Chuck Versus The Baby to Bring in New Year

It’s New Year’s Eve and I’m sitting here preparing myself mentally to talk about this week’s Chuck. Don’t worry; this isn’t how I plan to spend my entire night. I’ll keep this review short. The quick version of this review is as follows: I have very mixed feelings about “Chuck Versus the Baby”. Parts of it were really well done, particularly the B-plot with Morgan, Alex, Ellie and Awesome. Balancing the positive with the negative, we have Sarah’s flashbacks and the majority of her questionable decision making process throughout the episode.

Let’s tackle that negative nonsense first. Just a few episodes ago Sarah made a big stink over Chuck going solo and not trusting Sarah with his plans. Now in “Baby” Sarah is primed and ready to do the exact thing she got so angry with Chuck for doing. How does that make even a little bit of sense? It’s one of those situations where a character behaves uncharacteristically stupid for the sake of moving the plot forward and in this case it was a terrible decision. As soon as Sarah decided she needed to deal with her old handler, and this week’s bad guy (Tim DeKay), the storyline suffered. I could spend all day poking holes in this episode, and I normally hate doing that. Last week was so strong I could have cared less if there were story points that didn’t quite add up, but this? I’m offended by how flimsy this plot was. It wrapped up well enough, but it was a struggle to get through.

What didn’t help the episode was the sheer ridiculousness of Sarah’s flashbacks. Chuck is no stranger to cheesy fight scenes, but it was like they cranked the cheesiness to a whole other level. Through these flashbacks, we were introduced to Sarah’s mom (Cheryl Ladd). I wish I had more to say about her, but the truth of it is she was just there. She served her purpose and I don’t think we’ll see her again for the rest of the season. She got her five minutes of screen time and that was that.

Speaking more long term, with the death of Ryker and Shaw’s imprisonment, does this season even have a bad guy anymore? Last week, Shaw talked up his last plan like it would be an unstoppable force, but Sarah and co. saved the day in a single episode. Is that really all that Shaw had left in him, an ex-CIA handler looking for a baby? I cannot even begin to explain my lack of understanding for that way of thinking. This doesn’t bode well for the rest of the season, but my hopes haven’t been crushed just yet. There are still five episodes to go, which is more than enough time for this series to find a compelling story to go out on.

Before I forget, let’s get in to the Morgan and Alex story. I absolutely adored the idea of Morgan, Alex, Ellie and Awesome hanging out in Castle playing board games. That is so not what you would expect a spy base to be used for, but there it is. It wasn’t the smoothest way to get Morgan and Alex back together, but Ellie and Awesome’s break up story was cute and funny enough to make the abrupt reunion kiss at the end of the episode seem okay. The only big downside to this was it was stronger than the main storyline. That’s never a good thing in television.

When one of your favorite shows dips in quality it hurts more than you would expect. I’ve seen Chuck at its best and at its worst, and I can at least say “Chuck Versus the Baby” isn’t the worst episode in the series. That’s a positive, right?