6.06.2011

mxpw vs. Frea - Chuck vs. the Last Details

Chuck vs. the Last Details
Season 4, Episode 23, original air-date May 9, 2011

Chuck and Sarah's wedding planning includes one final detail: ensuring that the mother-of-the-groom makes it to the ceremony on time and alive. Meanwhile, Morgan's responsibilities as Best Man include his most dangerous mission yet, as he faces Vivian Volkoff. Elsewhere, Ellie tends to the last details of the rehearsal dinner and seeks help from an unlikely source.

Nearly a month late, here's what mxpw and Frea thought of Last Details. And yes, this episode was half-written by Frea's favorite Chuck writer. Did that save it? Click the link to find out.



Frea: Ellie was funny.

Frea: Morgan did the twinkle lights thing and oh, ho, ho, it's so funny because it's Morgan, that guy's so wacky, what a goofball.

mxpw: Well, Ellie was kinda scary there.

mxpw: I can understand why everybody jumped to follow her commands.

Frea: Yeah, that was fun. I was just busy rolling my eyes at Morgan's crazy antics, yet again

mxpw: It did provide a chance for Chuck to show off. It was nice seeing Sarah's proud smirk and "Impressive, huh?"

Frea: Not exactly a fortuitous start to the episode, given how big of a role Morgan had to play later on, if I was already less-than-amused by Morgan right at the beginning.

Frea: Oh, good. I think I'm the pessimist again.

mxpw: It's true that he did have a substantial role in the episode.

mxpw: He got to play the Magnet in a new and ridiculous way.

Frea: Ah, the Magnet.

Frea: It's now officially a move.

mxpw: It's so effective. They should really teach it in training to all the new spy recruits.

Frea: It makes me think of 10 Things I Hate About You where Kat is trying to get Patrick out of detention. "Misdirection!" "I taught you that?" "You..or Siegfried or Roy..."

mxpw: Haha. At least Morgan's involvement led to Casey getting to do something cool but completely impossible.

Frea: Be more badass than Sarah Connor?

mxpw: Yeah, but that's not that hard to do on Chuck.

mxpw: Since Mary is kind of like the worst spy ever.

mxpw: She's so bad, she makes He Who Shall Not Be Named seem almost competent.

Frea: Oh, burn! Speaking of Sarah Connor, did you see the Sarah Connor-esque shot on the surveillance cameras in the mine? It made my Terminator 2 heart go pitty-pat.

mxpw: Yeah, that was a nice touch. I appreciated her doing the pull ups.

I kept waiting for her to snap a broom in half during that scene but it never happened.

Frea: Good thing Big Mike wasn't around.

Frea: So I think we're getting ahead of ourselves a little bit. I enjoyed Last Details. I thought it was an okay episode, except that by the time it aired, I found myself warring with apathy and didn't even watch it until a week or so later anyway. I think Agent X completely broke me all over again, and nothing having to do with Volkoff will ever really stir my interest.

Frea: I mean, it took me quite a while to remember that it was important at all that they were even building some kind of DNA-based weapon. And naming it the Norseman? Seriously, show? As a green-blooded Viking, I am insulted you named something so lame after half of my heritage.

mxpw: Well, I really am the optimist this week. I quite liked the episode, even though it was full of ridiculousness. I choose just to ignore the fact that Vivian Volkoff was an absolutely terrible bad guy and that the Norseman is the dumbest thing ever. A DNA gun? Really? Ah well. So while yeah, that was not great, there was a lot of interactions between the characters that I quite enjoyed. Especially between Chuck and Sarah.

Frea: Yeah, that's what it really all came down to. I enjoyed the interactions. But man was I glad to see this whole plot go in Cliffhanger.

mxpw: The one big flaw this episode has, besides the Vivian stuff, is actually the end. Yeah, it was emotionally tense to see Sarah get struck by the Norseman (how did Vivian even get Sarah's DNA?), but it was completely absent of any real danger or alarm. We all knew that Sarah wasn't going to die. So not only was it ultimately an underwhelming cliffhanger, but by having Sarah not die, it undermined the whole drama of the Norseman plot. Yeah, it's a real dangerous weapon...until it's used to try and kill a main character and then suddenly, nothing.

