John Casey!!! He was active and instrumental in taking down the global alien threat of ‘96 before being assigned to Operation Bartowski! Now there, my dudes, is a real American hero. 🤓🍻

How did Ring Operative Justin know Devon would contract malaria and have to be taken back home with Ellie? Did he plan for this? Or did he just know mosquitos were prevalent in the area and Devon was very likely to get infected. Or did he find a way to infect him and make it LOOK LIKE malaria?

I know there’s that tiny scene of Devon smacking away a mosquito and that’s most likely how he got infected but, did Justin KNOW this would happen? Very opportunistic haha. On a season 3 rewatch today and am wondering haha

TLDR: Even if I accept that the ending is not as happy as I'd have liked, and even if I accept the use of memory loss in the story, the ending is still inconsistent and nonsensical and misses a number of opportunities for something better.

I’d like to submit that the ending is not only disappointing and potentially depressing. After all, that’s a subjective opinion. It’s possible to be on board with the emotional tone of the ending. It’s also possible to be on board with the concept of a character losing her memories. I argue that that plot device is cliche, but it can still make for a good story. It alone does not ruin the ending. But I submit that even if I was on board with both of those things, the ending would still suck because it is so forced, at the expense of logic and established characters.

First, the entire ending would not have happened if Quinn had fallen out of the train after being kicked out of the window by Sarah and died upon hitting the ground at an extraordinarily high speed, as the laws of physics would dictate. Instead, Quinn, who is not a young man, nor very slim, crawls along the side and underside of a speeding bullet train for at least 10 or 15 minutes to get back inside via a convenient hatch that somehow opens from the outside and is unlocked.

But the biggest problem is what they do with Sarah (bear with me). She does not merely lose her memories; she loses her entire character. The Sarah of Season 5, episode 12 is nothing like the Sarah of Season 1, episode 1. In episode 3:12 (the "Sarah, do you love me?" scene), Sarah says she fell for Chuck after he fixed her phone and before he started defusing bombs with computer viruses. That means she fell for Chuck in episode 1. She fell for Chuck in one day. Sarah does not have nearly the same character arc as Casey. She does not go from a cold, mechanical spy to someone more "normal". No, from the very beginning, she was capable of loving Chuck despite the complications it created for her spy job. In the very first episode, she fights off NSA agents to protect Chuck, and when she says "Trust me, Chuck" on the beach at the end, we are never led to believe that this was just a line between an agent and a handler. No, she meant this. From the very beginning, she saw Chuck as a person, not just a job.

By contrast, the Sarah of 5:12 trusts her handler blindly, obeys orders without question, and is laser focused on the objective of her mission without consideration for how it fits into the big picture. I can accept this from the Casey of 1:1, not Sarah. Some might chime in here and point out that Sarah does not trust Quinn immediately; in fact, she hangs him out of a window threatening to kill him. But this is more of a checkbox in the script, added so that the writer can claim Sarah is not trusting him blindly. Quinn only provides her one piece of evidence which proves that Sarah indeed had an assignment involving someone named Chuck Bartowski. But if you think about this for even a moment, this proves nothing. It doesn't prove that Quinn is her handler, and it doesn't prove that Chuck is bad. Following this, Sarah completely ignores massive warning signs that should make her question whether she should be trusting Quinn. Let's go into those:

1. First, would a CIA handler even send her back on a mission after she loses 5 years of memories? There are obvious risks here. Sarah's safety is a concern, and then of course there's the concern of her performance. Sending an amnesia agent on an assignment that she has been on for years would probably do more harm than good.
2. Chuck and company seem to genuinely care about Sarah. They also seem normal and fun; for example, Morgan making Harry Potter references while playing around with the invisibility field he comes across in the CIA base. Quinn, on the other hand, talks like a James Bond villain. I'm not saying this should bring her entirely back. But she should question whether this Quinn guy told her the truth.
3. If Quinn is her CIA handler, wouldn't his goal be to protect the Intersect from Chuck? Why would he tell Sarah to help Chuck break into the CIA base and then steal the Intersect from him? Why not just notify the CIA that Chuck plans on stealing the Intersect and increase its protection?
4. On that note, what is stopping the CIA from showing up and arresting Chuck? If he is guilty of what Quinn says he is (which I don't think is ever actually said), and his entire team consists of two other guys, and he is sitting in a known address in Burbank, California, why don't they just arrest him?
5. After Quinn blows up the CIA facility, killing 3 potentially valuable prisoners, and destroying a valuable government resource (as Sarah points out), she still trusts him! And she is still laser focused on getting the Intersect glasses for him.
6. After she accepts, in the scene in the house, that Chuck genuinely loves her, she still does not question her original orders or her original understanding of the situation. To take a different example from the show, Volkoff loved Mary, but Mary knew that Volkoff was an unstable maniac. By contrast, everything in Chuck's behavior over the last day should spell "normal, good guy" to Sarah, and now it's "normal, good guy who genuinely loves you" and she still is like "I need those glasses." No, you obviously need to sit down and rethink!

