CHUCK VERSUS THE AISLE OF TERROR
CAST
Zachary Levi (Heroes Reborn)
Yvonne Strahovski (Batman: Bad Blood)
Adam Baldwin (Firefly)
Joshua Gomez (Invasion)
Sarah Lancaster (Saved By The Bell: The New Class)
Ryan McPartlin (J. Edgar)
Mark Christopher Lawrence (Halloween II)
Scott Krinsky (Transformers 3)
Vik Sahay (eXistenZ)
Bonita Friedericy (Veronica Mars)
GUEST CAST
Linda Hamilton (The Terminator)
Robert Englund (A Nightmare on Elm Street)
Morgan Fairchild (Roswell)
Dr. Stanley Wheelwright (Robert Englund) walks through a secured area at Volkoff Industries. When a guard (Roland Kickinger) stops him, Wheelwright claims he is just looking for the fitness centre, but the guard grabs him and demands identification. Wheelwright feigns an asthma attack, and uses his “inhaler” to spray a toxin into the guard’s face. Wheelwright reveals to a security camera that his nerve gas, Atroxium, is fully functional and can send people into permanent nightmares. An observer, Mary Bartowski (Linda Hamilton), walks out and claims that she knows a buyer in Los Angeles.
Two weeks later, immediately after “Chuck Versus the Couch Lock”, Mary calls her son Chuck and they arrange to meet for the first time in years at Griffith Park. As Chuck walks toward the playground, Mary sneaks up on his backup, Sarah Walker, and they hold each other at gunpoint. Chuck introduces them as his mother and girlfriend, and Mary reveals that she is deep undercover in the Volkoff organization. She claims that there is no evidence of this, because her CIA records were expunged when she went undercover in Project Isis. She informs them that she broke cover so the CIA could obtain Wheelwright and the Atroxium, telling Chuck to explain the information to General Beckman by telling her he flashed on Wheelwright. Chuck is arranged to pose as Volkoff’s most trusted buyer, so Wheelwright can be taken into custody when he tries to sell the Atroxium. Beckman approves the mission, and Casey lets Morgan join the team after his help in “Chuck Versus the Couch Lock”. Later, Chuck informs Casey and Morgan that he has found his mother.
Chuck, using his usual cover of “Charles Carmichael”, meets Wheelwright at a restaurant. As Wheelwright starts to talk about price, Mary arrives unexpectedly. To keep her cover intact, Mary reveals Chuck as a CIA agent. Knowing that Chuck is wearing a ballistic vest, Mary shoots at his heart. Sarah approaches them, but Mary shoots at her, as well as a security camera (disabling Morgan and Casey’s security feed on her), and she and Wheelwright escape with the Atroxium.
Mary later returns at the Buy More and kidnaps Chuck at gunpoint. As he enters her car, he activates a tracking device on his phone. While she drives, she reveals that although she had to sabotage the mission and kidnap Chuck to maintain her cover, she will still give them Wheelwright, as he is too dangerous. She leads Chuck to Wheelwright’s portable laboratory, where both he and the atroxium are hidden. Mary finds out that Chuck has activated his distress tracking device and flees, and Sarah and Casey arrive to find Chuck, an unconscious Wheelwright, and the Atroxium.
With Wheelwright in custody at Castle, Chuck and Sarah starts dismantling the atroxium’s container. Suddenly, a timer starts counting down from five minutes. Wheelwright reveals that the only way to disarm it is with his thumbprint. Although he initially refuses to give it, they hold him at gunpoint and point out that he too would be affected if the atroxium where released. He reluctantly gives his thumbprint, but it instead accelerates the countdown, and the toxin is released. Wheelwright reveals that, having been the human test subject for his own toxin, he has learned to suppress fear. Chuck locks down Castle, sealing Sarah safely in a holding cell and chases Wheelwright to the Buy More. Chuck then puts the store on lock-down, but Wheelwright then drugs him with a more concentrated dose from his inhaler which then makes Chuck see even more horrifying visions.
As Chuck runs through the store, he is further terrorized by the various Halloween decorations. Chuck hallucinates that Mary kills Sarah when Wheelwright finds him and they stumble upon the “Aisle of Terror”, which the scientist uses to torture Chuck into unlocking the store. However, Chuck gains control of the situation and displays various terror-inducing images(for mentally ill patients), making the scientist again susceptible to fear. Wheelwright runs out the aisle and is clothes-lined by Sarah. Chuck manages to suppress the fear by closing his eyes, until Wheelwright gives up the antitoxin. Wheelwright is again taken into custody.
