Writer: Matthew Lau
Director: Jeffrey Hunt
Originally Aired: 11/17/2008
Grade: B+
I must say that Jill being Fulcrum was silly and obvious, and also that they didn’t go far enough with making her sympathetic. Seeing Chuck call her on her crap in the previous episode was great, but seeing the entire thing dropped after that point, with no real closure or explanation, utterly sucked.
I also had a problem with Chuck’s maniacal devotion to Jill in this episode. Him telling Sarah through the glass that he’s sorry, but “it’s Jill” just felt strange to me. Even though she was important to Chuck in the past, they’ve only been reunited for a few days. Plus there’s the fact that we, as an audience, were not attached to Jill because we barely know her and she didn’t even offer Chuck an explanation for what happened in college, so when he said that, I was just kind of like, “Erm, so?”
I also had a hard time with the “steamy” scenes in this episode. Both the Chuck/Sarah shower scene and the Jill/Chuck sex scene both had me feeling equal parts uncomfortable and titillated. The shower scene was just completely ridiculous, especially with her shaking his head in her cleavage, or whatever that was, but it did make me go “awww” when the romantic tension showed up and he realized he was soaping down mostly-naked Sarah. It was a little fan-fic-ish, but still, awwww.
(I also thought it was a bit weird that before that scene, Sarah and Chuck were changing their clothes in the same room, right next to each other. Kind of undermined the next scene, where Chuck was all, “OMG, naked Sarah!”)
As for the sex scene… that was hard to watch, because on the one hand, I adore Chuck and Sarah together, I knew things with Jill were not headed down a good road, and I found Chuck’s utter, headlong devotion to Jill deeply disturbing. Plus we've just never, ever, in the history of the show, seen a passionate sex scene like that, so it kind of made me feel like I was watching something I shouldn't see, which was emphasized by the conflict with Casey's surveillance.
On the other hand, I still enjoyed it because it was kind of hot, and because Chuck finally got to have sex. And I don’t mean that in a sexist “High fives, Chuck got laid!” way, but as far as we’ve been led to believe, the man hasn’t known the love of a woman in 5 years or so. And he looked very enthusiastic and not terribly nervous, so good for him. (ETA: Although unfortunately, given her Fulcrum status, he's probably just going to feel nauseous every time he thinks about that night. And he was so happy while it was happening, too, the poor guy.)
If Chuck and Sarah ever get to that point, it better blow this scene completely out of the effing water.
It’s almost like he’s deliberately insensitive because he’s both self-defeatist and even a bit passive-aggressive. Like he half-subconsciously says things that he knows would be hurtful to her if she really cared, but she doesn’t care, so it’s okay, except wouldn’t it be nice if she did care?
I think he absolutely cares about her, and about her feelings, but sometimes he just gets a little lost in his hard-to-shake belief that he’s a worthless loser. So yeah… he should be more sensitive, but I think it can be blamed on his lack of self-esteem. At some point, though, he’s going to have to stop this passive-aggressive lashing out, because while it's understandable, it's also self-destructive and not terribly attractive over a long period of time.
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