In the end, it takes Quinn literally telling her that he lied to her for her to believe that he lied to her. Sarah's lack of discernment and critical thinking throughout this episode is completely out of character. And this comes at a time when she should be the most curious. She knows that she does not remember the events of the last 5 years. She should have a deep desire to know everything that happened so that she can hope to make sense of her life again. She should want to know the specific details. But Quinn gives her a two-sentence synopsis, and this satisfies her.

All of this is to show that Sarah is not herself.

But wait, you say, it was established earlier in season 5 that the faulty Intersect does more than erase your memories. It melts your brain! Morgan also was not himself with the Intersect!

And I'm glad you brought that up because it provides a whole new lens with which to see how this ending doesn't work. The problem is that the show itself is unwilling to commit to the idea that the Intersect changed Sarah's personality as well as erased her memories.

First, in the last episode, Chuck is clearly only concerned with the fact that she doesn't remember him. When Ellie and Morgan try to persuade him to try to get her to fall in love with him again, he accepts that if he did it once, he can do it again, and he never brings up the possibility that Sarah's character has radically changed, making the goal impractical and possibly even undesirable. Then throughout the episode, Chuck pretty clearly still loves her and sees her as the same person. He just wishes she would remember their time together. If the characters of the show don't think this is the same as Morgan's mind melt, why should we?

And from a more objective perspective, Sarah of the final episode starts to feel more like Sarah, just without her memories. She goes on her own mission to destroy Quinn and get back the Intersect glasses, she shows a little more interest in knowing her past, and she feels bad for what Chuck is going through and treats him kindly most of the time. And most importantly, she is willing to go along with Chuck's plan for how to get her memories back. Does the show want us to believe that the change of personality went away in between the last and second to last episodes? If so, that has no explanation.

In addition, if we're using Morgan's case as our precedent, there are many important differences to point out. First, Morgan regains his character if not all of his memories while he still has the Intersect. Chuck gets through to him at the end of season 5, episode 3 in the helicopter scene, and from then on, Morgan is fundamentally himself but doesn't remember Star Wars and Indiana Jones. This is while he still has the Intersect (and if you want to say it's all about flashes, he flashes after this too -- I at least remember him flashing to use the Intersect one last time before it is removed). Morgan himself even says that the Intersect did not invent his frosted tips persona, that in fact it was a real part of him that the Intersect merely brough to the forefront. All of this is to suggest that the "mind melting" was really just a term that Morgan used. His mind did not melt, and his character did not really change. He allowed it to change. He gave in to the new temptations that the Intersect created for him. But he was ultimately still there, and after Chuck got through to him, he remained in control of himself even while still possessing the Intersect. Because it was ultimately his choice the whole time.

We can extend this further and say that Morgan's past and existing character were major factors in how the Intersect affected him. He was not strong willed, and he had spent much of his life in the shadow of Chuck. He had always wanted to be more than he was, and the Intersect provided that opportunity for him.

This is worlds apart from Sarah. Sarah had strong values, an independent personality, and astounding courage. She also had emotionally impactful experiences that should be far more difficult for the Intersect to erase. There is precedent for the Intersect erasing knowledge in the mind, but not emotion. Sarah's love for Chuck, her loyalty to her team, and her happiness with the life she had would be embedded deep in her nervous system at this point, and it is not at all clear that the Intersect has the power or reach to affect these things. In 3:14, Sarah says that "Burbank is the only place that ever felt like home." In 4:2, she says "You're my home, Chuck. You always have been." By season 5, Sarah's heart and soul are entwined with the life she has made in the last 5 years. It has become second nature to her. Nothing from Morgan's stint with the Intersect can be used to explain how this disappears from her.

Even after she loses her memory, what would make far more sense would be for Sarah to still feel a visceral pull toward Chuck and her previous life but not be able to explain why she feels this.

Some might argue at this point that Sarah flashed a lot more times than Morgan. In fact, we don't know how many times she flashed. Quinn had her captive, so he could make her flash as much as he wanted. And with that many flashes, eventually the Intersect would erase even things deep inside her. But if we really take this to its natural and dark conclusion, that Sarah was forced to flash an absurd number of times to the point that she "forgot" what had become second nature, we are still left with inconsistencies because Sarah still has many of her values and good traits in 5:13. In 5:12, she still has her fighting abilities and memories of Bryce and everything before the show started. And she remembers little things like the Irene Demova virus near the end of 5:13. You can't have it both ways, show. You can't have Sarah experience something so mind altering that it removes deeply embedded emotional memory but doesn't remove any of the things that would interfere with the ending you want.

And finally, this brings me to the way the story tries to tease the return of Sarah's memory in the last episode, and the opportunities that the story misses here. Everything that Sarah kind of remembers is from season 1, episode 1. She remembers how things are organized in the Wienerliscious. She remembers the Irene Demova virus. And she remembers the beach location where she had talked to Chuck at the end of the first episode. Shows tend to do this annoying thing where they view their first episode as their most important episode. They like to connect the very last episode to the very first episode at the expense of ignoring everything in between (cough, How I Met Your Mother). It's a shame that a beatiful show like Chuck falls into this trap as well. If Sarah was slowly starting to regain her memory in the last episode, why on earth would she remember three random details from five years ago that realistically should be three of the most insignificant things that have happened to her since the show started? She didn't even like the Wienerliscious job, and it was a far shorter tenure than the Orange Orange, and the Orange Orange had the added significance of being connected to Castle. Also, when she talks to Chuck on the beach at the end of 1:1, it is mostly to comfort him as a professional and to explain to him what's going to happen moving forward. Emotionally, it shouldn't have been that significant for her. I can understand how the Irene Demova virus would stick with her, but on the list of impactful things that she has experienced over the course of the show, it should not be near the top of the list.

