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Chuck: Chuck versus the Suitcase
“Chuck, beautiful women have a lot of baggage. You should be happy Walker’s just a suitcase.â€
Last week’s episode wasn’t the best episode ever. Not bad, just not stellar. But Chuck’s second entry had everything I hope for in a great Chuck episode: a glitzy, funny mission; a wacky McGuffin; and not one, not two, but three emotional arcs. I even loved the BuyMore antics. And they all tied together in a beautiful funny package.
Chuck and Sarah were hilarious working together, without Casey, and with only one flash. Even though Chuck sometimes brings way too much of his own baggage to their missions, they did a fabulous job, as even General Beckman was willing to admit. I particularly enjoyed that the writers didn’t just fall back on the jealous girlfriend trope: Sarah was genuinely worried that Chuck was starting to have concerns about her lack of rootedness. This neatly resolved in 42 minutes, but there was a bit of tension here (even though it’s nice to see that Chuck has moved beyond the will-they-or-won’t-they plot). Chuck may be more willing to settle down than Sarah is, and that could provide some wacky hi-jinks later down the road.
Casey is struggling with settling down as well. Even though he feels at home—well, as at home as that cave in Afghanistan—he hasn’t really set down roots in Burbank. (Insert bonsai tree joke here.) But he’s starting to connect with Alex, which means that hilarity will ensue when Morgan and Alex start to have some off-hours fun. (That’s just a guess, not a spoiler. I avoid spoilers.) At least Morgan’s an even better catch than before, what with his new managerial responsibilities and flashy nametag.
The arc that really got me is Ellie and her mother. Ellie talks a tough game to Awesome, but Chuck knows the truth: Ellie misses her mom, no matter how many problems there may be in their relationship, and no matter that Mama B wasn’t there to help raise Chuck. Did you notice that most of the pictures Ellie looked at were of Chuck with his parents, not her? Ellie’s relationship with her mom is about her own nascent motherhood, her relationship with Chuck, her relationship with Scott Bakula. Mothers and daughters, dude. Mothers and daughters and Scott Bakula, I’m tellin’ ya.
But enough with the deep emotional stuff: Jeff and Lester are back and better than ever. (Except that I might boycott if I have to see Jeff’s chest ever again.) And, just like last season’s “Chuck versus the Three Words,” this episode tied in with this week’s Gossip Girl, which also featured a fashion theme (Fashion’s Night Out) and an awesome catfight (between Serena and Blair).
Speaking of that catfight: no, I won’t. Just watch it and watch it again. Fabulous!
Bytes: (This list was originally two kilometers long, but in the name of all that is holy and American, I cut it down to mere inches.)
- General Beckman: “Colonel Casey, after the Yves Saint Laurent incident, you will obviously have to sit this one out.â€
- Casey: “Stab one guy with a stiletto…â€
- Morgan: “Lots of things you can do with a Roomba.†This reminded me of “Lots of things you can do with a stopwatch.†(Torchwood)
- Sarah: “Chuck, if we hadn’t stopped that bomb, your last words to me would have been about my weird unpacking thing.â€
- Chuck: “Hey, Spiderman kiss?†There was a Spiderman kiss in The O.C., too.
- Lester: “We’ve been taking gigs at the Whisper Lounge in exchange for scraps of tapas.â€
- Jeff: “We live here now, in the wild, with my van.â€
- Lester: “It’s not all bad. I’ve been expanding my understanding of the universal mind. Jeff has a new pet rock named Bruce. I asked him why ‘Bruce,’ and he said it’s because when he hits it, it doesn’t ‘bruce.’â€
- Jeff: “My water just broke.â€
- Jeff: “Is there room in that womb for two?†Ugh. And again: ugh.
And Pieces:
- Zachary Levi has an odd was of pronouncing “Achilles.â€
- This week’s Greta was hilarious. As were the acrobatic CIA/BuyMore employees.
- Hey…smart bullets, Achilles’ heels, tiny targeted areas that require an ace shot…symbolism?
- And Lou Ferrigno? Perfect. Just perfect.
- I hope Chuck and Morgan removed the tranq darts from Jeff and Lester before dragging them on the ground. Ouch!
- Ellie looked pretty in the flowered dress, but it didn’t fit her character.
Four out of four sequins.
