In “Chuck vs. The Cougars” it seemed we were learning a lot about Sarah’s past. Of course, almost all those revelations were later revealed to be lies. The only things we actually learned were that Sarah’s dad was arrested and Sarah was recruited into the CIA immediately afterwards. “Chuck vs. The Delorean,” while not about Sarah’s past, was much more helpful in filling in the blanks of Sarah’s past. And we got to see the always awesome Gary Cole show up as Sarah’s father, Jack Burton. What’s not to like?
It seemed pretty stupid of Chuck to tail Sarah on her mystery “date.” I thought Chuck learned his lesson about prying into Sarah’s personal life against her wishes back in “Chuck vs. The Cougars.” As you probably recall, Sarah was rather angry when Chuck started digging around in her past. And this time, it wasn’t about talking to some random high school people who had no real secrets to divulge, but meeting her father. Fortunately, for Chuck, Sarah was only mildly annoyed this time. And Chuck did seem to be on better behavior himself when he did meet her father (no digging for stories about Sarah’s childhood, no trying to find out stuff she would rather keep to herself, etc.).
The relationship between Sarah and her father was well done. It struck just the right mix of Jack really loves his daughter, and Jack’s kind of a scumbag. The scenes with Jack and young Sarah were particularly entertaining. I really hope we see Jack Burton turn up again in the future.
It didn’t occur to me while I was watching the episode, but in retrospect I find myself wondering exactly why Sarah’s father put the money in Chuck’s bank account. Was he trying to keep the $10 million for himself? If so, surely he could have dumped the money into an account that only he had access to (even if he planned to take the money back out of Chuck’s account as soon as he got back to his hotel, there would always be a chance that Chuck would find the money first. Perhaps he thought that the sheik would track him down, and this way Chuck could safeguard the money while they came up with a way to outfox Ahmad. But if Ahmad could track Jack down, there’s no reason he couldn’t also track down Chuck. I guess Jack taking off with the laptop could have been a practical joke to make them think he was screwing them over, but there wasn’t really any indication that was the case.
I also wondered about General Beckman telling Sarah about her father’s impending arrest. It’s hard to know what Beckman’s intentions were but there are a couple possible readings. If taken at surface value it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. For one, Sarah wouldn’t need the chance to say goodbye, before her dad was arrested. He was only being arrested, not executed. Sarah would have lots of chances to talk with him later on when he was in prison. And if it was just to give Sarah the chance to say goodbye, it puts her in a situation where she basically has to betray her father by not warning him of his impending arrest. It’s also possible that Beckman was basically giving an off-the-record chance for Sarah to let her dad go free. The scene makes a lot more sense if the latter is true.
While it was rather predictable, I really enjoyed Morgan’s subplot this week. Part of that was because I was geeking out over the Delorean, part of that was because Anna has been criminally underused this season, but mostly because it was entertaining. And it even ended up being one of the few Morgan subplots to tie directly into the main plot when Chuck had to borrow the Delorean to go help Sarah save her father.
“Chuck vs. the Delorean” was not only a great episode, it also (finally) gave us some solid information about Sarah’s past. Of course, Chuck didn’t get most of that information, but at least we did.
Trevor MacKay is the sci-fi/horror/fantasy/cheesy/random geeky stuff guy. If something is geeky and/or unbelievably cheesy, he’s there.
