Season 5 Episode 8: Chuck Vs The Baby

[whiteghost]

the epp. was great!  at this point in the series I don't care too much about the timeline or other such minor details, for myself it is about the show finishing off with some flair and a good feeling for the cast that we all like.

[Srh_Brtwski]

Totally agree.  An amazing episode and ranks as one of my favourites.  So far season 5 is shaping up to be my favourite season, more so than season 4.

Loved how Awesome got Ellie tickets to Les Mis...he has excellent taste in musicals.

Chuck and Sarah carving their names into the house at the end was cute...but they're going to have to pay for the damages...hmmm. .they probably devalued the house too...so they can probably afford it now.

[myasset]

Great episode. I love it. I could tell that LeJudkins wrote this episode even without knowing it before. It's their style and its a fantastic one. I love almost everything about this episode. Sarahs backstory. I've wished for a long time now that Sarah has something in her past that isn't bad. She did a good thing. She lost contact to her mom but it shows that Sarah always was that good person at heart and can make good decisions on her own, even before Chuck. I lost two tears, one: when she told her Mom that the baby should have the life she didn't have. Second time when she sees her mom again. Great chemistry between those two fantastic actresses.
I love that graham was there again
Ellie and Awesome
Morgan and Alex eventhough I still think she forgave him too fast, despite the EllieAwesome intervention yes
Chuck was adorable with that kid. And Sarah with the baby, oh god she really needs to learn how to hold a baby or maybe she did after that singing scene.
Sarah going Lara Croft on the table was also a great scene
The only problem I had were the already messed up timelines and retcons, but I am willing to overlook that.
Finally an episode in season 5 where I have to press the replay-button a couple of times


But one thing I can't understand yet, if her mom is that loveable good person and her dad was the con-artist, why go with dad? Did she think she could save him? Why decide for dad?

[Stargazer]

But one thing I can't understand yet, if her mom is that loveable good person and her dad was the con-artist, why go with dad? Did she think she could save him? Why decide for dad?

This was my biggest beef with this ep. And also the final scene with Graham. Lots of holes in the plot.  I expected much better for such an important Sarah ep, but we didn't really learn WHY her mom couldn't give Sarah all those things she apparently was going to give Molly.   

Look I can understand why people like this ep so much.. but to me the writing was very poor and weak. Sarah deserved much better. 

[armynurseboy]

But one thing I can't understand yet, if her mom is that loveable good person and her dad was the con-artist, why go with dad? Did she think she could save him? Why decide for dad?

Maybe as simple as she's a daddy's girl and wanted to be with him.  And likely didn't understand that what he was offering was not the best for a growing girl until she was much older and it was too late.  Not all that complicated. 

[--deb]

I'd wonder how, working off coordinates, her mother knew which apartment in that complex to go to, but since apparently the only 3 that are lived in are Chuck/Sarah, Casey/Morgan, Ellie/Awesome, I guess it wouldn't matter, huh?

And, seriously, I could watch those last 15 minutes of extended-family happiness over and over.

[whiteghost]

yeah it was nice to see them happy with no bad news or impending doom!

[Nick_Scryer]

I could watch those last 15 minutes of extended-family happiness over and over.

I have watched it a good 10 times already. I just love seeing how Sarah watches Chuck playing with Molly while her biological clock so obviously ticks down.

[Srh_Brtwski]

Modern medical technology means the biological clock no longer matters.

With the right procedures, women over 40 can still give birth to healthy babies.

[Goji]

Yeah, this was definitely an off episode. The violations in back story were problematic, but even in a vacuum I'd have too many issues to like this one. It's like they tried to roll an entire season's worth of sentimentality into one episode and didn't care if they had to ignore any sense of logic to get it away with it. Most of it just comes off as sloppy, particularly how little care the writers exercised in trying to fit the characters of Ryker and Sarah's mom into the establish back story of the show. It could have been made to work, but it wasn't, they didn't even try and I'm not going to ignore that. Sarah's pre-Chuck days have been revisited far better than this.

I didn't even like the fight scenes, which seemed way more brutal than usual (by admission, I could be wrong about this, it just felt that way to me), and were edited in a more "frantic" style. Actually, a lot of the editing/directing didn't work for me, particularly the shot of the tumbler spinning on the board game in castle. Cute, I guess, but it took me right out of the show.

Even the largely unrelated subplot in castle fell flat. I loved "Frosted Tips", but if this is not the end of the "Morgan has to win back Alex" arc, I'm going to retroactively hate it for unleashing this terrible waste of time upon this show's final precious few hours. How I long for the days when Morgan and Anna would break up, *and* get back together, entirely off screen and we'd hear about it in one line of dialogue from Chuck or Big Mike. How I long for Anna period. At least she was funny.

I liked seeing Tony Todd again, even if his scenes were problematic continuity-wise. I liked the scene where Casey and Chuck had to interrogate someone with a phrase book and a borrowed waitress. Everything else revolved around brand-new characters pulled from nowhere with no care given to integrate them organically into the first four seasons' history. As a result, everything the story used them for felt unearned, and that includes all of the emotional beats many fans are praising. Oh well.

I loved last week's episode. This week's made me want to rewatch that one.

[Srh_Brtwski]

AgentMel explained the continuity in a previous post.  No recon here.

And there are logical reasons why Emma introduced Molly to Sarah, not Sam.

Of course I'm standing by my rationale of Sam being a schizoid splinter off of Sarah's personality. 

[Goji]

No offense intended to anyone, but that explanation did not satisfy me, and it did not explain why Sarah would be assigned as Chuck's handler before she ever met him, which would be when she first identified that he had the intersect, and therefore deserved/needed a handler. The writers didn't feel it was important enough to get the details right, I just happen to disagree. Sarah having such a loving, supportive mother who let her daughter live most of her childhood with her drifter, con-man father is a much bigger problem. By comparison, the weak logic of Ryker being her "handler" so late in her espionage career is something I can sort-of live with. Or I can just bypass all the issues and skip this episode when rewatching the show in the future.

[myasset]

Maybe as simple as she's a daddy's girl and wanted to be with him.  And likely didn't understand that what he was offering was not the best for a growing girl until she was much older and it was too late.  Not all that complicated.

could be but it would be interesting to get an explaination for that. I think we won't.

[happydayz]

Maybe as simple as she's a daddy's girl and wanted to be with him.  And likely didn't understand that what he was offering was not the best for a growing girl until she was much older and it was too late.  Not all that complicated.

Yep. Or maybe he just took her and her mom didn't know where she was for a lot of those years. Any number of things could have happened, and while it might be nice to know that bit of Sarah's history I don't think it was required information in order to make the story work here. They were separated, that's all we need to know to understand this part of the story.

[Stargazer]

Maybe as simple as she's a daddy's girl and wanted to be with him.  And likely didn't understand that what he was offering was not the best for a growing girl until she was much older and it was too late.  Not all that complicated.

And why would her apparently responsible and loving mom allow for that to happen?? It's not like a little girl had that choice (to live with a criminal father).  Makes no sense to me, plus it is only a disservice to her character, because it makes Sarah look like a frivolous little girl that loved wild adventures.  I thought part of her backstory was that she was actually FORCED to be part of her father's lifestyle.  She was a victim, and that's why of the reason's that made her character's story compelling.

Any way, hope the following eps are better written and executed.