Monsters of Television

“That’s where you’re wrong, Casey. Because love — love is a battlefield.”

Legion of doom.

It’s a good thing Chuck is leaving town. With as many people roaming around that know his “secret” life, another year and he’d have the entire city of Burbank implicated in the war on terror.

The would-be season finale starts off with Chuck getting his badge and his first assignment, a pretty cush deal with a cover as a billionaire playboy in Italy complete with villa and generous stipend. Chuck, however, would rather stay in Burbank with Sarah. Adorable. Kid’s an idiot but adorable. But before he blabs that to the General, she mentions he gets to pick his own team and we see a twinkle in Bartowski’s eye. Why not live up the spy life with his best girl that he’s never actually had? Wait, I seem to remember him saying that Ellie was his best girl at some point. We’re going to assume he’s never had her either.

Anyway, this leads to Team Get Sarah Walker Back. Because Chuck, despite several pretty winning attempts at wooing Sarah in the past, is now somehow dumbfounded as to how to win her over this time, Morgan, Awesome, and Casey (all with their own stake in his getting Sarah) decide to approach this by committee. It was weird to see so many people come out of the woodwork and all of them know what’s going on with Chuck. I think, officially, everyone on the first floor of their apartment complex is in the know except Ellie. But that’s only because she’s not weirded out by constant helicopters and mysterious disappearances. We’ll say she’s selectively oblivious.

Meanwhile, we find out that the Ring doesn’t really want to kill Shaw, just bring him into their secret Orkian compound. The mysterious Ring operatives tasked with bringing him in decide to (conveniently) infiltrate the same date Team Win Sarah are also trying to spoil. As Casey, Morgan, and Awesome try to pump Chuck up and enact a loosely-cobbled plan to distract a world-class spy, the Ring also moves in to let Shaw know their intentions. Hilarity ensues.

But so does something troubling. Shaw and Sarah have been “together” for weeks. Although I’m supposed to understand them as “linked romantically,” I haven’t because they have no chemistry. And I’ve never believed them to have chemistry. But they’ve been together for so many weeks, I’ve been worn down into assuming, by sheer length of time, that these two are a couple. It’s really a cheap way to sell a relationship to an audience: just continually force it down everyone’s throats until they accept it. It’s not a shipper thing (where I think only Chuck and Sarah should be together); it’s a manipulation of my suspension of disbelief. Like if enough people tell me Jeff Goldblum died in New Zealand, I have to start considering it to be true. Maybe not exactly like that but you get the idea. I just like to mention Jeff Goldblum. But enough episodes where the show tries to convince us they’re a couple and, eventually, because it’s too much trouble to fight it, I have to believe them.

Thankfully, that didn’t last long. Shaw decides to infiltrate The Ring by going along with them as a bullseye. His plan: a tracker he swallows will lead bombers to the Ring compound and he dies an American Hero (though, believe it or not, a red suit short of Greatest). He goes in and they show him old home video of his slain wife. I’d completely forgotten that was the source of his vengeance against The Ring. Really, I just thought the wife “killed by Ring operatives” was a way to endear himself as someone that will protect Team Chuck but, apparently, it’s pretty important. Or it suddenly is now. Because it connects with the “red test” Sarah was talking about last week.

Yes, the next piece of video is of Sarah’s “red test” where she shoots Shaw’s wife. At first I was hoping this was some sort of Eisensteinian proof, that Shaw would connect the juxtaposed videos even if the woman Sarah kills is only a remarkable Mrs Shaw look-alike, a demonstration of cleverness on the Ring’s part. But probably not. Probably Sarah actually did kill Mrs Shaw and the CIA is playing Smocke to Shaw’s Clairesseau. They gave him something to hate. And now Shaw wants to turn that hate on Sarah, because they’re all spies and no one can trust anyone. You know, the whole routine NBC and USA have based a good percentage of their schedules on (not counting NCIS marathons).

Who could it be? Believe it or not, it’s just me.