(By the way, you might be wondering who I am. I’m Josie Kafka, and I review Chuck, Fringe, and The Vampire Diaries for billiedoux.com. And now, thanks to the goodwill of the chucktv masterminds, I’m recapping Chuck here, too!)
I thought the top 3 things to do with a roomba was a slight reference to High Fidelity’s top 5 lists of anything. You know, salesmen who have nothing better to do. 😀
This episode was kinda a disappointment..Nothing to bring the main plot forward and a weak “a-story”.. Sorry for saying this but their stunt casting is really getting out of hand.. They bring in celebrities that doesn’t contribute to the plot in anyway.. Like Pinchot(did i spell that right?).. we saw him for like 2 secs and he didn’t do ANYTHING at all.. And it seemed like Lou Ferrigno was there just so that they could say “We had Lou Ferrigno on the show”.. I don’t know maybe that’s just me…
I didn’t enjoy this episode at all either but I have no problem with the stunt casting because they seem to get free publicity that way, and Chuck needs all the publicity it gets since they rarely ever get advertised.
I second that. The “A” storyline was rather weak, and the only well used guest star was Isaiah Mustafa. Karolina Kurkova can’t act, but hey, she’s a model, right? One can not expect massive acting skills. Lou Ferrigno was nice, and the slapping scene was hilarious, but his character wasn’t necessary. And I just feel sorry for Bronson Pinchot. Poor guy, he probably taped some scenes with actual lines but they were edited out, so I am sorry for him for having 2 secs screentime.
I still don’t get why Sarah didn’t shoot to kill Sophia. She shot twice in her direction, but chose to shoot something else to “scare” (?) her away.. it just seemed too forced just to allow them to meet the bikini supermodel again on the second half. The catwalk fight was actually awesome.
And I thought it was sweet that when Chuck asked for a spiderman kiss, Sarah said “no”, instead of “what?”, and that shows that she is already more involved in Chuck’s nerd world, at least enough to know what the spiderman kiss meant.
I also enjoyed this episode more than the premiere one. It seemed to flow along better. I was so happy to have almost all of the original ‘Chuck’ cast members in this episode. It is truly an ensemble show.
It seemed light hearted and fun until towards the end when Ellie was looking at the photo album. Great job, by the way, of making all the photos look so authentic. I cannot believe how much Ellie (Sarah Lancaster) looks like her mom (LInda Hamilton) in the last photo. It almost looked like Ellie in that picture, to me anyway. After seeing these photos, it makes me so sad that Papa Bartowski is gone. I actually feel alittle empty knowing that Scott Bacula is no longer on the show ( unless there will be flash backs), still it will not be the same without him playing that wonderful character. That is one aspect of the show that truly disappoints me.
All in all though, great episode. Time just flew by watching this one.
Goes to dictionary. Looks up nascent. 🙂
A fun stand alone episode for me I enjoyed it. But like everyone else, I’m looking forward to more drama and excitement from the Mama B and Volkoff side of the rails. Hurry up monday. 🙂
I liked this episode a lot. It was a little less campy than the premiere, and I liked the tension and then the resolution.
Chuck actually flashes twice, once on the safe and once to take out the five guys after stealing the dress. Why the safe code would be in the flash, or how that works, I’m not too sure on, especially since Sarah had code-cracking equipment on it first. On the other hand, Chuck pulled a few stunts on those men before flashing, so he’s really become a decent spy apart from the intersect.
Other observations: good to have Jeffster back, and Skip and the rest of the Buymorons (the nameless awkward kid who didn’t get a high five). That scene was hilarious. It’s also good to see General Beckman debrief the team on site. Greta was hilarious and extremely good looking, and I loved the whole scene with Morgan and Beckman observing how efficient everything was.
Overall, a solid episode. The three storylines were well balanced, and the last 10 minutes were a great wrap up in addition to introducing plot points for future episodes.
He’s actually not nameless, his name is Fernando. http://chuck-nbc.wikia.com/wiki/Fernando I did feel bad for him being left hanging there, both hands up, and gettin’ no love.
Fernando! That guy always makes me smile just by being there. Thank you for posting that link.
Does anyone actually refer to Isiah Mustafa’s character as “Greta”? I watched the ep twice and can’t recall hearing the name uttered.
He was never called Greta, but it was on his nametag.
Ahh…good eye, Mel.