Frea: With no explanation, ever, of why it wouldn't work. Good job, writers. Way to break a fundamental rule of writing...again.

Frea: But that gets into Cliffhanger territory.

mxpw: But that's more a Cliffhanger thing, than Last Details, to be fair.

mxpw: Haha

Frea: Great minds, Sir Maximus, great minds.

mxpw: Indubitably.

mxpw: But I don't want to focus too much on the negatives with this episode. Because it did have things I quite enjoyed. I don't know if you feel the same way, but I like how the Chuck and Sarah relationship was done in this episode. I liked the beginning with their morning conversation. We were SO close to actual sexytimes!

mxpw: Sarah seemed disappointed when it didn't pan out for her too. Heh.

Frea: Well, given the number of wacky antics Morgan has pulled this season, I imagine Morgan doing something silly and vaguely sitcommy has gotten in the way of sexytimes quite a lot. She probably thought it'd be over when he moved out.

mxpw: Yeah, but it was her own fault for jinxing it. Heh. I did chuckle at the visual image of Chuck being fully clothed and of course Sarah only wearing that tiny little robe of hers when they checked what was going on.

Frea: Very true. Dude sleeps in a lot of pajamas for southern California...unless, of course, Sarah's gone on a multi-month trip across the globe with Casey

Frea: There's possibly something wrong with that. What did you think about Alex talking to Casey about Morgan?

mxpw: It made sense to me. I mean, Casey is Morgan's life partner, right? Alex should talk to him.

Frea: Oh so many Elektra Complex jokes I just tossed out..

mxpw: Though I'm sure the whole storyline about Morgan not doing anything dangerous anymore will be tossed out the window come next season so that they can have their lying storyline again.

Frea: They do seem unable to function without at least one of those going around...

mxpw: But that's next season, and we are talking about Morgan's odd threeway relationship between daughter and father.

Frea: Man, we really cannot help getting ahead of ourselves, can we?

mxpw: Oh, did I forget to mention that was a S5 spoiler?

Frea: I found that that whole concept, of Alex going to Casey to ask Morgan to take it easy... on the one hand, it's an intriguing use of tension, etc. On the other hand, like a great deal of this season, it feels completely inorganic and out-of-nowhere, and I had a hard time caring, save that Adam Baldwin gave another good performance.

mxpw: Yeah, I agree.

mxpw: But like you said, there was a lot of that going around this season.

mxpw: Speaking of inorganic, we should mention the conflict between Sarah and Mary.

mxpw: That was completely artificial.

Frea: Oh, right, the OTHER thing that came completely out of nowhere and made both Sarah and Mary mouthpieces for the plot in true S3-fashion?

Frea: Since WHEN has Sarah ever cared about having backup?

mxpw: She never really has.

mxpw: Well, I think it was more about Mary being a crappy spy and mom than her needing backup.

mxpw: Though yes, that was a bit ironic coming from Sarah.

mxpw: The real absurdity of that scene was that during Gobbler and Push Mix, Sarah went undercover and was perfectly willing to stick with it for forever if need be, just to save Mary and then all of a sudden in Last Details she's at odds with Mary like she'd been fighting with her future mother-in-law for months. That's what made that ridiculous.

mxpw: Well, that and the supreme irony of Sarah getting upset with Chuck choosing his mother over her when just a few months ago she was the one choosing Mary and the mission over Chuck. Heh.

Frea: I mean, Sarah's points were incredibly valid in this episode, don't get me wrong. It's just that it's not in character for her to be the one saying them. Ellie, maybe. Chuck, a little. Sarah? You're right. Not so much.

mxpw: Yeah, really, Sarah is the last person who should be chastising a spy for doing what Mary did.

mxpw: Of course, Mary saying she had to clean up Sarah and Chuck's mistakes was ridiculous too. I did like Sarah's outrage and indignation there. Though even that felt a little artificial to me.

