Friday Five: Chuck Musical Montages

This week’s Friday Five comes to us from Ernie, one of the fine folks leading intelligent discussions about Chuck over at Chuck This Blog. 

A montage is described as a technique in film editing in which a series of short shots are edited into a sequence to condense space, time, and information. A musical montage (my definition) is one that is somewhat, or largely without dialog. And for my purposes it doesn’t have to compress time if it is showing related events simultaneously by cutting between them. It relies on the characters actions or interactions with the music setting the mood to deliver the story they are telling. Sometimes some context is introduced before the montage begins and the montage fleshes things out, sometimes, like at the end of Chuck vs. The Fat Lady, you only put together what you were being shown until almost the end, but in either case, the musical montage shows drama or change or movement in a very condensed and enjoyable form.

I went through the five seasons of Chuck and picked what I consider the most important montage from each season (since I only get five). This leaves out a lot of great ones. I probably could have picked five from season two alone!

1. Chuck vs. the Tango

“Tango” by Tim Jones

I know that people who read my stuff are probably sick of this, but the episode Chuck vs. the Tango really established a lot of the show’s structural and visual style. The montage where Chuck learns to tango from Awesome, while the other spies also prepare, was a groundbreaking one for the series. One whose style would be copied until the end. And if you have never done so, watch it once just looking at Ellie and her reactions. In the context of the series, this was Chuck’s first mission, and his introduction to his new life.

2. Chuck vs. the Ring

“Mr. Roboto” by Jeffster (and Styx)

What can I say. To me this was Chuck at its peak. This episode actually has two of the greatest montages in Chuck history, but only one is transformative. This probably falls a bit outside the definition of a montage, but it is so stylistically linked with the intercut scenes and how they both come to a crescendo with the music, I felt I had to pick it. Jeffster delaying the wedding while Chuck attempts to protect the people he loves is priceless, and for the show it is the crux of Chuck’s decision to re-intersect. He thought he could be done with the spy world, but the spy world was not done with him and his family. As much as I’d like to include the First Date montage (completely a copy of the Tango montage, which now that I think of it hearkens back to the pilot montage of them getting ready) or the Tom Sawyer montage, or even Fat Lady, this is the one that matters most to the show’s future.

3. Chuck vs. the Honeymooners

“Holiday” by Vampire Weekend

If there ever was a transformative episode of Chuck … Well there were several, but this was a big one. In both a very deliberate and very subtle way, this episode examines who Chuck and Sarah were and who they’d become because of each other. The opening montage in which our characters rarely appear is a marvelous way to show us that these two have built up quite an appetite, and now that they can be alone together away from the world, their appetites are finally being fed. It also, not inconsequentially, introduces the notion that these two know they want to be together and really want to find a way for that to happen above all else. And while they do, to an extent, in this episode it is still just the beginning of their journey together.

4. Chuck vs. the Push Mix

“Young Blood” by The Naked and Famous

Josh Schwartz described the final minutes of this episode as “the greatest 15 minutes ofB ever.” I may be inclined to agree, to a degree, to that claim. But this is mostly about the culmination of everyone’s journeys, or at least this part of the season’s, as this episode thankfully did not turn out to be the season finale, or for that matter the series finale it was designed to be. The final shot, down the hall, past the janitor, to Chuck and Sarah sharing that moment alone is one of my favorite of the entire series.

5. Chuck vs. the Business Trip

“Silver Hands” by Alameda

To me this was the episode and the scene, that established what season 5 would be, and what it would mean to the series. There would be real repercussions for their actions and a real price to pay for their decision to be spies for hire. This montage established the cost of the life they lived contrasted against their idyllic family life and set up subsequent episodes for examining the decision to leave that life and the cost to extricate themselves. It was a powerful set up for the season that would come.