CHUCK “Chuck Versus The Gobbler” Season 4 Episode 12 – Last week’s episode left Chuck in yet another pickle: his girlfriend Sarah (despite about thirty minutes of dreary exposition he’s yet to ask her to become his fiancé) decided to go back undercover and become a double agent in order to infiltrate Volkoff Industries, rescue Chuck’s mother and restore her to her fretful son, all to make Chuck happy. So, where did that leave us this week? Was it a tour de force of television espionage and emotions? Was it a great episode of Chuck, finally overtaking Chuck Versus Santa Claus as the most powerful hour of Chuck tv? Or was it another build up episode which promised shocks, action, adventure and thrilling romance…in next week’s instalment?
Dressed in black, hair included, and going for the discount version of Scarlet Johanson’s Black Widow, Sarah eventually finds her way to Volkoff himself. Her takedown of three of Volkoff’s men was impressive, and I’m glad that neither Volkoff and Chuck’s mother believed her betrayal of the CIA. Villains are always more effective when they are smarter than or at least as smart as the heroes. The same applies vice versa, which rendered the prison breakout scene stupid on so many levels: the guard birthday cake diversion, the complete lack of rioting, Sarah walking through the unguarded prison floor without baiting so much as a wolf whistle.
There was a fork in the road: when the love of his life is in a bread van with an unconscious violent giant in the back tearing up because she is unsure how long her dangerous sacrifice for him will take, Chuck could have persuaded her to drop her mission. Instead he watched her leave which makes for a potentially fascinating character development for both Chuck and Sarah. The latter of course has the difficult and often bad choices to make in the name of love. Chuck’s role is more passive: he has to watch and, to an extent, let her go ahead with making these decisions. It is his mother after all. I’m sure Sarah could, eventually, be persuaded by Chuck into letting his mother drown with Volkoff.
Sarah’s fight with Casey ended the episode on an exciting note, but it brings back a recurring problem with this show. Chuck often seems to have twenty minutes of great material stretched to forty minutes. The final half of the episode is almost always far superior to the first half: if the first half were any bit as powerful as the second, you’d be hard pressed to guess why viewers aren’t flocking to this show. But the first half always infuriates; why can’t Chuck’s flash work to help him concoct an ingenious way to break the Gobbler out of the prison, instead of relying on a stupid birthday cake? Why are Ellie and Awesome, who long ago bypassed Chuck and Sarah as my favourite couple on this show, given lame storylines like naming their daughter after an IKEA spoon?
It seems this episode was a build up episode. I enjoyed watching it, but aside from Sarah and Casey’s fight, it was hard to get excited about any other scene. Next week looks brilliant. Then again, I thought that last week.
What did you think of this episode? Sound off in the comments below.
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