Chuck: Season 4 sees lots of change for all of the characters. For starters, Chuck is finally able to track down his elusive mom, Mary Bartowski (Linda Hamilton), but she isn't what he first thought. She seems to have gone rogue from the CIA and is now working with evil arms dealer Alexei Volkoff (Timothy Dalton), but Chuck should know by now that nothing is ever as it seems. Amazing revelations will come to light about both Mary and Volkoff and, through it all, Chuck will manage to make a nemesis out of Volkoff's daughter, Vivian (Lauren Cohan).
Meanwhile, Ellie (Sarah Lancaster) and Awesome (Ryan McPartlin) become parents to baby girl Clara. Chuck is hiding from Ellie the fact that he is still a spy, but before the season's end, Ellie will be hiding a few secrets of her own, when she gets her hands on her dad's old laptop and starts trying to crack the Intersect, although without Chuck's knowledge.
After last season's explosive ending with the Buy More being blown up, Jeff (Scott Krinsky) and Lester (Vik Sahay) are on the run, as they believe they are wanted for the crime. However, the CIA decides the Buy More is a perfect cover and rebuilds it completely, manning it with super-efficient CIA personnel. Before the customers (and the bad guys) figure things out, General Beckman (Bonita Friedericy) brings in Morgan Grimes (Josh Gomez) to manage the store and he fills the place with the usual suspects, including Jeff, Lester, and Big Mike (Mark Christopher Lawrence) as his Assistant Manager. Running the Buy More will be the least of Morgan's worries as his role as spy-in-training only continues to grow under the tutelage of the ever-grizzled John Casey (Adam Baldwin). Morgan's relationship with Alex (Mekenna Melvin), Casey's daughter, also continues to blossom, much to Casey's chagrin, and Casey must come to terms with the fact that he must finally reveal himself to his wife, Kathleen, who has thought him dead all these years.
Chuck will have to not only deal with the pressures of proposing to Sarah and hoping she says yes, but also to losing the Intersect and getting it back again several times. However, the most important event of the season is Sarah (Yvonne Strahovski) and Chuck's impending wedding and there is a ton of drama to be had, including the reappearance of Sarah's father (Gary Cole) and the reunion of Sarah's old team, the Cat Squad (a la Charlie's Angels) including familiar face, Karina. This is a great episode, as is one on Casey's old team, basically the A Team. It seems the writers had a blast with crazy episodes this season and they are chock full of guest stars, including Dolph Lundgren, Ana Gasteyer, Robert Englund, Eric Roberts, Summer Glau, Richard Chamberlain and much more.
Chuck: The Complete Fourth Season crams in a good many special features, with deleted scenes, a gag reel, featurettes on Josh Gomez and his learned spy tricks and one of Zach Levi and the episode he directed. There's also a series of webisodes on Jeff and Lester and their elusive search for Halo Reach, plus Chuckipedia, where an episode has not only snippets of video commentary from creator Chris Fedak, Zach Levi and Josh Gomez, but also interviews and back story on the Buy More, Chuck in general and, of course, Jeffster. Something new this season is something similar to Season Play where you pop in a disc and it remembers where you left off and prompts you to start there or pop in the next disc, if needed. While this is great for just running through the series, I wanted to see the deleted scenes after each episode and it was difficult to get back to the main menu until I had seen all the shows on that disc. In the future, I wish they'd simply put all the special features on the last disc and be done with it. My only other bone to pick with Chuck is the ridiculous number of product placements. I mean, do we really need to have the Subway sandwiches described in living color? Also, Chuck seems to be Toyota and Dell Computer's bitch. At least we don't have to listen to a pitch of the computers like we do the vehicles. Sheesh.
As for Blu-ray over standard DVD, Chuck and company visit some fantastic places this season and the Blu-ray makes things pop ever so nicely. Since this is a McG production, you know you're in for plenty of explosions, so why not see them in the best possible format? Once again, Chuck is always loaded with cutting-edge indie music and this season is no slouch. Plus you can hear every bone-crunching punch in surround sound.
Just like every season finale, Chuck leaves us wanting more as they throw in just one more wacky twist, this one involving Morgan. I can't wait to see what Chuck: Season 5 has to offer.