I’m also perplexed by the slippage of the timeline in the show. Last week it was the “6/9 month anniversary” and the “1994” flashback caption. This week Chuck says that it’s “only” been 8 months since Sarah moved in, which would take us back to late January. But she moved in on the 3rd of May at the end of “the Role Models”. It’s not as if these are back-references to the uncertain airing times of season 3 with the post-“Mask” hiatus for the Olympics. The season 4 eps were written and filmed with full knowledge of the season 3 airdates and could have reflected this. Is this an intentional mindgame they are playing with the fans? If so, I’m hoping they begin to let us in on the secret.
I think the wonky Chuck/Sarah dating timeline is simply in service of their story arc this season. If they have been dating for a few extra months story-wise than what we saw on screen it legitimizes a lot more of the issues it seems they will be facing as a couple this season. Things that might come up further along in a relationship than say if they had only been dating 3-5 months etc. I’m willing to forgo that since it provides some good storytelling opportunities for them, but the 1994 flashback stamp aggravated me more when I had the time to go back and think about it. Based on Chuck’s age there is just no way the math works at all.
The 1994 caption is just too wacky. When I went back and watched “the Best Friend†from season 2, I noticed that there’s a flashback scene where an 11 or 12 year old Chuck saves Morgan from being beaten up by a girl, and the caption reads “1992″. Yet “the Anniversary†flashback caption is dated 1994 and shows Chuck to be 2-3 years younger!
I agree with DoctorBob and Panda. It always irks me when pre-established timelines get ignored. You expect that on a soap opera–like a kid is born and then two years later they are already 10 years old. Maybe someone ought to make a list for the new writers of the episodes from the previous seasons that contain key information about character backstory…like a cheat sheet.
The 1994 mistake in anniversery must have been intentional because it was written by Chris Fedak.He cowrote Ring 2 and set the date of the flashbacks in that episode to 1990 I belive and and in it Chuck brakes his moms necklace and a few days later she leaves.Either Chris has a bad memory for dates or he is playing the fans.
The Chuck/Sarah timeline is easy. They started dating 9 months ago. It was a 6/9 month anniversary, because in 401 they were apart for 3 months on missions during that montage (wasn’t super clear though). Sarah moved in with Chuck roughly a month after they started seeing each other, thus 8 months since she moved in.
Ignore the airdates and its pretty clear…as for the Chuck/mom leaving dates…I just ignore it.
Ignoring pre-established timelines and airdates is easier said than done for the numerous fans who have been conditioned by past practice to notice such things. We were conditioned to do this by the very modus operandi that the show used in building the mythology. So often, things were left unsaid, and we had to decipher by a facial gesture. So often, the humour was subtle or a key fact revealled itself in what seemed at the time to be an insignificant remark. So often, new facts seemed to appear after a second watching of the episode. So we paid attention to timelines, often helping us to build backstories for characters about whom the writers exposed little. And the airdates were important enough to have Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas (oops, “Holiday”) and Valentines episodes. This has always been a show that appeals to the intelligence of the viewer. For the writers to think that we wouldn’t notice or wouldn’t care about sloppy timelines is unflattering.
Agreed Doctor Bob! I’m not trying to be picky and in fact I usually hate people who harp on television timelines because I get it; it’s fiction not reality. But the 1994 date stamp really is unbelievable. And Doctor Bob is right in that sometimes they help you build back story etc., as is the case with Sarah where we had little definite info about her character. I mean in Chuck’s case though, there has been more definite information provided regarding his character. If you pause one of the flash scenes in the episode where they all go back to Stanford in Season 1 you can see Chuck’s actual birth date and year. You could also approximate it from the flashback at the end of that episode I think where it shows him meeting Bryce Larkin his freshman year at Stanford. It’s hard to make the argument that they couldn’t have come up with a more reasonable date stamp for Vs. Anniversary
So not noticing references in the show to the passage of time is sloppiness and extreme laziness on the part of the fans complaining, that didn’t notice then? I really dislike it when fans talk about laziness and sloppiness as I can make the same argument in reverse. It just becomes a justifcation for an issue that the fan has with the show, if it bothers you ok but ‘laziness and sloppiness’ come on. This is also why banging on and on about timelines can kill a fans enjoyment of the show.
The fans who don’t notice timelines probably didn’t care about the mistakes. Fans who have no interest in the discussions regarding timelines needn’t have their enjoyment of the show killed since timelines don’t matter to them anyhow. My remarks about sloppiness in the timelines are not directed at fans who did not notice them, rather at the writers or fact checkers on the show who missed these details. I apologise if my comments were ambiguous to the point where you were misled as to their intent.
