After ten episodes of 'will he or won't he', Chuck finally becomes a real spy. Sort of.

This review may contain spoilers.

This season of 'Chuck' is different. While creators Josh Schwartz and Chris Fedak promised us that the show's dynamic wouldn't change too much with the Intersect 2.0 and all that entails, the past eleven episodes have proven that claim to be wrong. Sure, there's still the deliciously humorous nerdy moments at every turn (this week gave us "Ivan Drago"), but they seem to be attempts at momentarily hiding the fact that the show's characters are making less and less sense with every new episode.

For example, Sarah (Yvonne Strahovski) has made it perfectly clear that she prefers original recipe Chuck (Zachary Levi) over superspy Chuck. She has even told him that she doesn't like who and what he's changing into. So why then is Chuck so determined to become a real spy so that he can be with Sarah? For a Stanford graduate and supposed genius, Chuck's thought process here doesn't exactly use any type of logic.

While the spies are off not making any sense, Civilian John Casey (Adam Baldwin), aka John Crazy, continues to be the most level-headed character on the show -- even though he's a trigger happy, short-tempered uber conservative.

What Worked
The Subway product integration was far from the worst part of the episode.

What Didn't Work

This episode's "Three Days Earlier" in the beginning was reminiscient of 'Alias' back in the day. However, while this was a technique that worked well its first few times on 'Alias', after awhile, it became overused and predictable. For 'Chuck', despite the fact that the show has beaten this technique like a dead horse, it also became predictable, as well as anti-climactic. Plus, it led to a scene that somewhat mirrored the scene from "Chuck Versus Santa Claus," where Chuck sees Sarah killed a Fulcrum agent -- and, just like now, the short-lived plot that it led to was not at all believable or enjoyable.

Notably absent from this episode were Morgan (Joshua Gomez), Ellie (Sarah Lancaster) and Captain Awesome (Ryan McPartlin) in this episode. And while that was probably for the best given the episode's focus on Chuck becoming a "real" spy, it would have been nice for someone in his civilian life -- out side of Casey -- to remind him that there's a lot more reasons for him to stay in Burbank, living a relatively normal life than there are reasons for him to go into spy world. In fact, if Chuck were to make a list of pros and cons about becoming a spy, the only pro would have been Sarah, and even that's no longer a viable option for him.

Also, while it tends to provide laughs, perhaps the cartoonesque setting of Buy More needs to be dialed back a bit. It's not necessarily a good sign when the funniest part of a spy comedy is in the B-plot, outside of the actual spy storyline.

Giving Credit Where Credit Is Due

"Chuck" stars Zachary Levi, Yvonne Strahovski, Joshua Gomez, Mark Christopher Lawrence, Scott Krinsky, Vik Sahay, Ryan McPartlin, Sarah Lancaster, Adam Baldwin. "Chuck Versus The Final Exam" was written by Zev Borow and directed by Robert Duncan Mcneil.

"Chuck" airs Mondays at 8 p.m. on NBC.