Frea: Season 4: All Standalones, Even When They Shouldn't Be!

mxpw: Mainly because Sarah had always been Mary's biggest supporter, it seemed, and now all of a sudden she's questioning her spy competency. It didn't ring true to me.

mxpw: Yeah, really this episode felt very much like a standalone.

Frea: Honestly, most of my problems with this episode are more based in my problems with this season, so I should probably cut Last Details a break.

mxpw: There was very little connection to Agent X.

Frea: Agent what?

mxpw: Haha

mxpw: Exactly.

Frea: I mean, they played the Imperial March in this episode.

Frea: By all means, I should love it just for that alone!

mxpw: Which was one of my favorite scenes!

mxpw: Chuck and Morgan were great there.

Frea: I got some flashbacks to Walker's Eleven in that scene.

mxpw: That's how they should write nerdy Chuck. He is being a good friend, his nerdiness actually has a purpose, he's not being made to look ridiculous. Sure, Sarah clearly was a little weirded out, but at the same time it was like, "You are SO weird and I'm marrying you anyway."

Frea: So I have a nitpick...

mxpw: What? We do not allow nitpicks in mxpw vs. Frea!

Frea: Why wouldn't Vivian know about Morgan?

mxpw: Because she's Vivian?

Frea: I mean, he's the manager of the-obviously-CIA-Base-Buy-More that Chuck works at, that was infiltrated by Damien Arabopolis in Muuurder. Even if Vivian doesn't recognize Morgan, the Devil should.

mxpw: All good points. She seemed to know enough about the rest of his family.

Frea: This, for the record, didn't actually bother me while watching the episode.

Frea: But I would be remiss if I didn't at least point it out in our review.

mxpw: Duly noted.

Frea: Oh!

Frea: So this episode had one of my all-time favorite gags ever

Frea: Sebastian Carlyle, MI:6.

mxpw: Ha! I was just about to bring him up!

mxpw: Poor MI: 6. They weren't exactly represented well in this episode.

Frea: Not at all. However, I cackled for a good five minutes when the Devil shot him and then was like, 'Oh, that's okay, you can get the next one' to Vivian.

Frea: This episode did make me laugh a bit more than usual.

mxpw: Same here. I laughed quite a bit during the rescue of Mary. The Star Wars bit (though I'm genuinely perplexed at how Sarah has not seen SW yet), Chuck punching the guard, Casey getting into the guard's pants, etc.

Frea: I once dated a guy for three years that had not seen Star Wars.

Frea: So that wasn't actually all that perplexing to me.

mxpw: Really?

Frea: True story.

mxpw: I guess, though I'd say you're not nearly as big a nerd as Chuck is.

Frea: Yeah, I guess not. Now excuse me, I have to go work on my over-300,000-word-long fanfiction.

mxpw: Hey, I have a pretty good idea of the extent of your nerdery. :P

Frea: Uh-huh. Sure you do. Anyway, did Chuck punching Casey feel like Fake Name remixed?

mxpw: I do!

mxpw: And yeah, a little bit, though this time with no melodramatic freaking out by Sarah.

Frea: I mean, Sarah's reaction got a laugh, but I was like, "Oh, they're hurting Casey for laughs again. Greeeeat."

Frea: How dare you say Sarah was melodramatic in S3!

Frea: S3 was PERFECT.

mxpw: Haha. She was totally emo in S3.

Frea: *sticks fingers in ears and sings really loudly* Shaw wasn't real and the drama wasn't horribly manufactured and Prague never happened and it's all a bad dream, lalala.

mxpw: And unicorns are in every forest and SWP is in every episode and Morgan is a mute mime. Yeah, I know, we all have our fantasy worlds.