Good episode, not great. But that’s the idea. Not all episodes are, or should be, ultra intense. The first two episodes seem to laying a lot of ground work, much of that mentioned in the reviews already. I also feel they are setting up a SUPER PARALLEL between Frost and Orion with Chuck and Sarah. Chuck, though not willing to run out on those he loves like dad did, still is not a cold, unfeeling ruthless spy. Just like dad. But mom coldly blasting Marco away seems to be more like Sarah, not unfeeling, but certainly willing to do whatever it takes to complete the mission. It’ll be interesting to see if this plays out. And what hurdles that presents to the Chuck/Sarah relationship.
Sarah is not cold like Mama B appears to be.She killed Mauser but he threated Chuck and she believed he could carry out the threat.
I agree that Mama B seems to be a bit more cold and calculating type spy than Sarah, especially with the impact Chuck has had on her view of the spy world. But I thought the same thing as russ – that the parallels between Chuck’s parents and Chuck/Sarah’s relationship are pretty significant and I think it’s possible that is one of the angles they will explore this season.
I loved this episode. It was lighthearted, funny, emotional and thoroughly entertaining. I suspect that the real Achilles heal in Chuck and Sarah’s relationship will be the marriage, baby thing.
I hope the achilles is the pace of the “marriage, baby thing” and not that Sarah does not want those things at all. In Chuck vs. the Crown Vic she rather wistfully asks Casey “Don’t you ever just want a normal life? Have a family? Children?” This would seem to indicate that she does want those things eventually.
This is true. She also makes a similar comment to Carina in “the Three Words”.
Josie, I agree with your review on everything except the lack of Casey in Milan; even if it was just for one line uttered from the van. I can totally see why your original list of Bytes was so long, this episode is just brim full of excellent one liners and beautifully played scenes.
I liked it but I am beginning to get tired of all “cat fights” Sarah gets. She hits Dolph Lungren once and he goes down and then she hits a supermodel who is all bones, breaks a mirror with her head and it´s not enough? Seriously…
LOL….good point. I’m a tad worried the new writers aren’t up to speed yet. NBC’s late renewal did not help. I hope to god they just get more “Chuck” like. I agree with the person above who said the stunt casting has gone beyond the pale.
She also drops Lou Ferrigno with one blow. Perhaps a knock-down drag-out in a shower would not have been as interesting as it was with Nicole Richie.
Very funny review, I agree with you more than other reviewers. I thought the whole thing was clever and touching and one of the funniest episodes i have ever seen(second to operation awesome). Great and entertaining reveiw.
Good review Josie. You missed the best line from Lester though when he said “these are not the boys you are looking for”. I am still laughing at that line!
ChuckMe, I’m embarrassed to admit I have no idea what that line refers to. I could tell by the way they said it that it was a quote, but…
It’s from Star Wars: A New Hope.
And the best part of that line in that Morgan’s knee-jerk response is to repeat the line back, just like in ANH. That cracked me up.
Is the picture that sarah keeps in her suitcase from an episode or is it just a picture?
Just a picture. It’s a photo that has been around since I believe season 1, but definitely it shows up in season 2. Not sure, but isn’t one of the fake relationship shots like the one of them at Comic con?
This episode was hilarious, Isaiah Mustafa was amazing(Single-Handed TV Grab!), and the tranq scene with Jeff and Lester was the only scene when my whole family was laughing at the same time. I can’t wait until next week, when we GET TO THE BOTTOM OF THAT RING CLIP THAT NBC KEEPS TEASING US WITH!! But the problem is, if Chuck and Sarah marry, then how can the show go on? I’d expect that in the final- HOLY ERIC CLAPTON!!!
“No one should WANT to work at the Buy More.”
-Morgan
See You Monday and Bring Your Friends,
John
Indiana Buy-Moria Embassy
All Midwest Chuck Fans, LET ME HEAR YOU!!!
Anyone else have a problem with the “buy-morons” working at Buy More alongside the CIA agents? How do they keep the spy world secret from the regular dudes with all the CIA bells and whistles that the new Buy More has?
Was it just me or was the music a bit overwhelming for the first twenty minutes or so?
There were points where I could barely hear the dialogue, thank god for closed captions.
Just wondering.