Chuck: The Other Side

Is changing your hair from blonde to black the international symbol for going rogue? It sure seems like it.

Sarah is pretending to have crossed over to the other side on Chuck, and apparently the best way to do that is to dye your hair black and don a black latex jumpsuit a la ScarJo in Iron Man 2? Well, it worked because Volkoff has brought her into the fold. It’s not that he trusts her completely – he’s not that stupid – but he think she’s useful.

Sarah’s undercover mission meant we saw a lot of action in last night’s episode, but luckily there was still a lot of interaction between Sarah and the old gang. To prove herself to Volkoff she had to spring a giant, scary cannibal named The Gobbler from the slammer, and she needed help from Chuck, Casey and Morgan to do that.

The mission was a success (and provided us with lots of hilarious Casey/Morgan moments) but it was only a small step. Not only was The Gobbler not as important as Sarah and Chuck’s mom thought (Volkoff only had him sprung so he could get back a fancy eyeball and shoot the guy), but Volkoff was suspicious of the fact that Sarah had used Casey to accomplish the mission. Her next order was to kill Casey.

The fight between Sarah and Casey was probably one of the best things we’ve seen on Chuck. What’s great is that they’re so evenly matched in skill that if they were really fighting it could go on forever. But they weren’t really fighting – Sarah slipped Casey some important information, and then pushed him out a window. Because he told her to. Yeah, Casey isn’t dead. But he’s not exactly in good shape either. I like what this will bring for Casey emotionally, especially when it comes to his relationship with his daughter Alex. But what will this mean for him for the rest of the season? Someone needs to keep Chuck and Morgan out of trouble!

On the comedy side, besides some great Casey/Morgan interaction regarding Morgan’s relationship with Alex, we also got a few laughs from Ellie and Awesome. Awesome had Jeff and Lester help him turn Ellie off of the idea of naming their baby Grunka, but it actually ended up that Ellie was the one with a master plan – she’d only made up that name so Awesome would finally commit to a real name. I loved that Grunka was the name of the spoons she bought from Ikea. I really like Ellie, and I’d like to see her get more storylines like this – ones where she’s in control and comes across as smart and confident rather than a worrywart older sister or expectant mom.

Moving forward, Sarah knows she has to distance herself from Chuck in order to succeed with her mission. Mama Bartowski told her so. But it doesn’t seem like Chuck realizes how long it could take for Sarah to accomplish what she’s set out to do. His mom has been gone most of his life, does he really expect Sarah to be able to bring down the whole organization and be back in time for a Spring wedding?

The preview for next week’s episode has me very excited, especially since it was originally planned as a finale in a 13-episode season. What did you think of “Chuck vs. The Gobbler”? And what do you want to see happen next week?


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