Chucktoid: Long-Range Glasses

This post is part of a series of mini insights into Chuck – Chucktoids, if you will – courtesy of G. Walter Bush, author of Unpacking Chuck and Unpacking Chuck 2.0.

To accent the perspective characters gain in particular episodes, long-range lenses are occasionally used as hand props. In one variation, Chuck, posing as assassin Rafe Gruber (“Fake Name”), uses a telescopic rifle scope to observe Sarah reveal her real name and kiss Shaw, even as he reaches a pair of epiphanies. Not only does he immediately realize, “Sam is…my girl, sorta,” but in the very next scene confesses to Ellie that he is “living a lie” with Hannah, agreeing with her assessment that “the truth is that you still have feelings for Sarah.” Hannah is suddenly history.

Other scenes employ binoculars. On the sentimental stake-out during Chuck’s spy test (“Final Exam”), both Chuck and Sarah use a pair to look for the target entering the hotel. Chuck notably lowers his pair just before acknowledging it was his decision not to run with Sarah in Prague that triggered their separation, followed by his plea to pursue a renewed vision of a future together, if Sarah is willing “to give it another shot” (likely a subtle allusion back to the sniper rifle). A visibly moved Sarah, who just moments earlier admits her realization that she will miss Chuck if she leaves with Shaw for D.C., then lowers her own set of glasses, momentarily sharing Chuck’s vision by moving to accept his kiss…until Shaw interrupts.

Binoculars reappear in Season 4 for a similar purpose when Sarah and Casey both use a pair while staked outside Volkoff’s Swiss Alps bunker (“Family Volkoff”). During their discussion about the pre-nup she sprang on Chuck, Sarah lowers her pair to confess, “Now I see what Chuck’s side of it would have been like: flipping out about a relationship boiled down to the contents of an envelope…seeing the end before we’ve started.” Casey follows with his own realization. Enlightened by Sarah’s dilemma of being “caught between parents,” Casey affirms the “hardest place for a kid is right in the middle.” Upon his return to Burbank, Casey promptly insists on revising his plans to celebrate Alex’s graduation on another day, citing, “It’s not fair for [her] to be torn between two parents.”