Meanwhile, Casey searches for information on Project Isis with Pierce, an expert on expunged missions. Casey informs Morgan that Mary was telling the truth, just to keep Morgan from telling Chuck the real truth: Project Isis was ended 20 years ago after Mary went rogue. As Mary goes to meet Chuck and Ellie, she is captured by several masked individuals. Chuck attempts to rescue her, and he unmasks one of the captors, revealing her to be Sarah. Sarah tells him that she is protecting his “blind spot” (Chuck’s influenced judgement about his mother), and Mary is taken away. Chuck then reveals to Ellie the truth about Mary being a spy.
As a huge Nightmare on Elm Street fan growing up, I loved seeing Robert Englund, who in the opening few minutes, had me wishing he could play Freddy again, as we saw the effects of Wheelwright’s toxin, which caused “a gigantic nightmare you never wake up from!” The visual of Englund’s jaw opening wide even evoked a similar image in Wes Craven’s New Nightmare. Englund was a lot of fun switching from the bumbling, soft-spoken doctor to the more openly evil, and sadistic villain Wheelwright truly was. Another classic Halloween themed epsiode.
Veronica Mars is set in Neptune, California, a town without a middle-class. Everyone’s either a millionaire or works for one, and the man largely responsible for Neptune’s unparalleled success is Jake Kane (Kyle Secor), the resident billionaire software mogul. Kane and his family are still reeling from the murder of his daughter Lilly (Amanda Seyfried) some months earlier, and as if that loss wasn’t enough, the beloved Kane family was doggedly pursued by a county sheriff convinced that they were hiding something. Public sentiment turned against Sheriff Keith Mars (Enrico Colantoni), who was ousted from office and abandoned by his wife.
Cue the title character. His daughter Veronica (Kristen Bell) had already lost her best friend with Lilly’s death, but standing by her father also cost Veronica her friends, her social status, her house…even her mother. Veronica had already been unceremoniously dumped by Lilly’s brother Duncan (Teddy Dunn) shortly before her friend’s murder, and a defiant visit to face her former friends at a party weeks later led to Veronica being drugged and raped. Despite having lost so much, Veronica is resilient enough to move on with her life, and as her father struggles to stay afloat as a private eye, Veronica puts her smarts and determination to work to help ease the caseload at Mars Investigations. She also puts her talents to use to help her classmates with their troubles — for a price, of course. To cap it all off, Veronica’s faced with a couple of her own mysteries to solve. What convinced Lianne Mars to abandon her family, and where is she now? Who was it who drugged and raped Veronica last December? Also, is her father right — did someone other than disgruntled Kane Software employee Abel Koontz murder Lilly? If there is, who orchestrated the conspiracy that led to Koontz’ confession and why?
The dialogue in Veronica Mars has the same sparkle as Joss Whedon’s work…arguably better, even, since Buffy sometimes sounded like a deliberate attempt to be hip, whereas Veronica Mars manages to be witty and clever without feeling quite so forced. The writing doesn’t skew as young as one might expect from a TV show set in a high school. If anything, the target audience seems to be twentysomething — I don’t know how many fifteen year olds would be able to appreciate references to Archie comics or 21 Jump Street, f’r instance. Characterization is another strength of the series, and part of the reason Veronica Mars works as well as it does is that the audience truly does care about the characters. Despite having a seemingly endless array of talents, Veronica isn’t some sort of idyllic Mary Sue. She’s not always right. Her investigations frequently take morally questionable turns. Things don’t always go the way she wants. Not every episode has a happy ending.Kristen Bell in Veronica Mars (2004)Along with the cases that are solved in the space of forty minutes and change every week, a couple of mysteries are introduced in the pilot that are gradually explored throughout the entire length of the season. That’s right — unlike the hydra that is Lost, where answering one question spawns ten more, all of Veronica Mars’ mysteries are resolved by the time the season finale rolls around. (The finale tosses out a couple questions of its own, but if a second season hadn’t gotten the green light, it still would’ve been a fitting end to the series.)Veronica Mars has a capable cast to match the quality of the writing. Veronica is strong and cynical…bright and sarcastic…and even though all of the trauma she’s suffered over the past year has aged her somewhat, she’s still an emotionally vulnerable teenage girl.
That’s a lot to juggle, but Kristen Bell is talented enough to make such a colossal task seem effortless and captivating enough to carry a show on her shoulders. Of course, Bell is joined by a strong enough supporting cast that she doesn’t have to shoulder it all herself.VM-S2D2_04After cutting down Wallace (Percy Daggs III), the new kid at school, who’d been stripped naked and duct taped to a flagpole, he and Veronica become best friends. In teen-TV land, it’s an immutable rule that people of different genders can’t just be pals…there’s this endless temptation to couple everyone. Veronica Mars manages to resist, resulting in one of the few platonic friendships like this left on television.Enrico Colantoni, who plays Veronica’s father, is another fan favorite, able to shift from warm, loving, and borderline-goofy to secretive and deadly serious when the situation calls for it. There’s also Eli “Weevil” Navarro (Francis Capra), the leader of a local biker gang from the wrong side of the tracks who engages in some mutual backscratching with Veronica.
