Writer: Scott Rosenbaum
Director: Robert Duncan McNeill
Grade: A+
Aside from a couple of fairly important details, I thought this was a great episode. I loved how they focused on the bracelet when Chuck saw Sarah shoot the Fulcrum agent, because I think him giving her that bracelet is part of what really set her off in this episode. She probably still would have offed the guy even without Chuck giving it to her, but I think him doing so really upped the emotional stakes for her. What she did was motivated by the personal rather than the professional.
And I knew she was gonna plant one on Chuck when she saw him again! My love for Sarah (and Yvonne’s acting) grows with every episode.
I also found Jeff calling his mom in prison to be genuinely sad rather than funny, and it seemed intended to be, especially contrasted with Lester calling the phone sex line.
I wondered what was up with John Casey referring to himself as “Johnny” to his mom. I figured they were going for him calling someone with the government (General Beckman?), because otherwise it means that only the “Casey” part of his name is a cover.
My minor nitpick with this episode is that I don’t like how Fulcrum seems to be a group of generic bad guys. I have a hard time with villains who are just eeeevil and don’t act like real human beings with motivations. The writers tried to do more with Jill, and it sort of worked for her, but eh, I need a little more complexity from the big shadowy evil organization itself.
My more major nitpick involves the character interactions in this episode. I completely understand why Chuck freaked out about Sarah shooting the Fulcrum guy (and subsequently lying about it), given the way it was framed. Chuck saw the man hold out his hands to be cuffed and say that he was ready to be taken in, so from Chuck's PoV, Sarah killed someone in the midst of a surrender. Chuck didn’t see all the stuff where the guy told Sarah that Fulcrum would come find him and get the info that Chuck was the Intersect.
However, I have a bit of a problem with the fact that Chuck was so trusting of Ned the dumb but well-meaning criminal, who turned out to be a Fulcrum goon, and yet when he saw Sarah kill a Fulcrum agent, it didn’t occur to him to trust that there was more to the story than what he saw. I guess her lying compounded the issue, as in maybe Chuck was banking on his trust in her and willing to hear her out, and then she lied? But the way it came off on first viewing was the he condemned her immediately, even before she lied. When he asked her what happened to the guy, I saw nothing in Levi’s expression that indicated to me that Chuck expected her to tell him the truth. He’d already flipped the Sarah switch in this brain to the “scary killer who can’t be trusted” side (with heaping sides of sadness and disappointment), and she just confirmed it by lying to him.
When I see, within the same episode, Chuck going through these polarized thought processes about Ned and Sarah (in which Ned goes from scary car chase guy to dumb-as-a-rock and desperate but totally not evil new criminal to oh shit, he’s Fulcrum?! and Sarah goes from yay faux girlfriend/bodyguard to OMG she executed a defenseless man in the midst of surrender), it basically makes Chuck look like his judgment-of-character skills are completely out of whack. To me. Still love the guy, but his temperamental faith in Sarah is beginning to drive me up the wall.
So on the one hand, I'm happy with the fact that Chuck saw Sarah kill someone and is upset about it, and that she knew him well enough to know he'd be upset about it, hence her lying to him. It's a conflict that's very much in character for both of them, and it's one of the biggest hurdles getting in the way of their relationship. On the other hand, certain aspects of the way the conflict was set up and played out make me feel angry with both of them--I'm irritated with Sarah for lying to Chuck in order to protect him (from realizing his own part in what happened) and herself (from having Chuck see her as a killer and from giving Chuck more evidence of her feelings for him). But that's pretty much the standard dance between them, so maybe I'm just tiring of the writing.
I'm not even sure what the writers were trying to do here. I honestly hope that they actually KNOW that this was in the episode, because if Chuck’s bizarre quasi-hypocrisy of trusting the bad guy and distrusting his body guard/love interest was not intentional and won’t come up after the break, then I have a feeling the Chuck/Sarah relationship will never quite satisfy me from a writing perspective, even if ZL and YS do have amazing chemistry. If the writers intended absolutely no connection between Chuck's experience with Ned and Chuck's experience with Sarah, then I am not a happy camper. If they did intend a connection there, and if I'm supposed to be questioning some of these things, and if I'm supposed to be somewhat irritated with both characters, then that's okay and I'm looking forward to where they will take this conflict next year. (Not like I have a way of knowing either way, though...)
Of course, it probably doesn’t help that I'm actually predisposed to side with Sarah right now, because Chuck's behavior in vs. the Break Up and the entire Jill arc left me slightly disenchanted with his character this season, despite the fact that he's actually my favorite.
Is Chuck right to be so quick to think the worst of Sarah? Personally, I don’t think so. Sure she has lied to him in the past, but very rarely (if ever) has one of her lies caused harm to anyone else, and most of the time, the lies are told to protect Chuck (or sometimes herself, professionally and emotionally). In general, it seems like there's a common story frame on the show of:
a) Sarah lies to Chuck about something (or Casey, or events in general, conspire to make Chuck suspicious of her),
b) Chuck freaks out and becomes suspicious of and/or upset with Sarah, then
c) Chuck realizes that Sarah did whatever she did for a reason, and usually an acceptable one, or at least an understandable one that doesn't make her the Worst Person in the World.
The constant back and forth between Chuck adoring and trusting Sarah and then freaking out because she does something to bust up his fantasy of her is, for me, temperamental and immature. He seems to have a tendency to "get over" whatever disturbing thing she's done and stick her right back up on the pedestal, and then something happens that knocks her off again, and the whole cycle just keeps repeating. I'm tiring of it very quickly now.
He needs to accept that Sarah is a spy, that Sarah has killed people and will again, that Sarah lies and will lie again--this is the reality of who Sarah is. Which is not to say that Sarah is flawless, because she's definitely got some work to do about her own emotional issues, but for her part, she has been pretty consistent with how she feels about Chuck. Chuck needs to see Sarah for who and what she is and either consciously accept that and be willing to give her the benefit of the doubt, or decide that's not for him. Either way, he needs to keep her off the pedestal. The whole "Chuck becomes disillusioned with Sarah, again" story is becoming a crutch.
Overall, I'm just having a problem with the writing this season, where I can see what they were going for, but it's sometimes failing in the execution. This episode is definitely one of those cases--I like what they set up between Chuck and Sarah, but I don't like everything about how they got there, and given the repeating cycles in their relationship, I'm not sure I have much faith that it's really going anywhere different this time. They've set up several conflicts that deal with the main obstacles between Chuck and Sarah, but then after the conflict is resolved or a decent amount of time has passed, it doesn't feel like they've moved forward, it feels like they've just gone back to the way it was before. There’s an illusion of progress rather than any actual progress.
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