10.25.2011

Brain Lint The First

Hey, all! Frea here, coming to you TWICE in two days. Before you fall over from shock however, or reach for that paper bag to breathe into, I'm just here doing some introductions. Firstly, we've got some new faces filling the blog out while I get ready for Nanowrimo this year, awesome people like the wonderful BDaddyDL and Shoe. (it's really hard not to go a step farther and just call her Chuck)

Today's special guest columnist is one of my favorite people in the fandom. It's her fault Top Gear now plays for at least two hours a day in chez Scan, and that I now regard librarians suspiciously and await the throwing stars at any moment. Seriously, if you haven't gone over to ff.net and followed her wonderful works-in-progress, Ninja Librarian 2 and Chuck vs. the Sound of Music, your days are 113% less awesome.

And today, we've got a real treat, as quistie64 has put her thoughts to paper and handed that paper over to Castle Inanity. Muhahahahahahahah—I mean, please read after the break. :)





Hi, I’m Quistie (Hi, Quistie!). I have been successfully assimilated into the collective here at CI. I’ve gotten used to the constant buzzing in my head, but the cybernetic implants get itchy after awhile.

Anyway, I’ll be blogging from time to time about Chuck stuff. Not knowing what exactly to start with, I decided to write about something that has bothered me all summer (I know, I need to get out more).

Before I start, you must know that I am a person who pays attention to minor details. (My beta just started laughing at that. Hush, you!) But the big stuff, not so much. (There’s a reason I got a D on that paper on Hamlet when I was in high school. Ironically, the teacher’s name was Mr. Walker. But I digress.) The writers of a TV show want to have me suspend my disbeliefs and tell me that it’s possible to upload a computer into someone’s brain? Okay. They’re telling me that there are cabals of evil-doers roaming the country, trying to take over the government? I’m there. They’ve got a plot hole big enough to drive a truck through? I probably won’t even notice. But do something ordinary and not pay attention to the details? That bugs me.

All this leads me to my question: What happened to the reception? You know, Chuck and Sarah’s wedding reception. At the end of “Chuck vs. the Cliffhanger,” we all watched as Chuck and Sarah got married inside a lovely little church in Pasadena. We see the joyous scene where they exit the church and the touching video montage interspersed throughout, rice being thrown (which I haven’t seen in years) and hugs good-bye to Ellie and Awesome. The happy couple climbs into the limo and Chuck says, “To the airport, my good man.” (This bothers me, too. We’ll get back to that.)

We know from the sign outside the church that their wedding was at 4 pm. Weddings take no more than forty-five minutes, right? It is still obviously afternoon when they leave the church which makes it look like they got in the limo right after the ceremony.

What about the reception? Didn’t they pay big bucks to the fake wedding planner for a wedding and reception? I could see where they wouldn’t have a reception once Daphne Peralta (Evil Wedding Planner) ripped them off. But Sarah’s dad comes to her rescue and leaves her rolls of hundred dollar bills in her piggy bank, and says in his note to her, “It should more than cover the cost of your wedding to the Schnook.” So we are given to believe that they will be able to have everything they wanted regarding the wedding and reception, as if Evil Wedding Planner never scammed them.

We, therefore, are left with two options:

1. They decided to skip the reception altogether and buy a vacation condo in Boca. I think this is a non-starter since I’ve never been to a wedding that hasn’t had some kind of reception. So no reception at all is right out.

2. They had the reception at the church. This, though, has a couple of problems:

- Couples rarely have church receptions anymore since they usually only include finger sandwiches, cake and punch. You don’t need wads of hundreds for that. So unless Chuck and Sarah got married in 1957, I don’t see it.

- They had the reception at the church catered. This is a possibility. But why not just have it at a place where they are set up for receptions? This also gets us back to the question of “Did the reception last an hour since it’s still daylight when they leave the church?” I don’t know about you, but I think it would be dark by the time they’re leaving the reception.

- Many churches don’t allow alcohol to be served. This is problematic since Jeff is seen tossing rice at them when they leave. If there was no alcohol, Jeff would have left the reception and been out looking for the closest bar. If the church did allow alcohol to be served, then Jeff would be passed out under a pew somewhere. So either way, his presence when they leave is a problem.