The character who stands out the most — aside from Veronica, of course — is Logan Echolls (Jason Dohring). Like Kristen Bell, Dohring is endlessly engaging. He’s introduced as an “obligatory psychotic jackass”, but as the season progresses, Logan’s humanized without being watered-down; even when he’s doing something as thoroughly loathesome as bribing a homeless vet to join in on his homebrew Bumfights video, there’s an undercurrent of understanding why Logan is the way he is. The character changes throughout the season, but the shift feels deserved and natural, not just because that’s what’s scrawled on the whiteboard in the writing room.Other guest stars throughout the season include Napoleon Dynamite’s Tina Majorino as computer whiz Mac, Aaron Ashmore as a love interest with a shady past, Logan’s movie star family (played by Harry Hamlin, Lisa Rinna, and Alyson Hannigan), Anthony Anderson, Zachary Ty Brian, Joey Lauren Adams, Jonathan Taylor Thomas, and, in a shameless bit of stuntcasting, Paris Hilton. 
The fact that the second episode of Veronica Mars manages to be really good despite a Paris Hilton guest spot really is a testament to how good a series this is. Oh, and, in true Laura Palmer fashion, just because Lilly Kane is dead doesn’t mean that Amanda Seyfried can’t rear her head in nearly every other episode.The conclusion to most of the mysteries caught me by surprise. Throughout the entire season, the only time I correctly guessed the culprit was in “Lord of the Bling”, and even then, the motivation and execution were well out of my reach. The many twists the stories take are clever, and watching these episodes a second time, I could spot all sorts of clues and hints that didn’t seem that important the first time through. Veronica Mars is a series that’s easy to dive into as a marathon, but for viewers catching these episodes for the first time, I’d recommend drawing it out a bit.
Bones very quickly garnered rave reviews and amassed a loyal following. Bones is loosely inspired by real life forensic anthropologist and author Kathy Reichs. This funny, clever, sometimes gross, and totally addictive crime drama centers around forensic anthropologist Dr. Temperence Brennan (Emily Deschanel), who toils out of the Jeffersonian Institution and, on the side, writes mysteries starring her fictional heroine (and here’s the twist) Kathy Reichs. Because Brennan has an almost supernatural ability to generate accurate assumptions based on her examination of the corpse’s bones, she is often consulted by the FBI on difficult, seemingly unsolvable cases. She is frequently partnered by brash wiseacre FBI Special Agent Seely Booth (David Boreanaz), who seems to hold a bias against science and those who practice in that field. It’s Booth who breezily saddles Brennan with the nickname “Bones.” Naturally intuitive and freewheeling, Booth immediately is at odds with the clinically analytical Brennan. But, despite their personality clashes, and with the aid of Brennan’s gifted and quirky colleagues, the cases do get solved.
It’s no great secret that the palpable chemistry between Deschanel and Boreanaz is what actually propels the show and is what separates it from the other, more formulaic, dispassionate crime dramas. Every week, fans tune in for the leads’ deliciously caustic banter more so than for the weekly dose of mystery. You see, the mystery jones can be fixed by viewing any other one of the gazillion forensic dramas so currently prevalent on the airwaves. So the mystery is basically the MacGuffin that drives the show forward. But the cantankerous chemistry – that palpable “something” between the two leads as they hilariously bicker and wrangle – is definitely unique to this show.
And David Boreanaz. Yeah, I found it difficult going, at first, watching him in a new role, seeing as how I’m a fan of Buffy and Angel. But it helps that Booth isn’t much like our vampire with a soul. This ex-Army Ranger Special Agent is breezy, personable, and outgoing, not brooding, tortured, and introspective like Angelus. So, the transition, while disconcerting for me, was ultimately smooth enough. Boreanaz brings such command, self-assurance and charm to his character that I bought into it soon enough. My favorite episodes are the pilot episode, where we are introduced to the cast; “The Man in the Fallout Shelter” – the team is quarantied together in the Jeffersonian during Christmas and we learn personal stuff about the characters; “Two Bodies in the Lab” – character development galore in this episode as Brennan dates on-line and is targeted while she works on two cases; “The Superhero in the Alley” – a decomposed body is found wearing a superhero costume; and “The Woman in Limbo” – a gripping, emotional season finale as Brennan discovers shocking facts about her parents.