It certainly didn’t take long for the General’s concerns from last week about Chuck and Sarah’s relationship to result in definitive action as “Chuck Versus the Broken Heart,” saw agent Alex Forrest (Tricia Helfer) brought in to evaluate and ultimately replace Sarah as Chuck’s handler. Naturally, this lead to some Chuck and Sarah angst as the two tried to deal with being forced apart.
I’m not sure what to think about the way Forrest was brought in. If, as General Beckman later revealed, Alex was always intended to take over for Sarah and the whole evaluation thing was just a ruse, then how come Sarah seemed to think she was being evaluated?
And if Sarah’s work (and her relationship with Chuck) really was being evaluated, then how come she wasn’t actually given a chance to do any work. Agent Forrest repeatedly kept Sarah from doing any of her normal spy work, meaning there wasn’t really any opportunity to see if her relationship with Chuck had impaired her judgment. I was kind of expecting Forrest to be revealed as a Fulcrum agent after she “evaluated” Sarah without giving Sarah any chance to prove herself.
The Chuck and Sarah stuff was pretty solid this week. I often complain when the show focuses too much on their relationship, but in this case the moments felt natural. If Chuck and Sarah are being forced apart, we should see them having trouble dealing with that.
It was also good to see one of the rare times that Chuck gets to have something positive come out of his being conscripted to work for the government as Sarah used her CIA powers to track down Chuck’s father. Presumably we’ll be learning a lot more about Chuck’s dad next week.
It’s always nice when the B plot is tied into the main plot in some way. This week, that was very much the case with Awesome’s bachelor party actually playing a role in both the main plot and the B plot at the same time.
On the other hand, the Awesome and Ellie drama didn’t really work for me. For one, it seems like it shouldn’t have happened in the first place. Seeing as Casey was the one to drag the unconscious Awesome home, it should have been pretty easy for Casey or Forrest to use the keycard and return it before Casey brought Awesome home at 4 AM. Not to mention that would be better spy-work, as Awesome would never even suspect that his card had ever been anywhere but around his neck.
The other problem is the pictures Ellie saw. For one, Alex and Awesome were alone for his “lap dance.” Jeff and Lester weren’t there to take pictures. So presumably sometime after Awesome was knocked out, Alex invited everyone in to the room to watch as she kept playing around with Awesome while he was unconscious? What possible reason is there to have done that?
I probably wouldn’t complain so much about this, but the Awesome and Ellie situation was still unresolved at the end of the episode. So the fight, which felt forced to begin with, is going to be dragged out over at least one more episode.
The stealing of Awesome’s keycard did lead to some amusing hijinx once the baddies detected the bug and Chuck was forced to take on Awesome’s identity though. Chuck’s horrific attempt at posing as a doctor was good for a laugh, as was the whole laughing gas incident. And I really liked Chuck’s clever bit of drug-addled questioning of Doctor Zamir.
“Chuck Versus the Broken Heart” had some problems, specifically with the Ellie/Awesome sub-plot and the way Forrest replacing Sarah was handled, but those problems were relatively minor and did little to damage an otherwise entertaining episode.
Trevor MacKay is the sci-fi/horror/fantasy/cheesy/random geeky stuff guy. If something is geeky and/or unbelievably cheesy, he’s there.
