"Chuck" is BAAAAAACK!!

I've been waiting for this for about as long as I've been waiting for the season premiere of "LOST." Without the same amount of bated breath, mind you, but fairly close.

NBC's "Chuck" is the little show that could. At the end of season 2, it was almost canceled, and due to some very overwhelming fan action (Subway Day, anyone?), NBC renewed the nerd-spy series. I was jumping like LeBron James the day "Chuck's" renewal was announced. It was like being in the hospital waiting room while a loved one is going through life-threatening surgery, then getting the good news. Only, it wasn't so life-and-death.

Thankfully, the powers that be deemed that we "Chuck"-starved fans would get a double helping of the show tonight, Sunday, and then a third hour tomorrow during its normal time slot of 8 p.m. What a great idea! A triple-threat!

So, what's going on? When we last left Chuck Bartowski and crew, he had tracked Bryce Larkin to the location of the new Intersect chip, version 2.0. Chuck tracked him without the aid of the first Intersect, which his dad had effectively removed from Chuck's brain. Tragically, Bryce is killed by the last remaining Fulcrum dudes, but not before he manages to get Chuck some alone time with the new Intersect. Chuck downloads the new Intersect in order to keep it from Fulcrum, and when they show up to take him down, he reveals some major upgrades by kicking their asses with kung-fu.

Now it's six months later, and Chuck is in Prague, training to be a super spy. Only, he's got a problem. The new Intersect isn't cooperating -- he's not able to consistently "flash" on anything. Apparently, his emotions keep getting in the way. Shortly after he downloaded the new Intersect, he and Sarah planned on running away together to start a "normal" life. Something happened along the way and now she is gone and Chuck is hurting. So, the government considers him a dud and casts him aside, putting him at the lowest point we've ever seen: laying on his sister's couch, fully bearded, wearing a dirty bathrobe and chomping away on cheese puffs.

Thus begins season three with the episode "Chuck vs. The Pink Slip."

Here are the most important things that happened (with analysis, of course).

1. Chuck tries to get back into the spy game to win back both his job AND Sarah. This leads to a really funny moment (pictured above) when he knocks out a Spanish guitar player at a nightclub and takes his place so he can stay close to Sarah, who's on a stakeout. Chuck doesn't know how to play the guitar, though, until he gets one of his "flashes" and suddenly becomes a flamenco/classical virtuoso -- much to his own surprise. Zachary Levi plays this scene perfectly as he appears shocked by his independently operating hands while still pining for Sarah, who dances seductively with a man.

2. The guitar player Chuck clocked was a bad guy -- the assassin Sarah and the other Feds were trying to track down. He's a part of The Ring, new group of badasses for this season. What they want or represent are still uncertain.

3. Morgan's back from Hawaii. He and Anna split after she ditched him for another Hibachi chef. Now he's sleeping at the Buy More.

4. Emmitt gets killed! Yippee! Shot right through the fucking eyeball! Awesome. I love Tony Hale, the actor. He played Emmitt as the type A version of his character Buster on "Arrested Development." He made Emmitt a great, albeit extremely annoying character. What was best about the scene was how Emmitt was listening to Wilson Phillips in his Nerd Herd car before getting shot.

5. Ellie and Awesome get sick and tired of Chuck being a loser, so they move out and leave him and Morgan to become roomates -- something I had been hoping for since season 1 anyway. This opens the door to Morgan learning more about Chuck's operations as the season progresses.

6. Chuck and Sarah get captured by the new bad guys and Sarah manages to calm Chuck down enough once they wake up in their Mexican prison cells to get his Intersect to work. I think the Intersect is a metaphor for sexual performance anxiety.

7. Chuck gets his old job back, both as a spy and at the Buy More. So, the gang's all together again. Except Sarah makes it clear to Chuck that he needs to bottle those feelings of his up and send them away because that's what a spy has to do.

Which leads us into the second episode...

But I'll post on that tomorrow.

In the meantime, a couple final thoughts about this episode.

1. At the beginning of season 2, Casey was told to kill Chuck once the new Intersect was built because they didn't need a liability like Chuck lying around with government secrets in his head. Now, at the beginning of season 3, Chuck seems like even more of a liability and after firing him from his training as a spy they just let him go? That doesn't make since. Chuck's new version of the Intersect makes him more dangerous, something the general makes clear to Sarah at the end of the episode. If Chuck is soooo dangerous now, how come no one was handling him after he returned to Burbank? That's one inconsistency in what I thought was a really well done episode.

2. I love how the train station flashback scene resembled Casablanca when Rick received Ilsa's tear-stained note. Only here, Chuck gets to break Sarah's heart in person. Usually I'm totally down with the way Chuck handles things, but this was one time when I kept shouting "Asshole!" at the TV. You know it's a great show when the character's make decisions that cause you to call them foul names. My heart broke for Sarah after she kisses him and she says, "That's not the kiss I expected." Yvonne Strahovski was at her best -- and most beautiful -- in this scene.

More on "Chuck vs. The Three Words" tomorrow!

Chuck - Episode 2.18 - "Chuck vs. The Broken Heart"

As great as Chuck is, last night's episode, "Chuck vs. The Broken Heart," really boiled down to this:

Who's hotter: Tricia Helfer or Yvonne Strahovski?

Tricia Helfer, fresh off her stint as America's most loved Cylon -- Number Six -- on "Battlestar Galactica," guest starred last night as special agent Alex Forrest. Her mission: replace resident hottie Sarah as Chuck's new handler. Apparently, Chuck and Sarah's pseudo-relationship has gotten to be too much of a liability for General Beckman, who looks like she hasn't had a good lay in many years. Her idea of being too emotionally involved probably includes ignoring each other over the Sunday morning New York Times crossword puzzle.

