This week on “Chuck” entitled “Chuck vs. the Baby”, Sarah, Chuck and Casey go to Hungary to look for Sarah’s former CIA handler but Sarah doesn’t tell the team the reason why they are searching for him and Morgan has “Game Night” at Castle with Ellie, Awesome and Alex.
This was an episode that I have been looking forward to because it concentrated on Sarah’s past before she was assigned to Chuck. Yvonne Strahovski was amazing throughout by showing all the emotions Sarah was having from protecting this baby and her mother from her ex-CIA handler at all cost including not telling Chuck and Casey about her personal secret.
We finally got to see Sarah’s mother. I thought Cheryl Ladd was brilliantly cast as Sarah’s mom. I loved how they setup the introduction of Sarah’s mom by giving us a couple of flashback scenes between Sarah and her mom. One flashback scene in particular that I loved was when Sarah didn’t have the maternally skills to take care of the baby so she called on her mother to guide Sarah into calming the baby down. The payoff at the end where you see how Sarah’s mom looks now, proves how much of an impact that scene had because not only the viewers haven’t seen how see she looks now but also Sarah where she broke down into tears when she embraced her mother at Chuck’s apartment proving how much Sarah has miss her mom all these years. It was also a sweet moment to see Sarah meeting her sister, Molly that is now a five year old girl.
Even though I knew the baby had to be about a mission, I was still relieved that the baby wasn’t Sarah’s because as I mention last week, I would’ve been upset if they introduced Sarah bearing a child from her past this late into the series. I’m satisfied that instead of being a mother, Sarah is a big sister to Molly.
Once again, I didn’t enjoy another episode where Chuck and Sarah aren’t honest with each other this time Sarah not coming forward about her mother and the baby to Chuck. I just felt that Sarah’s plan of working alone to find Ryker without Chuck and Casey’s help wasn’t going to work. However, I did like how the episode emphasis how Sarah of five years ago was working alone without any help from family and friends. Yet, during one of the flashback scenes where Sarah gave the baby to her mom, you can see the start of Sarah wanting a new life outside the spy world where she told her mom to give Molly a normal childhood that Sarah couldn’t have. Five years later, you see how the Sarah Walker character has grown and is now different from Sarah sharing a life with Chuck and their family and her beginning to accept a life outside the spy world. I loved Chuck and Sarah’s talk at the house at the end where Sarah tells Chuck that she doesn’t want to sacrifice her family anymore and they will do so if they go back to the CIA. So they decided to pass on Beckman’s offer and while they don’t have the money yet to buy the house, they have a sweet moment at the end by engraving their names on the doorframe as a promise to each other that they will find a way to get the house.
Tim DeKay gave a stellar performance playing Sarah’s ex-CIA handler, Kieran Ryker. DeKay portrayed the character brilliantly by giving Ryker that menacing presence. Ryker didn’t care at all for the baby’s well-being and only wanted to use her as a bargaining chip. Ryker’s fight scene with Sarah was brutally violent from Ryker continuously beating down Sarah through walls and him being stabbed by Sarah.
I was kind of surprise that Ryker didn’t do a background check on what Sarah has been doing the past five years especially marrying Chuck. I would’ve thought that Daniel Shaw would’ve mention it to Ryker and Ryker could‘ve used Chuck as a hostage to pin Sarah into telling him where she hid the baby.
It was a nice call back of seeing Tony Todd back as CIA Director Langston Graham during Sarah‘s flashback scenes.
Going in, I was kind of preparing myself to being bored by the “Game Night” scenes with Morgan, Ellie, Awesome and Alex, but I will admit their scenes had some nice moments. I liked Ellie and Awesome still playing their romantic spy role game in Castle. In addition, I enjoyed the Woodcombs reaching out to help Morgan and Alex on their situation by telling them that the Woodcombs almost have giving up on each other, but through their mistakes, found a way to love each other again. At the end, I’m glad that after listening to Awesome, Alex forgave Morgan and they reconcile.
Overall, I thought “Chuck vs. the Baby” was pretty good. It’s just a shame that NBC had to “dump” this great episode during the holidays especially with Strahovski giving an outstanding performance. I just loved Sarah’s desire to be with her family and is willing to give up being a spy to achieve it. It will be interesting to see how Chuck and Sarah will make a living outside the spy world. Now that it looks like Team Bartowski have put away Shaw and the rest of the “CIA rogue agents”, I’m looking forward to seeing what the writers will have in store for Team Bartowski with only five episodes left.
