This week on “Chuck” entitled “Chuck vs. the Hack Off”, Casey and Lester are imprisoned together, Chuck and Sarah discuss life after the spy game, Chuck, Sarah and Gertrude worked together to get a virus in exchange for Casey’s freedom and Jeff and Morgan have a plan to get Lester out of jail.

Chuck vs. the Hack Off" Episode 5.05 - Photo by: Matt Kennedy/NBC

Let’s start with Carrie-Anne Moss as Gertrude Verbanski, which she once again gave a stellar performance. Her scenes with Casey (Adam Baldwin) in the jail closet scenes were romantic and hilarious. Their chemistry is amazing like when Moss perfectly did Baldwin’s Casey grunt. It’s such a shame that this is the final season because I would‘ve loved to see another season of them working together.
Along with her scenes with Casey, Gertrude helped Sarah and Chuck as a favor for Casey in trying to retrieve the virus to Decker in return for charges against Casey to be dismissed. I enjoyed watching the scenes between Gertrude and Sarah where Sarah is trying to start a conservation with Gertrude about her true feelings towards Casey but kept on getting shot down until finally Gertrude couldn’t take it anymore and lets out that she’s in love with Casey. It was such a great hired by “Chuck” producers and hope we get to see Moss one last time before the series wraps up because I really enjoyed Casey and Gertrude as a couple.

Even though it was a little of a stretch that Casey and Lester wound up together in the same detention facility, I had a laugh that Lester was the one that saved Casey from the prisoners that were trying to hurt him because Lester became head honcho of the facility due to watching “Caged Heat“.

It’s interesting to see the setup the writers are planning for Sarah and Chuck when it comes to deciding whether they want to be spies or civilians for the rest of their lives. In this episode, Chuck had to go back to his hacking skills days when he was then known as “The Piranha” because he was in a “hacking duel” with another hacker while Sarah and Gertrude went to get the distribution device. While having this duel, Chuck realizes he was having so much fun being a tech nerd that later on, he tells Sarah that he was thinking of changing Carmichael Industries into a tech company. As for Sarah, during her conversation with Gertrude, she realizes that she doesn’t know what to do with her life outside the spy world. This situation has been brought up in earlier seasons of “Chuck” but now that the series is coming to an end, it will be intriguing to see in the remaining episodes if the both of them find out how to live their lives without being spies or remain spies.

I loved watching Danny Pudi’s cameo where he’s impersonating an Indian/Jewish/Canadian guy (a Hin-Jew) just like Lester, which Jeff and Morgan used Pudi’s character as a plan to make Lester think that they have already found his replacement. After hearing Pudi’s character singing voice, Lester got jealous and had no choice but to accept Jeff and Morgan‘s deal to get out of jail and back working at the Buy More while promising never to poison Jeff again. I wish there were a couple more scenes with Pudi because in this one scene alone he was so hilarious that he made me want to see more of him. Also, how great was it to see another “Community” cast member, Yvette Nicole Brown making a surprise cameo in this episode?
I’m really glad to see Decker (Richard Burgi) gone because after a while, the character got annoying and uninteresting. In addition, I still don’t understand how a villainous man that Decker is (or now was) continued to work for the CIA? I was shock to see how Decker went down by being exploded by Verbanski. It was such a shocking and suspenseful moment that I was in awe and wasn’t paying attention to the following scene where Gertrude was saying goodbye to Casey, which I had to go back and watch that scene. If you would’ve asked me, I thought Decker was going to be “removed” by Casey or maybe Sarah or Chuck, but I approved this decision since I wanted Decker gone anyway.

Overall, “Chuck vs. the Hack Off” was immensely enjoyable to watch from start to finish with a mixture of romance, action, comedy and suspense. The only small problem that I had was Chuck and Sarah trusting Decker where he was going to honor his deal of getting Casey out of jail and it wasn‘t a surprise at all that he double-crossed them at the end. However, it was a nice payoff of seeing Decker being blown to smithereens by Verbanski. Besides that, there weren’t any scenes that I disliked or was bored. In addition, this episode was directed by Zachary Levi, who deserves high praises for delivering a very strong episode. I hope Levi gets the opportunity to direct future projects because he’s a pretty good director from his work on “Chuck“. After a slow start to this final season, it seems like it’s back on track thanks to this fun episode that reminded me why I became a “Chuck” fan.