The chase across continents this week covers Italy and the Aral Sea.

In a solid episode, we see the welcome return of Chuck plus some fallout from his quest to get to the bottom of the portentously- and amusingly-named “CIA-Vatican Connection”. A scene in an old basilica shows lovely cinematography – and evokes some nice suspense. Danny makes a great sounding board for Chuck, in person, on the phone, or simply in his head.

With the bad guys hot on their heels, Lexi and Danny face plenty of action as well. Despite less humor than last week, jokes about cockroaches and dry lakebeds don’t fall totally flat. Hardwick continues to shift his loyalty, but not really. Hardwick’s number one priority remains, as ever, Hardwick. The fight scenes, although perfectly good, suffer in comparison to last week’s great ones.

At one point our heroes suffer a great loss. Rather, they suffer a potential loss, but only potential given the nature of this kind of show. The only trope more annoying than pretending to kill off a character is actually killing them off. Time will tell which applies in this case.

Because of that, though, the episode sparkles a bit less than last week, not due to any inherent flaw but due to hitting plot twists I dislike. Rarely, a show executes one/some of those irritating twists so extraordinarily well as to still garner a superlative ranking from me. Not this time. The job this time, quite well done, nevertheless annoyed and lacked anything exceptional counterbalancing it.

Verdict: Plenty of forward motion but less humor and character. Solid yet not exceptional. 7/10

Rigel Ailur