants, Chuck asked him where he got it. He said “Sarah,†not Walker. When he found Awesome stressing out in the hallway, he finally made his feelings known about how he felt toward his daughter and that Awesome shouldn’t make the same mistake – wow, that sounds like Casey talking about his “feelings†to me! Casey? Feelings? Come on!
Jeffster playing at the birth of Devon and Ellie’s baby (the beginning of their family). Weren’t they there at their wedding too?
Chuck, Sarah, Morgan, MomaB all arriving at the last minute like the Calvary.
Sarah seeing Casey and calling him John – and going to hug him – I’m guessing. Too bad we didn’t see that. Maybe it’ll make into the Season 4 DVDs.
Chuck making sure that his mother is in the room for Ellie, but making sure that Ellie knows that they’re all there for her. That’s culmination of Chuck keeping his promise to Ellie that he would find their mother and she would be there for her!
Casey, Morgan and Alex walking away down the hall together! Alex telling her dad she’s going to be in his life. Casey telling her he’s not going anywhere. Morgan telling Casey he likes him. “Your line is, I like you too Morganâ€
Devon looking at his baby daughter…..”awesome”….
And then…….no dialog. Chuck and Sarah look at one another. Chuck gets up and opens the box with the ring. They kiss and hug…..fades to black….
Man, if that’s not about relationships, I don’t know what is. That’s why I think this show has always been about relationships and that’s why I think the writers said this would be the best 10 minutes. If this had truly been the last ever episode of Chuck, I don’t think they could have done a better job!
This episode had all of the facets and aspects needed to be one of the great Chuck episodes. It had action, Chuck showing his smarts, Morgan being the amusing side kick, and a well done romantic scene with our two leads.
Unfortunately, through no fault of its own, it did not pull off the seasonal arc. We needed more background about Volkoff and his organization. We knew it was powerful and that it sold weapons to unstable dictatorships, but we have no idea why. Money, power, world domination, furn, the desire to watch the world burn? We also needed more of a reason to care about Mary. Chuck and Ellie seemed to care and by extension Sarah, so the fans cared for their sake, but Mary herself was hardly a sympathetic character in the way that Orion was during his arc. Indeed the final take down was more poignant as a completion of Orion’s hunt then it was for saving Mary.
We all know that the writers and producers have it in them to produce such a story. They just need to write it a little tighter and beware of dangling threads with actual significance.
The only story arcs that are done well on Chuck are those involving the development of the principle characters, especially the relationships between Chuck and Sarah, Casey and Morgan, etc. The spy-related story arcs are usually underdeveloped, inconsistent, nonsensical and probably unnecessary. Fulcrum, the Ring and even Volkoff Industries are interchangeable, generic bad-guys (although Volkoff himself is hilarious). The show is a lot more fun, spy-wise, when the characters deal with individual villians in standalone or two or three part episodes.
It was hard to care too much about Mary or the “Search for Mom” because they found her too quickly and she didn’t seem to be in any actual danger.
Still far and away my favorite show…don’t want to sound like I’m whining.
The idea that we the audience dont care for Mary is irelevant we dont know her, and what we do know is that she has willingly been away from her children for 20 years which does not make us love her but that should not matte.
In the first episode of this season we were shown a specific memory of Chucks of her reading him a bedtime story and telling him how much she loves him. We are supposed to be wanting that person back, the person that Chuck wants back for himself but more importantly for Ellie. Ellie is the most important person in Chucks world even more than Sarah (dont shoot me) and she wants her mother, as beautifully shown when she is looking through the old photo album. Finally he is doing it as it was Orions legacy his lifes work to get her back to her family. We should want her back because Chuck wants her back and wew want what is best for him.
I am sorry if you find that arc unsatisfying but I think this show works best when it shows the relationship between the charcters and what relationship is more specail than a mother and her children.
It’s funny how I see the season similarly to you, but I reach a different conclusion. One of the problems was the story was divvied up into several mini-arcs, but they didn’t come together to form a coherent whole. There was the relationship arc from “Suitcase” to “Coup d’Etat,” the Mama B arc in “Aisle of Terror” and “First Fight,” the Intersect suppression arc from “Fear of Death” to “Leftovers,” and the final arc in “Gobbler” and “Push Mix.” The relationship arc turned out to be filler that had almost nothing to do with the rest of the season, and the Intersect suppression arc ended up being merely a digression, having no consequences or bearing on the plot. Even though they were purportedly related, the mini-arcs didn’t mesh well together.
So, I come to a slightly different conclusion. The show can do as you suggest, and break the story up into clearly defined mini-arcs, resolving them every two or three episodes. The show could also write a longer story, constructing mini-arcs that overlap each other, mesh together, and resolve periodically. Personally, I’d like to see the latter.
In so far as this might have been the series finale, I thought they did a good job tying up loose ends. The major ‘miss’ that bothered me is that we never learned how the laptop got into the mustang. That bothers me for some reason. S&F keep insisting that SJB is dead, but I get the feeling we havan’t seen the last of Mr. B.
I have to say that I agree with you if Chuck wants to survive they need more stand alone episodes. I love how it has gone so far but you won’t get any new viewers this way because nobody wants to go watch 10 episodes just to know what is going on. The other way to get more attention for the show would be if another network picked it up and played all the old episodes to get new viewers involved.
In my opinion nothing about Chuck and Sarah is a B story.
I love this show and it was great but like last year it could have been even better with some more explanations.
The problem is that if the season arc isn’t illustrated enough it tends to have a domino effect on some other important telling.
For an example, Mary got isolated for 20 years in the iron grip of Volkoff but they really didn’t show the iron grip, did they? So how can we understand Chuck’s concern about also losing Sarah to Volkoff if we don’t fully understand the original?
The difference is that Alfred Hitchcock showed us the bomb and how it was ticking before the blast while here we see the blast and must assume what caused it.
One other thing I have problems with is the Mary character. I love how Lind H played her but I don’t like the character Mary, because she got stained by the lack of explanation too. On top of that they wanted to move us between good Mary and evil Mary through her questionable actions towards her own son. I’m just saying that it will take a while before I accept her in to the family like I do with Ellie, Devon, Sarah, Casey, Morgan and Alex.
In difference to Lou I say do the arcs either way, not both ways at the same time.
They can do a season arc if they skip one or two stand alone episodes and explains why, when, how.
Agree, this is a very good, to great “stand alone” episode. As a culminating end to a nearly 13 episode arc, it left a little to be desired. Way too many loose ends, left dangling. But “Chuck” does that a lot.
I will say that Dalton as Volkoff was the best villian in 4 years of “Chuck”. He played the character brilliantly. However, Volkoff Industries as a villianous organization left much to be desired.
Fulcrum is the best villianous organization in the four years of “Chuck”. It was fleshed out so much better. I felt I knew what Fulcrum was trying to do.
The same can’t be said for either The Ring or VI.
As for story arcs versus standalones, most of my favorite episodes just happen to be stand-a-lones.
I loved the bit where the nurse came out and asked if they were all family, and everybody encluding Casey, Sarah, and Morgan all said in unison ‘yes!’ I loved that. And Ellie remarking that John is family and we know Team B does whatever it takes for family you mess with one you mess with all of them. And I wish Casey and Sarah could’ve hugged. Jeffster could’ve been cut easily for that. 🙁 it would’ve been so sweet to see Casey reassure Sarah that it was alright and that she didn’t have to blame herself anymore.
Nice episode. 🙂