As far as replacements go, Alex Forrest ain't half bad. She's certainly pleasant to look at. And that strip-tease she performs at Captain Awesome's bachelor party...woah!

But is she as hot as Sarah? That's the real question.

Before I get into that, let me recap. There were four storylines to follow:

A) Chuck, Casey, and Forrest are ordered to confirm the identity of a known associate of a terrorist named Hassan Khalid. They must infiltrate Ellie and Awesome's hospital to plant a tracking device in the dude's pacemaker. This leads -- surprise -- to complications when the terrorists discover the tracking device during a "routine" bug check over the associate's body.

B) Sarah gets replaced by Forrest and tries to help Chuck by obtaining his missing father's location as a passive-aggressive "don't fuck with me" message to the C.I.A.

C) Chuck organizes Awesome's bachelor party as a way to get him drunk enough to swipe his access card to the organ donor room. They do it at the Buy More.

Quick question and comment: since when did the Buy More get a stripper pole? Wouldn't life be even more awesome if Best Buy employed the same business practices? It would get us out of this recession, I'll tell you that.

D) Ellie questions Awesome's faithfulness at the bachelor party.

There was also the planting of a future sub-plot as Awesome sort-of gets early pieces to a puzzle that might cause him to unmask Chuck's cover. Had to happen sometime, right? There is no fun in a show about cover-ups without some threat of being found out. After all, teenage boys can't go on hiding their porn forever without mom coming across it under their beds at some point. The real question, as always, is what will mom do about it? The same will be asked of Awesome.

Let's get this undercard over with so we can move on to the main event. Chuck, assumed to be Awesome by the terrorists, gets taken hostage and put in a back vault to cut out the tracking device. Sarah is the first to figure out Chuck's location, showing up Forrest, and they manage to help Chuck, but not before he neutralizes Khalid by dousing him with nitrous oxide. The two nearly laugh themselves to death before Sarah rescues them. Had they been trapped in the vault any longer I think they would have actually laughed at a "Police Academy" movie, or an episode of "Joey." Everything works out, except for Ellie, who, after seeing photos of an unconscious Awesome being straddled by Forrest at the bachelor party, begins to question his faithfulness.

Moral of that story: don't take pictures at a fucking bachelor party.

Now, on to the main event. Helfer vs. Strahovski.

How do we determine hotness? Well, lets break it down into some categories:

A) Figure and cup size.

Call this the Grab and Hold Index. There is a simple formula to determine one's score on this index:

Cup size (Hip size + waist measurement (weight + height))/500,000 = GHI

Don't let anyone ever tell you hottness is not quantifiable.

B) Face and hair.

After all, you can't look at the body forever. Some elements must be considered here. Symmetry, eye shape, fullness of lips, hair style and length. Hair style and length is the variable, because based on the other elements, some hair styles just look better. For example, Halle Berry looks better with shorter hair, even though most men prefer longer hair. On her, it isn't butch, right?

How do you measure this? By pure objective opinion.

C) Personality.

I know, I know, who really cares, right? After all, for all of us geeks out there, we are just salivating over pictures. But personality counts for something. Is she more aggressive, like a cat, or more gentile, like a parakeet. Does she come off like the girl next door, who you might actually have a chance with, or like the goddess at the top of the mountain whose pussy is locked up as tight as the gold in Fort Knox?

Score must be based on availability. A woman is much hotter if you think you might actually be able to touch her. Then the fantasy almost seems real.

With the categories defined, let's compare, shall we?

A) GBI.

Helfer: According to the Battlestar Galactica wiki, she is 34-24-34. She's obviously a "C" cup, and can't weigh more than 120. She's 5'10 and has webbed toes, a feature she finds very unique, and Aquaman might find boner worthy. On the GBI index, her score would be .75. Not bad.

Strahovski: Geekipedi4 -- obviously a place I'd feel at home -- claims she is 37-23-34 with a "C" cup. I'm going to place her at about 115, and her height is 5'9. She has normal toes. GBI = .86.

Advantage: Strahovski.

B) Face and hair.

Helfer: Long, diry blonde hair, full slender lips. Eyes large and blue. Her nose is slightly offset to the left and the left side of her lips angle downward slightly as well.

Strahovski: Wavy blonde hair, shoulder length. Again, full lips, bow shaped. Blue eyes. Nose is dead on center, with her left eye a tad bit closer. Almond shaped eyes, though.

Advantage: Strahovski. I'm a sucker for blonde hair and almond-shaped eyes.

C) Personality.

Helfer: She posed in Playboy and FHM. She has been on two geek TV shows now. She is married (damnit!), and has adopted six cats from shelters. In high school, she described herself as a tomboy and athlete. She was a professional model, doing ads for high profile companies like Ralph Lauren, Chanel and Armani. TV.com gave her a person score of 9.4, ranking her as superb!

Strahovski: Came from a family of artists -- her father was a musician -- in Australia. Her name is a stage name, a more phonetic spelling of the Polish "Strzechowski." She can also speak fluent Polish. IGN ranked her as number one on their Top 25 "Boob Tube Babes" list. She's also a writer. She can do kung-fu, and had braces as a child. She is also an outdoor babe who has a nose ring and doesn't really dig on beauty salons. Plus, she loves Science Fiction movies like "Alien" and "Jurassic Park."

Advantage: Strahovski.

Holy shit, that's a trifecta! She is easily the hotter of the two. This is no knock against Helfer, definitely one of the hottest women on TV, but Strahovski is flat out amazing. Maybe the hottest woman on TV -- hell, if IGN says it, it must be true. And if I say it...well...

Next week on Chuck: Scott Bakula and Chevy Chase. The 80s fanboys are drooling.

Fuck. I need to get a life.