Frea: You mean my magical Dr. Pepper fountain is a fantasy?

mxpw: No, that's sort of real, it just requires a constant stream of minions dumping Dr. Pepper into the fountain to keep it flowing.

Frea: I love having minions.

Frea: So funny story:

Frea: I must have gotten up to go fetch more Dr. Pepper or something during this episode because I completely missed Jeff's version of the Charah fanvideo the first time through.

mxpw: That's a shame, because I liked it.

Frea: And as great as the video was, it will never beat my favorite on-show fanvideo, which is from Broken Heart.

mxpw: Some may have found it corny, but I did like it.

mxpw: What video was that?

Frea: The "Chuck and Sarah are horrible at pretending this just a cover" video Beckman shows them in Castle in the beginning.

mxpw: Oh right.

mxpw: Every time I see a montage like that, I think of Community now.

Frea: I don't think I stopped laughing for nearly five minutes after the first time I saw that one.

mxpw: Hahaha

mxpw: I remember watching it now and being like, "Uh, how did they get video of that scene!?"

Frea: It's possible I have a sadistic streak.

Frea: Ninjas, Maximus. Ninjas.

Frea: Perhaps they contract Jeff for that job.

mxpw: It wouldn't surprise me. Why could Jeff had gotten the Intersect instead? Then I could finally claim the writers stole something from one of MY fanfics.

Frea: Yeah because they've never used the word Chucksickle or anything.

mxpw: Which YOU got credit for!

Frea: Well, yeah.

Frea: That's how minionhood works.

mxpw: I don't think that counts.

mxpw: Minionhood sucks.

Frea: Oh, good! You really are getting it

mxpw: Yeah, I may be slow, but I pick up on things eventually.

mxpw: Like Vivian Volkoff. Oh burn!

Frea: Oh, man. Vivian Volkoff, such a pretty face, such an empty head.

mxpw: Yes on both accounts. So pretty, yet so dumb.

Frea: But I will say this for her: I still adore her accent.

mxpw: And Last Details really neutered her plot. I mean, it was ridiculous before, but at least one could think that Vivian was turning into an evil overlord all on her own. Nope, actually, the Devil made her do it.

Frea: Great. Now Flip Wilson is going to charge us royalties for that.

mxpw: Good thing I'm a minion, then, eh?

mxpw: That's your problem, not mine!

Frea: I don't understand why Vivan couldn't have just been evil, and twisted.

mxpw: Because they wanted to tell a Darth Vader story.

mxpw: The problem was, Darth Vader was actually cool.

Frea: Well....

Frea: Sort of.

Frea: Darth Vader was cool.

Frea: UNTIL THEY TOLD HIS FREAKING STORY.

mxpw: Huh? What are you talking about?

Frea: Episodes I, II, and III were awful, mythology-breaking cesspools of bad storytelling that effectively neutered Darth Vader.

mxpw: I'm sorry, Episodes I, II, and III?

Frea: Yeah, I pretend they don't exist either.

mxpw: :P

Frea: Seriously, Darth Vader was so badass. Until they went back and told his story. Of course they would think telling a Vader story from the beginning would be a good idea. Just create an evil bad guy, keep him evil for once, and let him be bad.

mxpw: Heh.

mxpw: Well, that's not how bad guys work in today's world.

Frea: We don't secretly need every evil overlord that's going to suffocate his superior officers to secretly love hugging puppies.

Frea: Yeah, but nothing else on this show really applies to today's world. They don't have regular reactions to situations, after all. Why do their bad guys?

mxpw: Good point.

mxpw: I'm just saying, they were never going to make Vivian like that.

mxpw: Unfortunately, they failed in telling an alternative story as well.

Frea: Yeah. Vivian depresses me. Unicorn.

mxpw: Unicorn.

Frea: Wow. Somebody else earned our Morgan safeword. That must have been some awful writing. Hm, anything else we need to talk about?

mxpw: I don't know, the end? I mean, I thought the rehearsal scene was probably the best scene of the night until the end. Just seeing Chuck and Sarah being happy and having a good time was some great relationship stuff that they hadn't really delivered much this season.