So what about the shipper story? Chuck saves Shaw from being bombed thus proving his Chuckness to Ms Walker. A lengthy speech later where he finally says, “I love you” to Sarah’s face without being gassed puts Sarah on a decision of whether to continue her career by going to Washington with Shaw or going with Chuck and being happy. Casey’s admission of shooting the mole last week puts her over the top for Chuck. Then she drops her gun on the bed. You know it’s never good when Sarah decides not to bring her gun.

Shaw, looking more Hulk than Supes, huffs and puffs his way out of the hospital to kidnap Sarah (though she doesn’t know she’s being kidnapped) and Chuck has to save her before Shaw tackles Sarah with a knife and tries to kill her for stealing his baby. I mean shoots her. Yeah, he’ll probably just shoot her.

I make fun but there were some interesting turnarounds, the most interesting to me a continuation of last week’s Episode of Turnarounds, where Sarah loses faith in Chuck because she watches him kill someone in cold blood. The tables were turned in “Chuck vs Santa Claus,” where Sarah kills the Rook in what looks like cold blood to Chuck, even if it was in his best interest. The disappointing part of that particular plot point was its quick dissipation in the following “Chuck vs The Third Dimension.” At the end of the next episode, Chuck admits his being freaked out by the whole thing but it’s quickly smoothed over by Sarah with no real dramatic tension. I mean, this was a violation of Chuck’s (however naïve) ethics and, though it provided us with an opportunity to watch Yvonne Strahovski crawl around in lingerie (in 3D no less), they pretty much let the drama slide.

Now, this moment, where Chuck supposedly kills in cold blood, is also resolved in an episode but, with the tension all season of Sarah debating Chuck’s Chuckness, the murder of the mole is more of a climax than the beginning of a new short-lived narrative thread. That was the final straw for her. Chuck being able to wield a gun and shoot a person on his knees is all she needed to know. To her, he’d crossed to the other side. Drama. Good. Even if it was quickly resolved, it made up for the missed opportunity last season. The switch from Chuck Bad to Chuck Good also felt natural (since these are two kids that want to be together). Casey admitting that Chuck is still the same pansy he’s always been is just icing on the cake for her, more proof she was making the right decision. He’s still Chuck. Just spy-ier.

I’m glad to see this show stepping up its game. No longer are they just a lead-in show or something that can just hide under the radar. Well, I mean, they’re on NBC so they’re going to fly under the radar anyway. But this is a show that continually gets better, is using its mythology well, and is ready to anchor Monday night. And, yet, it’s still on the bubble. With its narrative going so strong in its third season, I think we owe it to ourselves to make sure this thing keeps going. Buy a sub, everyone. Or a Mr Jibb.

Some other notes:

• Mr Jibb sequence is a nod to Spies Like Us, one of those movies I’ve been meaning to watch for a good while now [link via @Narfna (a plug for her blog for enlightening me)]
• A quick note on the timeline of events: for some reason, I had it in my head that Shaw’s wife was killed more recently (one of the many reasons I thought that Shaw jumping Walker’s bones was a little premature), which made Sarah killing her in her “red test” completely unbelievable. But, upon further review (and rewatching the ending of “Chuck vs First Class”) I realized she’d been dead for five years. Still a little late in Sarah’s spy career for a “red test” (since she was recruited in high school) but more honest to the timeline than I thought before. Also, it’s interesting that none of this information made it into the Intersect. Not that Chuck had all the pieces he needed to put it together but you’d think that how the CIA pitted Shaw against The Ring might make it into his dossier.
• One of my favorite moments in the whole episode: when Chuck is openly talking about spy stuff with Morgan and Devon walks in. Morgan gives a head nod and doesn’t miss a beat. Great familiarity between characters.
• Man, even when Casey is no longer an agent, dude still has to stay in the van. What’s a guy gotta do to stretch his legs a little? Oh, right. Treason.
• Did anyone else think the hologram thing was stupid?