If you didn’t like “Chuck vs. The Aisle of Terror” then you just shouldn’t be watching Chuck.

Yeah, I said it. Boom. Stop watching, because you’re just a complainer and you’ll never be happy. 

You may have noticed, since you’re reading this, that I write a blog about television. That means I also tend to read a lot of other blogs, comments and message boards about television. And I’ve learned one thing from this: people are a bunch of Negative Nancies. Yep. It’s true. People complain that Glee doesn’t have enough plot. Other people complain that it should focus even more on music. People complain that Chuck has too much action. Other people complain that the story isn’t moving along enough. People complain that How I Met Your Mother focuses too much on Ted, other people complain that it relies too much on Barney. My point is, people rarely agree. But the most recent episode of Chuck? If you complained about that, then you just love to nitpick and I don’t want to be your friend.

It was so good! It was funny – Jeff and Lester in charge of the haunted house at the Buy More? Fantastic. It had action – Chuck and Sarah vs. Chuck’s mom was pretty epic. It had heart – literally, Chuck got shot in the heart by his own mother. 

So let’s talk about Chuck’s mom – the is-she-good-or-bad thing has created a lot of awesome suspense. I feel like she’s going to end up good, but the back-and-forth in this episode alone still kept me guessing. The show artfully put the viewers in the same position as Chuck – deep down, we sense that she’s good but right now there’s no way to be sure. 

First Mama Bartowski admitted that she was undercover, and she had contacted Chuck so he could pose as a buyer of a very dangerous weapon. Nice mommy! Even though she was risking a cover 20 years in the making, she didn’t want the dangerous weapon to get out. Then she showed up at the meeting and shot Chuck in the chest. Bad mommy! Then she showed up again and kidnapped Chuck. Bad mommy! BUT, she told him she’d known all along he was wearing a vest, and she led him straight to the weapon and the evil weapon developer, Freddy Kreuger. Good mommy? Then Casey did some digging and found out that she’d gone rogue a long time ago. So for now I guess it’s bad mommy. 

On top of all the Mama Bartowski drama, Chuck had to battle fear and a crazy weapons developer in the Buy More. The super dangerous weapon, which creates intense fear in people, went off in the basement and he was the only one affected. I loved the tie-in of Jeff and Lester’s “Aisle of Terror”, which Chuck and the weapons developer ended up in. Chuck battled through his synthesized fear, but the weapons developer caved to the images that Jeff and Lester had supplied, thanks to a research project Jeff participated in. Rather than traditionally scary things, the images were of old people, babies in costumes, and black licorice. 

Ellie finally got some material to work with as she dealt with a visit from the overbearing and subtly critical Mama Awesome (played brilliantly by Morgan Fairchild) and the anticipation and ultimate disappointment that came with meeting her own mom again. It was pretty sad to watch Chuck and Ellie’s mom get captured just moments before entering the restaurant where her children waited. I hope someone got that Teddy Bear to Ellie.

Chuck broke the news to Ellie that their mom is a spy, which I thought she would have already figured out. I mean, she disappeared. Her dad was a spy. Her brother was/is a spy. You’d think she would have realized it was a bit of a family business. 

This obviously isn’t the end of Mama Bartowski. Hopefully her arrival will mean more great episodes like this one, a lesser reliance on drama in Chuck and Sarah’s relationship, and more episodes that give Ellie something to do other than worrying. Here are some more great lines and moments from the episode: