I liked this episode. Chuck asks Sarah if they are ever going to be a real couple and she says no. Chuck is obviously devastated and I was worried they would end the episode there with no resolution. Then Chuck breaks up with her (stop posing as bf and gf) and hooks up with Lu. Who knew he had the stones? We then find out that Sarah probably does have real feelings for Chuck. The writers are not letting the formula of the show get old and predictable.
My biggest quibble with this episode was near the end with the poison. All of the characters had been poisoned and had seen the green vial of antidote. When offered a yellow vial which the villain said was the antidote, John and Sarah were both going to drink it, and Chuck objects and says make the villain take it first. Didn’t John and Sarah go to spy school?
Wouldn’t it have been better if the false antidote was also green? We are supposed to be talking about supervillains here who should be smart. Chuck could have still objected, but John and Sarah wouldn’t have looked like complete morons.
Are you kidding? Sexual tension and unspoken feelings and fraught glances interrupted, coupled with the horny guy endlessly frustrated by the woman whose sexuality is casually paraded though she’s completely oblivious, are as old and cliché as it gets. What would have been relatively innovative is if she’d said “okay, let’s do it”, they gave it a shot, neither of them particularly enjoyed it and they spoke no more about it.
Or they did enjoy it, decided to go for the occasional ride in future and invested no emotional value in it whatsoever. Not likely for an 8 p.m. timeslot, though, barely removed from the After-School Special hour as it is.
Agreed. The sooner they deal/dispense with that particular storyline, the better, says I. Sandwich girl is going to end up being evil next week, I bet.
But that annoying bit of cutesyness is not enough to detract from the unalloyed pleasure of watching Adam Baldwin sitting in his old-man-pajamas with his spy gear and his portrait of Ronnie Reagan looking on.
And he got rid of the evil assistant manager! Hee!
Jeez, another female hobbit. Normally I side with the brunettes, but Sarah has Lou beat in every way, aesthetically. Chuck starts dating Lou, he’ll have neck and back problems within the month.
What happened - Harry’s actor get another job (I know what happened in the show)?
And Big Mike! Damn, he’s good. I’m jealous. I guess “diddling” makes the 8:00pm slot, but “tapped that ass” is still out.
I enjoyed the episode. The villain was very familiar and I realized he was the “Hobbit Lover” from Clerks II. Kevin Weisman. My daughter said, “he looks like a giant dwarf”. I had to agree.
I get the feeling Bryce is not gone, but I doubt he is the one in the coffin.
I thought the show made Sarah look stupid. The antidote bit and the “is there any chance for us reply”, to only find out she probably lied.
Chuck grabbing the bug to say he found the secret to lure the killer back was made very funny by John’s line. (from memory) “That was very clever, if you do it again, I’ll kill you!”
I was surprised Harry Tang written out.
Anyone else wondering is the government is actually going to compensate Chuck for his work and time and is he ever going to think to ask?
Kevin Weisman was also the ‘nerd’ character from the show Alias. Also the Harry Tang actor is concurrently on the Showtime show Dexter which I’ve recently stopped watching. (maybe I’ll get back to it)
Both characters are pretty low in terms of importance, but I don’t know where Dexter shoots. (Takes place in Miami, and has lots of outdoor shots…still, I don’t know)
Kevin Weisman is also playing a camera man on Moonlight! He was one of my favorites from Alias so was very glad to see him on Chuck last night.
Still completely enjoying every episode. Loved the hilarity of the truth serum, especially for Ellie “Chuck, you need to get a haircut, your hair is making funny animal shapes” and Chuck “Your chin was chiseled by Michaelangelo himself.”
Loved the fact that Casey does like Chuck - he totally gave it away under the truth serum when he said he wouldn’t shoot Chuck (which is great, since his boss pretty much told him he might have to kill Chuck later). Of course, Chuck would never believe Casey considers him, well, if not a friend at least not easily killable and replies “oh right, don’t waste a bullet we’re all dead anyway” as if THAT were the reason why Casey wouldn’t shoot him.
I definitely enjoy the Chuck/Sarah interactions and I really believed he was going to put the liplock on her in the end. Kudos to the writing team for not going for the easy kiss! Sarah’s big smile when Chuck told her she was pretty and the look in her eyes when Chuck broke up with her - I think the actress is doing an excellent job. Also loved her happy smile when she raised her hand as the best locksmith. Her character is normally so…dour, it was good to see some happy energy.
Musical choices were also top notch - Toxic during the search for the antidote, Fresh Feeling during the emotional scene, just great.