Frea: You may have to carry this part of the conversation. I wasn't paying much attention by this point.

mxpw: Alright. Well, I think I said what I wanted to say up above. I liked it and I liked seeing them as a happy couple.

Frea: I don't remember why. I do remember liking the bits I saw. Did Mary give a speech?

mxpw: She did, where she was basically handing over the baton of being Chuck's protector over to Sarah.

Frea: Which she did in First Fight... excellent callback, I suppose. The courtyard looked really pretty, so Ellie's call for the twinkle lights was clearly a good one.

Frea: And then...that ending hit.

Frea: Clearly, Vivian has not read the Evil Overlord List.

mxpw: Yeah. Though to be fair to Vivian, and I can't believe I'm going to be fair to her, she seemed genuinely surprised that Sarah was alive in Cliffhanger. So she at least fully expected the weapon to work. She just didn't take into account Sarah's plot shield.

But yeah, she would make an awful Evil Overlord.

mxpw: And I think that's all I have to say about this episode.

Frea: 57. Before employing any captured artifacts or machinery, I will carefully read the owner's manual.

mxpw: Heh. Well, it's Vivian. That was probably too much for her.

Frea: Oh, most likely. Thanks for making me laugh, writers, but I'm regarding this episode in the bottom half of my Chuck viewing list. One last thing: hasn't Chuck seen Spaceballs? You never order the special.

mxpw: Haha

mxpw: So very true.

Frea: Much to learn in the ways of the nerd, Sarah has.

mxpw: And with that, I am done.

15 comments:

  1. I completely agree that the Sarah/Mary rivalry seemed to come out of nowhere. However while rewatching, I convinced myself of something that made me feel better about the episode. It was not an ongoing rivalry but a specific issue in this instance because it was the week before the wedding. The have established this season that Sarah insists Casey should have back-up, and she has consistently gotten mad about people taking away her missions (Chuck in CAT squad or the Gretas in A-Team). It's part of her perfect spy self-image. SHE's the only one good enough to not need back-up, and no one takes HER mission away from her. Mary got in the way of that. Also, Sarah would likely agree with you that Mary is a bad spy, considering Team B did in a few weeks what she couldn't do in twenty years. She'd never say anything, though. The car argument between Chuck and Sarah still seems out of place, but I ignore that because it's cute.

    While this is getting into a little of the next episode... The writers could have fixed the whole "Why did Sarah survive?" issue with a simple line about having two doctors on scene immediately, the relative proximity of the Norseman to the target, or both. Not that I care as much about logic on Chuck as I do in crime/mystery dramas, but I sometimes wonder if the script writers either don't worry about those things, or if all of those simple lines get edited out as boring or unnecessary during filming and editing.

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  2. No Castle slide and sexy times score!


    Thanks for the review

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  3. Cool review. :) Ya'll are awesome.

    Quick ? though, did you guys feel like Mary's rehearsal speech was not necessary? I mean, I don't understand how she's "letting" Sarah take care of Chuck now when she abandoned him as a kid. I didn't really feel that connection/sentiment the writers were trying to show there.

    Anyways, this was fun and made me laugh. Can't wait for the next review. :)

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  4. Ayefah6.6.11

    These last few episodes do have a whiff of "oh god our episode order got extended again what do we DOOOO?!" I mean, I know that feeling. It's like when my law school let me know I was a credit short of my graduation requirements. In March. And much like the paper I ended up writing on the Indian pension fund system in three days, this whole Agent X business and pretty much everything to do with Vivian falls apart if you so much as blink at it wrong.

    The difference is that Fedak & Co. are experienced professional writers creating entertainment for millions of viewers and I was a schlub trying to claw her way to a diploma. There's only so much that NBC's messed-up episode ordering system will excuse, you know?

