Even though the final two season three episodes of Chuck were aired together last night in a marathon, we're going to review each separately with mini-reviews, starting with the first half  "Chuck Versus the Subway," which ironically had zero Subway references.

The episode was all about setting up Shaw and Justin as bad guys within the CIA and making Chuck, Sarah, Casey and Beckman incapacitated.  Along the way, it also introduced us to Casey's surprisingly hot daughter, Alex, and killed poor Stephen Bartowski, and brought Ellie in on the secret.

Just when all seemed hopeless for our hero as he lost his governor and was being shipped away with his handlers, we were shown the new underdog team of Ellie, Awesome and Morgan "planning" a rescue.  It was a fun note to end an episode on, but we would have preferred if the episode simply ended with Chuck feeling all was hopeless.

To us, the first half was certainly the stronger of the two episodes with most of the major events happening (that we listed above) and it set up a very clever way for Shaw to capture the team.  Even if it was all just setup for the finale, it was a great setup.

Our rating as well as our favorite Chuck lines from the hour are after the jump.

Jeff: That's my dream come true: Ellie is exactly like Chuck but with lady parts. | permalink

Ellie: Morgan Grimes? The guy who took my pillow as his date to junior prom knows more about my family than I do? | permalink

Awesome: And you can blame CIA for my bachelor party. Stripper? She was an agent. Told you I didn't cheat. Faithful. | permalink

Eric Hochberger is the programmer of TV Fanatic, so please forgive his mediocre writing. His programming is far better. Follow him on Twitter and/or email him. Just don't request threaded comments. They're coming.