Chuck - "Chuck Vs. The Baby"

Season 5, Episode 8

In terms of television narratives, the introduction of babies tends to mark a creative downturn for any show. It’s this truism that made me really nervous when, in the last seconds of last week’s episode, it was revealed that there was a child apparently important enough to be referred to as “the baby”, thus indicating that it held some importance to Sarah. I suppose all those fears were for naught, considering that “Chuck Vs. The Baby” didn't go somewhere as stupid as Sarah having a secret child, and in fact the little McGuffin actually led to some nice moments of pathos for Sarah as a character. However, that didn’t stop the episode from being sort of disappointing in its own way.

So let’s start off with the things that I liked, since as a whole the good outweighed the bad in last night’s episode. As mentioned above, this was a good an episode for Sarah. Some people have compared the episode to last season’s “Chuck Vs. Phase Three” (in which Sarah became known as the Giant Blonde Shemale of Thailand), and while I can see why they made that comparison, I don’t think it was fully apt. “Phase Three” was just straight up octane awesome-sauce, an episode fueled by action scenes (that is, all the ass kicking Sarah had to do to rescue Chuck) above anything else. “Baby” had its share of action scenes – especially with Sarah’s final confrontation with her former handler, and that awesome show or her firing at her enemies with the baby snug against her in a bulletproof vest – but there were also some more emotional moments for her as well, and I’d say that’s where the main focus of this episode lies.

I don’t think that this is not necessarily a bad thing, especially because the stronger Sarah moments both made sense for the character, and (thank god) didn’t impede with her spy work. Though we’ve seen Sarah change over the past four and a half seasons into a more open and emotionally available person, tonight’s mission was a reminder that old ways die hard, while simultaneously acknowledging that yes, meeting Chuck has been good for Sarah. (Awwwww.)  

More importantly, this child serves as a symbol of Sarah’s progress for both the audience and for her character, as it allowed her to come to further terms with where she is in her own life. Part of the reasons that old habits die hard is that in most people – and I definitely think Sarah is one of those people – change, especially change which could render a person weaker than they were before, is not only hard to discern to the individual being changed, but for them to accept as well. Being forced to face the past of who she once was and see how far she has come since then through the reappearance of this child however, has allowed her to accept these changes at her deepest level.

This is important because as the show goes into its final laps, it appears, as it did last week with Chuck defeating Shaw, as if the show is going to be giving each character one finale, resolute victory. This makes sense because hey, Chuck is the kind of show that loves its (eventual) happy endings, and ending any other way would be so antithetical to the show’s tone that from a storytelling perspective it would look like a botched ending. I still hold my reservations from last week as to what this means for the plot(s) of the remaining episodes, but as long as the episodes can keep delivering high moments like Sarah carving her and Chuck’s names into the house, I think these last five hours will work just fine.

But – and here’s where I must mention the negative – there were a lot of smaller moments that led up to those final scenes that made the whole journey a bit rough. For starters, the Sarah flashbacks were inherently problematic, for two reasons. First, these early depictions of Sarah felt a bit off in a way that just doesn’t sit well with me. I get that Sarah was a colder person before she met Chuck, and that these scenes should reflect that. However, depicting her as someone so devoid of empathy that she couldn’t figure out that she should try rocking a baby to sleep makes her seem stupid at best, and looks downright misogynistic at worst. It was an overly-easy way to mark her less emotionally evolved self, and something more nuanced would have worked better.

Secondly, there’s the question of continuity, since we see Sarah go directly from this mission to being assigned to Operation Bartowski, with absolutely no mention of her time with Bryce Larkin – especially since the whole change of assignment was predicated on her move from having a handler to being one, and there was definitely no handler position in her assignments with Bryce. (Okay, I’m assuming that last part, but the fact that I can’t be sure only multiplies this confusion.) It’s a small quibble, but it’s one that was jarring nonetheless, especially from a show that tends to keep better tabs on its own backstory than this episode would seem to indicate.

But more detrimental to the storyline were the present day actions of the characters, because even if these were smaller errors than those of the flashbacks, there were a lot more of them, and it added up to a messy whole. I’ll give the show points for actually allowing Chuck to (relatively) control his emotions in the face of Sarah’s secrecy, but I have to take those points away for making Sarah the emotionally unstable one. Not only did she agree with Chuck that she was wrong to keep her secret from him (something I’m not even sure I agree with) way too easily, but she also didn’t seem to notice that there was a bug stuck her hair. (I mean, as a super spy, she should have realized it was there, right? Maybe by feeling it’s presence when she was lying down?) Similarly, why would she fall for Ryker’s fake baby fake-out considering that no five-plus-year-old cries like that, and, oh yeah, that was the same trick that she pulled on Ryker the last time she saw him? And I thought Sarah not knowing how to rock a baby to sleep made her look dumb.

To end this review on a more positive note, let’s discuss the episode’s B-story, which featured exactly zero Buy More employees, and instead focused on Morgan & Alex and Awesome & Ellie playing board games inside Castle (in what was a tenuous connection to the A-plot), and the latter couple trying to get the former back together. It was silly and slight and, especially that “interrogation” scene with Awesome and Ellie, a bit stupid, but entertainingly so in all three aspects. Somehow that gang just hanging out at Castle (and not the Buy More) seems like something the show should have done a long time ago, and it just fit perfectly into where the show is now.

I of course realize that the real point of this plot was to get Morgan and Alex back together, since this was apparently his victory lap episode as well. (New Theory: Some characters might be getting more than one of these, especially since I’m still holding onto the belief that Chuck will get the Intersect once again before the show closes out. So it’s entirely possible that Morgan’s got an even bigger victory moment coming up as well.) But, since that was more or less a foregone conclusion, I was more impressed about how this dovetailed with the A-plot at the end, and allowed Morgan to get back together with Alex in a way that was effortless for both him and the show. Now that’s how you do a victory lap without any sort of forced storytelling.

Quotes and Other Thoughts:

That was Tim DeKay, most famously of White Collar, playing Ryker tonight. I couldn’t help but imagining him as the evil, alternate universe version of Peter Burke, which actually made his appearance, and the episode as whole, a good deal more fun than it already was. (Almost as much fun: Imagining Jonathan Frakes in the same role, because come on, you know that’s who popped into your head when you saw the name “Ryker”.)

Yes, that was Cheryl Ladd as Sarah’s mom. No, I don’t what would posses her to take such a thankless role, but it’s not like she’s the first Special Guest Star to get short-shifted by this show. This is just the kind of show that’s more interested in the spectacle of stunt-casting than actually making it work.

So apparently Chuck’s still trying to buy that house for Sarah. Considerign that this has been a plot that has appeared only one other time this season, and given that it’s a foregone conclusion, I feel hard pressed to get invested in it.

One more practically inevitable final victory lap: Casey getting together with Verbanski. Because duh.

"Wikipedia-ing facts about Hungary is harmless. I for one didn't know that Rubik's Cube was invented there."