    And it's crazy-making because as a fan it ends up making me feel like I'm putting more effort into thinking about the show than the writers are, and that is a really, really annoying feeling to have. It's one thing when canon veers away from where my fervid fangirl brain would ideally like it to go; it's quite another when the path it ends up taking is nonsensical and lazy.

    It's not that I hate S4, per se. It didn't inspire gouts of fire-breathing rage the way last season did, and in fact had some fine episodes I'd be happy to rewatch in the future. ("Wedding Planner"! "Seduction Impossible"! "Phase Three"!) The idea of having a supervillain rather than an amorphous Evil Organization and the casting of Timothy Dalton were both brilliant moves. "Cat Squad", for all its problems, was the first (and still only) episode of the show to actually feel like it had a female sensibility. Awesome eventually regained his awesome. And the writers clearly had emotional arcs in mind for Chuck, Sarah, and Casey, and pretty well-conceived arcs at that.

    But over and over again, when the show had the chance to take its promising pieces and do something awesome, it fell flat on its face instead. Chuck got the Intersect back in 2 minutes. Mary turned out to be an incompetent good guy instead of the awesome ambiguous figure she seemed to be. Chuck was a secret-keeping douche to his sister again and nothing came of it. Vivian...well, okay, she was never a good idea.

    Emotional conflicts were invented for one episode and resolved inside of forty minutes. There was too much Morgan constantly disrupting the Trio's dynamic. Sarah was weirdly okay with Chuck being repeatedly insulted and demeaned on the job. Casey never got called out nearly hard enough for his asshattery in leaving Kathleen. Mary's asshattery was overlooked almost entirely. Chuck and Sarah's courtship was repeatedly expressed in three-camera sitcom cliches instead of actually being about them, which kind of negated what made the pairing charming in the first place.

    And did I mention that Chuck kept secrets from Ellie for no good reason again? Because he did, and it really made me think less of him, which I really, really hated. The season that was ostensibly supposed to be about Chuck's good qualities minus the Intersect ended up losing his character for episodes at a time, making Morgan the resourceful good guy instead and wasting time on Vivian the Chuck parallel instead of saying something about Chuck himself.

    Nearly every episode, even those with abundant good qualities, had at least one of these black eyes working against it, and that made it impossible to build up that momentum of joy that gets me through the plot holes and occasional bouts of sexism that Chuck periodically drives me crazy with. I wanted to love this season, so very much, but it just handed out too many letdowns. I'd give it a B overall, maybe a C if I think too much about the last thirty seconds of "Cliffhanger".

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  5. Big Kev7.6.11

    Ayefah,
    Your comment is as good as the review. S4 in 3 paras. Agree with every word.

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  6. MyNameisJeffImLost, I agree somewhat with your analysis of Sarah and it makes me sad because...it kind of makes me not like her. Blah.

    dnm, yeah, I completely forgot to give a rating. I'd give it, um, 6.2 Castle Slides, maybe? and of course, you're welcome. I'm just sorry the review took so long!

    Catherine: Honestly, by the time Mary's rehearsal speech came around, I really wasn't paying any attention. It was a nice speech from what I remember, and you do raise an excellent point, but the problem is, Chuck forgives. A lot. In fact, a lot more than I really think he should, really, ever. By this point, the fact that Mary abandoned him for most of his life and he and Ellie even had their own holiday to celebrate their independence, all of that is a long-distant memory. So Mary's speech makes sense in canon to me.

    HOWEVER, I do really agree with your point about not feeling any connection there. I don't, not generally. I like Linda Hamilton bunches because she was super nice to crystal.elements at Chuckfest, but the writers haven't really lived up to her awesomeness with her character. She's a lot of tell, and not really any show. I think most rational people would be wary of letting their mother back into their lives after so long, even if her intentions were good. Realistically, there would be a lot of old wounds that would need to open and heal anew, and there would definitely be a lot of growing pains, mistrust, and basically, time needs to pass.

    However, this is Chuck. Realistic reactions aren't exactly in abundance.

