This week on “Chuck” entitled “Chuck vs. the Kept Man”, Gertrude Verbanski returns to hire Team Bartowski for a mission in South Beach, Casey is having a tough time showing his true feelings for Gertrude and Jeff and Lester begin to suspect about what’s really going on at the Buy More.

I mention last week that it’ll be interesting to see that now with all the major storylines from the previous episodes (for example: Shaw being captured and Sarah’s “baby” secret) has been wrapped up, what’s left for Chuck and the rest of Team Bartowski for the remaining four episodes (including this episode). Well, this week’s episode focuses on Casey and how much his life has changed since the beginning of the series. In the beginning of this episode, you still see Casey have the urge to go on a real, cold mission instead of vacationing in “sunny” South Beach with Gertrude. However, as the episode progressed, you see the changes in Casey’s life due to the strong “female” presence of Alex and Gertrude.

It should be said once again that Carrie-Anne Moss and Adam Baldwin have such an amazing chemistry together. Their scenes were both hilarious and poignant. I laughed when Gertrude gave Casey a deep V neck cashmere sweater to wear it to work. However, my favorite scene was their final scene where Gertrude admitted that she wanted to be close to Casey and asked Casey if he would go with her on a mission to Dresden where it’s very cold to Casey’s likings but he passes because he didn’t want to be far away from Alex for two months. Even though she’s on this mission, I suspect and hope that we will see Gertrude one last time in the series finale even if it’s just a cameo.

I laughed so hard when Sarah walked in on Casey and Gertrude having a “special” moment at the honeymoon suite where Gertrude said to Casey that “you’ve been a naughty, naughty Colonel” and heard a slap and Casey’s grunt to Sarah’s dismay face and she couldn‘t get out of there any faster.

Jeff and Lester began to be suspicious about what really is happening behind the scenes at the Buy More with Jeff starting to think that Chuck, Casey and Sarah are spies. The “cliffhanger” at the end was Awesome and Team Bartowski tried to throw off Jeffster by staging a “fake” exercise room. However, Jeff realized that there’s a fake wall because the paint was still wet and he breaks through to reveal on the other side was Castle. Morgan shoots them with darts, but Team Bartowski realizes that they have a big problem on their hands. I have a feeling that next week’s episode will have Team Bartowski continuing to discredit Jeffster’s accusations about finding Castle, but Jeff and Lester will still keep digging until they come up with some type of evidence and/or Team Bartowski comes clean. I think Team Bartowski might as well come clean to Jeffster since they are now a private spy firm and don’t work for the CIA anymore and might as well hired Jeffster and used their tech skills. By the way, I agree with Jeff that Lester looked pretty comfortable walking in high heels and Awesome looked pretty sharp wearing that “James Bond” tuxedo.
I didn’t care at all about Chuck’s C.A.R.E (Clandestine Agents Relating Emotionally) mission statement to attract business for Carmichael Industries. As for Chuck, I felt at times that he wasn’t relevant and when he was, it was a little too much of Chuck’s “listen to your heart” spiel especially in the beginning of the episode. In addition, I was bother that Chuck didn’t notice at all that Sarah “might” be pregnant giving all the “blatant” signs that she could be.
Maybe it was last week’s “baby” episode but I had a sense from the beginning that Sarah wasn’t pregnant and half of the episode was wasted guessing on whether or not she is. I probably would’ve appreciate it in the final episode or in last week’s episode since all the talk was about babies and Sarah wanting a family but not in this episode. With that being said, I thought, while watching this episode, that it would’ve been fun to see how a pregnant Sarah will adjust her work as a spy for a whole season.

Overall, I will say that this week’s episode was solid at best. Honestly, I wasn’t surprise that I felt that this episode wasn‘t going to be as good as the previous two episodes that were sensational. However, I’m disappointed because this is one of the last remaining episodes of the series that should’ve felt special but to me it felt like a fill-in episode that didn’t have any standout moments. I was entertain by the Casey and Gertrude scenes and as well as Jeffster, but like any “Chuck” episode that I have rated either high or low it always comes down to how Chuck and Sarah were written. In this episode, I felt they could’ve done a better job than this. As I said before, I felt Chuck this week was kind of annoying and too much oblivious to Sarah possibly being pregnant. I hope the remaining episodes leaves some (not all) of this “oblivious, listen to your heart” Chuck behind.