Not to sure how I feel about the addition of Lou (surely evil??) and I will DEFINITELY miss Harry Tang (what a great character!).
Him and Baldwin may be the only things that makes the show watchable for me. I’d skip it entirely, but the last time I did that I got distracted and missed the opening minutes of Heroes.
As I was watching this, I got an idea for an OP: Plot vs. Character*.
What I mean is, the plot this week, and over the past few weeks, well, it’s really stoopid. It’s only there to develope character. Notice how the perfect relationship 'tween Ellie and Awesome is not so perfect after all. She has her issues that have never been voiced before and so both those characters got a little bit richer and more interesting.
Strahovski is doing an amazing job going from steaming sex object, to tough spy girl to vulnerable love interest. Small, small shifts in her acting deepens the character as weeks go by.
And most importantly, it’s possible to be a geeky guy and still attractive. Lou coming on to Chuck made perfect sense. He’s actually quite good looking, but shy around girls, he doesn’t have an obvious macho/jock appeal and is aware of that. The shy and fumbling persona is quite interesting and I know enough real guys who are just like that and have been very successful with the ladies.
Chuck is my first ‘must-see’ on my PVR every week.
*I don’t think I’ll get around to it.
I’ve been watching it on the internet and really enjoying it. (They have the latest four episodes on the NBC Web site; the latest ep is supposed to be up by 5:00 a.m. Tuesday mornings.)
I’m not watching it for anything deep, just for the entertainment. Still, I think there are enough twists to make it more interesting than average. I agree that the truth serum made it easier to show the state of the relationships. It was fun to see Ellie get all worked up about so many things. And to have Awesome actually listen to some of what she was saying.
Good move bringing Lou into the picture. That makes it harder to resolve the Chuck-Sarah story line. It’ll be interesting to see where they go from here.
You make a good point here. I was wondering why I liked the show so much despite the despicably unrealistic plot (why keep all the government secrets on one computer anyway? With no back up?)
It is definitely because of the strong acting. Casey, Sarah, Big Mike and Captain Awesome are good characters because the actors play them really well. Sarah especially is my favorite. She can’t let Chuck know how she feels because that is what she is trained to do. She is good at keeping her emotions from interfering with her work. Too good. The actor that plays her keeps it consistent from scene to scene, whether she’s in a gun fight or alone or is getting dumped by Chuck. It’s a nice break from the chicks are emotional stereotype.
I’ll forgive the plot of the show as long as they keep up the good acting. Just like I keep forgiving the acting on Heroes as long as they keep up the good plot.
What I was referring to was the relationship of Chuck constantly pining for Sarah, and Sarah always rejecting him. That would get old. The new love triangle may be a cliche, but it is interesting and certainly unexpected to me.
Sarah and Chuck can’t ever get together. Once they resolve that sexual tension there is no show. It would then go under the Jumped the Shark category of “they did it.” Previous examples would be Moonlighting, Cheers and Remington Steele.
Anyone have any ideas about how they’ll do a season 2 for this show? I mean, the premise is that Chuck is an “everynerd” who gets unwittingly pulled into the world of espionage.
My theory:
Chuck gets some sort of “Men-in-Black”-type of memory swipe to remove the info from his brain (which will also erase large chunks from the past year from his memory). But then he again unwittingly opens an email attachment and gets a new set of secrets and has to go through this all again, with little bits of memory flashing back on occasion, which leads him to wonder if he and Sara have some sort of past.
Why spoiler a wild-assed guess? Personally, I don’t think your speculation is even in the realm of possibility, but I’ve been wrong before (specifically, February 18, 1989).
I’m not taken with Sarah as much as others, and Captain Awesome is annoying. Chuck, Big Mike, Morgan (!), and Anna all ably support the real star - CASEY. The rest are fillers.
They will be overjoyed if the get picked up for a second season and iron out the details then. I would imagine that they won’t mind milking his data past the point of where it makes sense, but as the series progresses he will become more skilled at espionage and maybe even get some training.
So far, he has mainly been just lucking into things coincidentally. This is already strained the fabric of reality of the show and pushed into the realm of just sit right back and enjoy the tale.
No difference. Just makes no sense as nothing is being spoiled, and makes ultra-lazy me have to reach waaayyyy over to my mouse to highlight the box. I think I expended 1/100 of a calorie doing that, and I was winded.
They said in the first episode that they were rebuilding the intersect, but it would take at least 6 months, so until then, they need to stick with Chuck and keep him alive. Seemed like they were setting it up for a crisis to come about the end of the season, where the new intersect was up and running and Chuck was…redundant and still had classified information in his head. At that point, just how much do Sarah and Casey like him?