So the only conclusion we can come to is that the writers didn’t want to mess with a reception at all, so they hoped we’d forget by distracting us with the montage. Oooo, pretty! And it’d likely cost money to add an additional location shot anyway.

Last thing, I promise. The happy couple climbs into the limo and Chuck says, “To the airport, my good man.” Really? Not, “To the hotel, my good man”? I have a mental picture of the limo dropping them off curbside at LAX at the Southwest terminal with them still in their wedding garb. Are they flying out that night? Are they going to spend their wedding night in coach, first class even? Is Sarah going to change out of her wedding dress in the handicap stall in the ladies’ room? Do they change their clothes in the back of the limo as a callback to “Wookie”? I’m sure we all assume that they are staying in a hotel close to the airport that night (Maximus’s addendum: never assume with this show, never assume), but why not just write the line as, “To the hotel, my good man”? *Sigh.*

Don’t get me wrong. I loved the wedding. And the montage was a sweet recap of what our favorite couple had gone through to get to that point, and also a nice way to end the series had they not gotten a season 5.

I must go. The hive has recalled me. The MBO thinks my brain implant needs adjustment.

18 comments:

  1. Anonymous25.10.11

    Huh, I never thought of that before but you are absolutely right. I think I must have been so frustrated that we didn't get to see Casey walk Sarah down the aisle to I didn't even notice the lack of a reception or that they apparently flew to their honeymoon in their wedding clothes.

    I was also a bit annoyed that Awesome made a comment of "Welcome to the family" like somehow Sarah wasn't really a part of the family until it was legal. Whatever happened to the characters from the first two seasons that were such open and caring individuals. The ones that would expand their "Mother's Day" to include Sarah and Morgan, or would invite Jeff and Lester to Thanksgiving because they had nowhere else to go.

    I realize it is completely nitpicky but Awesome’s comment just irritated me and reminded me of how far gone the characters are from the ones I initially fell in love with.

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  2. It also brought the question, why did they have a rehearsal dinner if there weren't gonna be any reception?

    Did they cancel the reception because the rehearsal went horribly? :)

    That's the explanation I'm gonna go with. With Sarah's coma (*grumbles*) their plans changed, they had to cancel, etc.

    But I have to agree, it's really ridiculous. They just had to say they were going to the reception in the limo...

    Speaking of details, if I were one of those numerous unknown friends and relations Chuck and Sarah seem to have since they decided to get married, I would find it weird that kids of a Nerd Herder and Yogurt Girl would be little superheroes with little capes. Seems oddly specific.

    I also couldn't help but wonder where the hell was Clara, and why Bologna wasn't with Big Mike. They could have at least make it look like he was with someone...

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  3. Anonymous25.10.11

    Oh, and very good column btw. I look forward to your next blog.

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  4. The reception actually happened, its just that time slows down around Sarah Walker. The reception lasted three hours but only a few minutes of real time went by. This explains why her past is so screwed up. Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey.

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  5. That is a really, really big brain. Sorry, these things occur to me the morning after I make a graphic.

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  6. That brain with the lint roller going through it is scaring me!

    Hi Quistie. Great question about the reception. It's crazy the things that they miss. But there were so much last season that I just started ignoring them, or else my brain would just spin endlessly like a hamster on a wheel. That is the way to headaches.

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  7. I tend to agree Kris. I ignore most of those stuff.

    In that case though, well, we spent half of the season preparing this wedding. There were entire episodes about it. And then... We get *that*?

    They could at least have taken the time to write the 2 minutes where we saw it correctly, IMO.

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  8. doc2or25.10.11

    I never really thought about the lack of a reception, I was too mad that Sarah never got to wear the dress that she had spent almost an entire episode picking out.
    Maybe there was supposed to be a reception scene at the end but when they got the nod for season 5 they changed it to morgan-sect? (shudder)

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  9. *Anonymous - Awesome's comment of "Welcome to the family" bothered me, too, but not for the same reason. I just thought it was weird for an in-law to say it to another in-law. It really should have been Ellie's line to Sarah. Maybe it was just ad libbed.

