Season 3 of Chuck finally started up Sunday by airing the first two episodes of the season, followed by a third episode on Monday as the series moved to its actual air time for the rest of the season.  Though there are a few things I am pouting about (which I will get to later), this season is looking like it has lost none of that special Chuck flair during the long break following season 2.

WARNING: TINY SPOILERS ARE LITTERED THROUGHOUT BELOW.  TREAD WITH CARE AND THOSE WHO HAVEN’T WATCHED THE EPISODES YET MAY WANT TO AVOID THIS UNTIL DOING SO.  THE EPISODES ARE UP ON NBC.COM, SO GET TO WATCHING!

Here’s a recap to get you up to speed:  At the end of the second season tensions were high as Chuck hoped to find his kidnapped father (AKA Orion), the one man who can get the Intersect out of Chuck’s brain.  Out of desperation, Chuck and Sarah went rogue in order to get his father back, which brought about a certain situation where their feelings of longing were acted upon a little more freely than usual (though thanks to Morgan things didn’t get too far).  Eventually they find Chuck’s father, bringing him back in time for Ellie’s wedding.  Unfortunately for her this lucky day is ruined thanks to Fulcrum, and only Chuck can save the day, which he eventually does by setting up a wedding on the beach.  Now back to the spy stuff…  To make a long story short Bryce is killed and can no longer become Intersect 2.0, so Chuck acts quickly and imprints himself before destroying the computer.  As we see with the ending scene and Chuck’s newfound skill in Kung fu, not only does this intersect come with flashes of intel, it also provides skill sets.

But enough with season 2; season 3 starts 6 months following all of this, and it is clear that many things are not going according to plan.  Thanks to Chuck’s emotions, he is having trouble controlling his skill-based flashes.  Because of this, the General removes Chuck from his spy training and he is thrust back into a depressing life post Buy More employment.  What’s more is that Sarah is now missing from her place by Chuck’s side.

OKAY, THE SPOILERS ARE GOING TO START POURING OUT NOW BECAUSE I AM GOING TO START RANTING.  CHECK BACK AFTER VIEWING THE EPISODES!

The main change going into season 3 is the upload of skills a la The Matrix, giving Chuck the ability to do a range of things, from playing the guitar to boxing.  Oh yeah, and apparently better flexibility is somewhere in there because I doubt he could do the splits prior to episode 302.  It is going to be interesting to see how this gets integrated into the stories, especially considering that learning to knock out baddies might get overused quickly.  However, so far they seem to be handling it in an interesting manner.  For one thing, it has been mentioned that these skills will not be retained forever following the flash, so to smooth out Chuck as an overall spy Casey and Sarah are forced to stick around (sigh of relief), working besides him during missions and training him during their free time as well.  Also, something else they are doing is playing off Chuck’s lack of the usual spy’s mindset (think Casey).  In other words, his emotions affect his ability to bring on these flashes when they are needed.  Also, Chuck sometimes flashes on random things when he shouldn’t, which comes up humorously in episode 301 when he has to restrain himself from attacking Emmett at the Buy More.  Other times his control doesn’t kick in as quickly and his actions are on autopilot, something that will most likely bring about some really humorous responses during the season.

Because of the importance of what Chuck has downloaded himself with, there is something that has been nagging at me since I first watched episode 301 Sunday.  The first two seasons of this show have all been about protecting Chuck, with numerous threats to put him in an underground facility when things started to get a little too dangerous for him.  So what I don’t understand is that when he doesn’t live up to expectations during his months of spy training, why does the General just cut him loose?  I am assuming he would still be in danger because he is the only Intersect (that I can remember), and has all the government’s secrets still stowed away in his brain, and clearly he is not necessarily going to be able to protect himself when those baddies come a-knocking.  Though I am grateful that we avoided a threat to stash him underground so far, the logic behind this not coming up eludes me.

But now lets get to what’s really bothering me: Chuck and Sarah, or rather, the lack-there-of.  In ep. 301 it is revealed that Sarah asked Chuck to run away with her so he could avoid living the life of a spy and she could live a “normal” life, which Chuck agrees to.  However, after 3 weeks of his training he suddenly goes against everything we know of him and his feelings for Sarah by showing up at the train station only to turn her down.  UGH.  Now this may be because I just rewatched season 2, which included a very passionate make-out session between the two in the second to last episode, showing that everything was finally coming together for them.  And there was much rejoicing among the viewing audience.  But following Chuck turning Sarah down everything is moved back to square one.  As much as I understand his reasoning behind doing what he did (which is eventually all fleshed out in episode 302), I still wanted to smack him across the face because a lot of the resentment could have been avoided if he explained himself better at the train station.  I understand that this works for the series by bringing back the tension between the two that has been going on since the beginning, but because they both know now that they love each other things better move along a lot quicker because I can only take so much longing and moony eyes.  All I know is if it gets stretched out for as long as it is in Bones and Battlestar Galactica (and don’t even get me started on how thing ended between Kara and Lee) someone is going to get punched.  Besides, if Sarah and Bryce could work things out while they were working together then there is hope for Chuck and Sarah sometime in the future, especially when he begins to become a better spy.  But I digress…

Though this digression back to friendship between Sarah and Chuck has got me moping, there is plenty to still be excited about.  So far we have explored the new intersect and how it works (or doesn’t) for Chuck, Carina returns to the excitement of Morgan in episode 302, Captain Awesome is brought into the spy world during episode 303 thanks to his discovery of Chuck’s side job in season 2, and the living situations are being rearranged with Ellie and Awesome moving across the courtyard and Morgan moving in.  Basically, overall season 3 is already turning out some great episodes and looks to continue doing so throughout the weeks to come.

PS:  Just a reminder that Superman (Brandon Routh) is appearing in next weeks episode!  Though the “coming up” video makes it appear that he is going to throw a wrench in my optimistic hopes for Chuck and Sarah thanks to his appearance in numerous episodes, I can’t be too angry because it’s Superman!  Okay, I will contain myself