    Ayefah: As I told you on IM — big, fat freaking WORD. S4 gets a C since the Castle Slide is only in 1/12th of the episodes. THAT IS LESS THAN 10%.

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  7. alladinsgenie4u7.6.11

    @Ayefah - Nice summation of the negatives that bogged down S4. After S3 I have stopped blaming characters for their decisions. So, when Chuck decides to keep lying to Ellie - it's because TPTB feel that it should happen that way - damn the character destruction!! They even said at the start of S4 when asked about Chuck and Ellie that it's a spy show and there should be secrets, blah, blah, blah - pointless justification for something absurd.

    Secondly, the issue of Morgan being the resourceful good guy throughout the season - I wouldn't have had so much problem with it, if it hadn't poached on Chuck's qualities so much. And it was all done because TPTB in their infinite wisdom thought that the only way to give Morgan screen time and show his growth (who cares) was to take away Chuck's qualities and give them to Morgan. And Zac Levi himself said in an interview that " This year you have Morgan more involved and you have Chuck going to him ,etc,etc.

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  8. Mary taking care of Vivian seemed like the writers trying to do the over bearing mother angle. So instead of her coming over to clean your house or cook like a normal mother she goes after a villain. Of course like everyone else has pointed out she was never really a mother to Chuck. It reminds me on how they handled Orion last season with him being overbearing about the 2.0. They both came back into their children's lives unwillingly and act like nothing happened.

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  9. See, this is why I'm so conflicted about the show now! I love the cast to death, especially after ChuckFest, but I hate that the writers have completely botched what used to be my favorite show and completely effed up the both the plot and character development. WHY, WRITERS, WHYYYY?!?!

    Why yes, I am channeling my stress for finals into this comment, why do you ask?

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  10. The problem with Mary starts with the idea of Chuck's mom leaving when he was nine. It was great for the mythology because everyone wanted to find out more. However, I can't imagine any actress or any writer being able to make that mom seem a likeable family member or a semi-competent spy. If they made her captured and tortured for five or ten years and then rescued by Volkoff, she might be more sympathetic. However, that would probably be too dark, even compared to the red test episodes. It isn't Double Agent after all.

    I had problems with Stephen, for some of the same reasons. His saving attributes were the bumbling genius persona, the fact he was threatend by Fulcrum (instead of living it large with Volkoff), and the fact he hung in there as a parent for at least a few more years (which isn't saying much).

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  11. I agree with pretty much everything in this review, except it didn't make me laugh that much. That ep was a big fail for me.

    And Ayefah that comment just nailed it.

    Thanks for doing the review. ;-)

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  12. Just piling on, because I can.

    Guys, excellent insight and comedy as usual! The show does not deserve such wit and candor. As of late the reviews have the same feel as when they let the rabble in to the stocks so the people might heave their vegetables at the faces of those bound there. The two of you spend the review metaphorically debating on whether to throw the onion or the ripe tomato.

    Reviewers, great comments! I'd say they were as entertaining as the post itself if I didn't think it would make Frea and Mxpw feel bad. ;)

    And Ayefah, your short post was just expertly crafted and makes me envious. I don't know if you're formally affiliated with any blog (hint, Frea) but whichever one manages to snag you will be noticeably elevated.

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  13. Anonymous7.6.11

    armySFC says,

    agree on the episode. not to bad not to good. now lets take on morgan. vivian should know him, very well. he met her the party, then traveled in the back seat of the car when they fled said party. traveled to burbank together when they were protecting her. heck he even sat beside her in castle if i am not mistaken. how could she not know him? the glasses? that took a lot away from the episode for me. thanks for the write up.

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  14. Anonymous7.6.11

    For being spot on and calling problems for what they are, you are all hereby and officially banned from the Chuck This! Blog. Thus speaketh Ernie Davis and his minions.

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  15. The best stories are told with clarity and honesty. Honesty in being true to the characters and most importantly to the audience.

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