    *Crumby - I also wandered about the rehearsal dinner. Why was it a week before the wedding? Isn't it the night before the wedding? And yes, nothing like building up something for half a season and then giving it 3 minutes of the show.

    *JC - Apparently, Doctor Who was a guest of the reception.

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  10. Brains are awesome. That's actually a pretty normal sized brain. And they are squishy!

    Oh, right, good column and all that, quistie. Welcome to the fold. Yadda yadda yadda.

    So back to brains...

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  11. *Frea - Tha's my big brain, right? :)

    *Kris - It is crazy making, the easy things they could get right, if they just tried! Then we wouldn't have to bang our heads against the wall all the time.

    I didn't even mention Chuck's line of "I don't know why Sarah's not dead" to Vivian. I wish I had been in the writer's room for that one.

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  12. *mxpw - Thanks, etc. I know brains are usually gray, but I really hope mine is all rainbow-y like this one.

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  13. Anonymous25.10.11

    How about when Sarah is given the Iridium 5 antidote and Ellie tells Chuck that it bought her "A day, maybe less."

    A one way trip from LA to Moscow takes 13 hours. Factor in time spent getting to the airport, waiting for the next available flight out, driving to Volkoff Industries and convincing Vivian to give him the antidote, and then flying back to LA, and you are talking about 27-30 hours going by before he was back in LA with the Iridium 6.

    And why did Chuck land in front of the hospital anyways? Why not just land on the roof and bypass Decker completely instead of wasting valuable time arguing with him when Sarah's life was hanging in the balance. He was clearly in a rush to get her the antidote since he ran through the halls in the hospital a few minutes later.

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  14. Anonymous, you forgot that they a) have a Castle Slide (though that only goes to Thailand) and that b) on this show, Moscow and LA are neighbors. ;)

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  15. Honestly, Moscow and L.A. are so close that Chuck probably didn't even need to fly. He could have just taken the bus.

    He is an expert at using public transportation, after all.

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  16. They bought Tesseract Airlines from Alias.

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  17. In defence of wearing the wedding gear when they were travelling I spotted a couple all decked out waiting to catch the overnight train from Nice to Paris a couple of years back. I even have a photo somewhere, because I was so surprised and it seemed like something worth documenting...

    Agreed about the reception though... that was weird that they had a practice and not an actual. Unless Sarah's recovery meant everything got pushed back and the reception wasn't able to be rescheduled at such short notice *ponders*

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  18. There is always so many frustration with missing moments from Chuck for me, Nearly always I just want more Chuck and Sarah moments, or indeed Sarah moments. They could have showed us more of the wewdding itself we did not see the rings, Sarah being walked down the Aisle by Casey or her dad, but then we never really got to see Ellies and Awesomes either but one has to say that Fedak and co criminally underestimate some fans desire for Chuck and Sarah, yes they got them together and havent split them up which is good but they dont give us these moments that have been 4 seasons in the making.
    The problems is that 42 mis per episode are not enough and the always want to shoehorn so much into an episodee that some things have to go. It was always surprising to me that they werent originally going to film any of the wedding at all and just show them leaving the church (according to Robbie Dunc Mcniel on Chuck vs the Podcast and that Montage was put in in editing and not in the script)
    I think many peoples problems with season 4 was pacing. The first epiosdes were primarily showing Chuck and Sarah, but people wanted to get into finding mom, They did the usual is she bad or good thing for a couple of episodes and then we had the whole losing the intersect arc, etc. In the back half we have a filler in Vs Murder which is one of the worst episodes of the series IMO and then after that the pace is so hectic and we have to have the attack on Sarah at the end of an epsiodes to give a sense of drama but as there was never any real posibility of her death it does not really work. They could have given themselves more time in the episode by cutting the morgansect as I think most fans would have gone into S5 in a lot better frame of mind if it had been dropped. Personally I hated it at the time but reallise now Chuck needs to develop without the intersect, Chuck with the intersect did not need Sarahs protection, I think Morgan will so hopefully we get some Kick ass Sarah fight scenes.

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