Just a few episodes ago, we were introduced to this seasons Big Bad, Alexei Volkoff (played by the former Bond, Timothy Dalton).  His big reveal was saved for the end of the episode, so we weren’t given a lot of time to get to know him for who he really is.  Needless to say, whatever your expectations were, Monday’s episode most likely shattered them.

Team Bartowski captures Chuck’s mother Mary, aka Agent Frost (Linda Hamilton!), which brings down the wrath of Volkoff on the Buy More.  His men infiltrate the store (thanks to Jeff’s odd back shaving fetish), and quickly take over.  Volkoff goes from a seemingly charming criminal to an absolute mad man in seconds.  He makes it perfectly clear he’s insane and will kill everyone, including Frost, unless he gets what he wants.  The man had my full attention.

And what does Volkoff want?  The love of his life.  Frost.  He’s completely deranged, and Dalton plays it perfectly.  He’s up one second, down the next.  Volkoff’s mind must be like a roller coaster.  It’s only because of his strange love that he doesn’t kill Chuck and Sarah when he finds out Chuck is Frost’s son!  And then he learns about Ellie!  And then he gets crazier and wants to have dinner with the whole family, because (as he put it) “kids love me!”

The dinner at the Bartowski’s was a great sequence.  Even though Chuck and Sarah had no choice but to bring Volkoff to Ellie and Devon’s place, how could you not enjoy watching Volkoff playing charades so vigorously?

The show made two pretty obvious references to famous movies.  One took it’s time and had a good payoff, the other was rushed and fell flat.  The latter of which being Linda Hamilton giving the “Come with me if you want to live” in.  The first, and much better, was Morgan slowly become John McClane from Die Hard.  Starting with him running through the Buy More air ducts in a wife beater and no socks, having him step on metal fastener to hurt his feet, and finally taping a gun to his back, but having put it too far down to reach.  Very well done.

Speaking of that gun, both Chuck and Morgan were seen with real killing weapons, not jusProxy-Connection: keep-alive
Cache-Control: max-age=0

tranquilizers.  Are either those two going to kill somebody one of these episodes?
%Proxy-Connection: keep-alive
Cache-Control: max-age=0

At the end of the episode, Devon had a big moment of telling Chuck off for bringing the spy stuff into his home.  He handed over Steve Bartowski’s computer for Chuck to look after.  This leads to Chuck solving a riddle and receiving the Intersect again.  I was disappointed with this sequence.  We were teased earlier about Morgan and Chuck taking defense classes, which is where I wanted the show to go.  Now it’s just back to status quo I guess.  Maybe it’s an upgraded Intersect that let’s Chuck access it whenever he wants.  Either way, we have to wait til January 17th for a new episode!  Argh, that’s so long!