Dancing With..Chuck!

Well, another season of Dancing With the Stars has come to a close, and the winner is...Helio!

Thankfully, it came down to Mel & Maks and Helio & Julianne, or I would have had to fast forward through even more than I did to get through a bloated finale almost as overstuffed with filler as American Idol. As it was, I skipped through every retrospective, every Dance Wars pimping, Celine Dion (twice) and several of the dancers. I was glad, though, that each of the couples got a full 90 seconds to dance a routine...unless they were Wayne or Floyd, neither of whom actually danced. (Tom called it "Chatting with the Stars". Hee!) Nice to see Albert Reed again, who was ousted WAY too early (thanks again, annoying doll lady!) and Sabrina and Mark, who rocked as per usual. Oh, and Cameron took his shirt off, which I can't complain about. Mark Cuban and Jane Seymour both still annoy the crap out of me, and Wayne scares me almost as much as Marie's god awful routine last night. I'm impressed with myself though: 2 hours of programming, done in 45 minutes.

Watching how truly all of the celebs seem to enjoy each other and how much fun this always looks like it would be, my new goal in life to get just famous enough to be on Dancing With The Stars 17: Bloggers Edition. Do you think Maks would take me?

I guess we'll come back for more in February, when I fear we may have to deal with Donny in Marie's place. Unfortunately, I'm not kidding!

Before I dug into the Dancing finale, I watched Chuck, which aired arguably it's funniest, freshest episode all season. The writing was as crisp as it's ever been and the pace was perfect. There was a perfect blend of comedy and action, as we learned how Bryce was alive, and what the hell was going on. Sort of. There's still no really good reason for Bryce to have sent Chuck the interconnect, especially if his motivation for getting him kicked out of Stanford was to save him from being recruited in the first place. But, at least we now know that Bryce was trying to do the right thing once he figured out his who the Fulcrum really were and wasn't actually rogue. Too bad the scar-guy figured out Chuck was the intersect after all. It would appear that even though Bryce is now deep undercover again, we still may see him again at anytime, which is great news.

I loved how they used Black Friday as a device for moving the spy action into the Buy More, and how the "NSA Cleaners" could fix up all the damage done by the shoot-out. Loved Sarah's struggle over the two guys (I can't blame her one iota), and how it puts Chuck right back at Stanford. Loved every word Casey uttered, and especially his little chat with Awesome, who is really very funny himself ("two words: water sports"). The little c-plot with Morgan and Anna was even cute, as was the whole "Pineapple" scene where they evacuated the store. Really, this is a great show that I enjoy as much as many of my old favorites every week.