How much more meaningful would it have been for Sarah to remember the charm bracelet Chuck gave her in season 2, or when Chuck saved her from Shaw in Paris, or when they posed as the "Charleseses" while doing one last mission together before running away, or when she desperately saved Chuck from the Belgian in season 4, or when Chuck proposed to her after they defeated Volkoff, or how about their wedding day which came right after Chuck defied the entire CIA in order to save her from the Nordsman? Realistically, these were more powerful moments for her, and she would be more likely to remember them. It's like the show doesn't believe in itself. It's like it doesn't know what meaningful past events to draw on so it defaults to the very first episode.

And those are just meaningful things that we could believe Sarah might start to remember again if she was getting her memory back. It gets even worse when you consider that the show had just established a highly significant event in Sarah's past from even before the show started! Why is there no mention of the baby?? The show doesn't explicitly say so, but it seems that Sarah remembers things from before the show started. After all, she remembers Bryce and Director Graham. Shouldn't she remember the baby that she saved?? And wouldn't that be a sensible way for the story to get her to remember other things?

More practically speaking, where are Sarah's dad and mom? Why does no one talk about them? Why does no one ask Sarah whether she remembers them or suggest asking them to come see Sarah? If she remembers Bryce and Graham, she should remember them, and either of them could potentially help her remember Chuck.

Even if I accept everything the ending was trying to do, it missed huge opportunities to do it better. With what we were given, Chuck vs. the Baby feels like an unnecessary deviation, when it could have so organically had a pivotal role in the show's climax. And Sarah's parents just feel like boxes that were checked - forgotten as soon as they are offscreen - instead of real people that exist in this world.

It's just so clear to me that the show wanted a subversive and dark (and annoyingly ambiguous) ending and was willing to discard the story and character development that had built up until that point in order to make it happen.

And that is why the ending of Chuck absolutely sucks.

Okay, that turned out pretty long. Do you guys like the ending? Or what other reasons do you hate it?

It’s the interview where Yvonne joked that Morgan and Sarah have an affair in season 5 and Zac goes “If you did anything with my wife, I will end you!”

Anyone know where could see this again? It used to be on YouTube but I can’t find it anymore.

The La Ciudad episode was the first spy mission formula episode and it was a barn burner. Malena Bernal is an absolute angel.

The Helicopter episode felt like a transition episode between the pilot and spy missions, to me.

Chuck started with quite a few extremely strong episodes. Such a great show.

What episode that doesn’t involve any main story arc is your favorite? Mine is Chuck vs Tom Sawyer. Loved the bit of Jeff history, throwback video gaming and Chuck having to hang out with Jeff. :)

I vaguely remember it repeating “ wake up wake up wake up up this time-“ a sad kind of song and I think it was one of the times Chuck was in his room sad about Sarah.

Not much info at all but incase it jogs anyone’s memory

wikipedia lists a sitcom as: A sitcom (a shortening of situation comedy, or situational comedy) is a genre of comedy centred on a fixed set of characters who mostly carry over from episode to episode.

I never really understood what a sitcom was. I know the big bang theory is a sitcom. But is Chuck a sitcom? what is the difference between a sitcom and a non sticom comedy show. I genuinely dont know.

I have watched chuck twice now, but the thing is I always drop it around season 4, idk why I can't seem to watch all of season 4, like I think it's not as good as the 3 first seasons but I also never really tried to force myself to watch it, what do you guys think about the two last seasons

Let me start with the very last one: Bryce Larkin. Who else?

I’ve watched Chuck countless times. I’ve just found out that on amazon.de you can watch it with German dubbing. I’ve been in the (long) process of learning German, and am excited to bring Chuck along with me in the process!

Anyone else watched in German (or any other language)? If so, how’d it go?

I wish they had revisited some of the old spontaneous lies told over the first few seasons to set the record straight. A few that would have been fun for Team B to explain to Ellie:

• Awesome didn't get attacked by a cat/bear
  
• Casey didn't get arrested after drinking too much and exposing himself
  
• No, Sarah doesn't have a spastic colon

I am guessing the whole show was filmed on in LA on sets but I was curious if maybe the scene where Shaw takes Sarah to the cafe and eventually goes over the bridge was show on location somewhere.

Anyone know?

I am starting the episode rotation …again… and got to the episode where Sarah tells the story of when she was 9, her sister and her used baby oil instead of suntan lotion and got a bad sunburn. There was never a reference to Sarah having a sister close to her same age after that. Was this ever explained by Josh and Chris or was Sarah telling something that did not really happen as part of her cover?

https://preview.redd.it/cmry88xkib9d1.png?width=3440&format=png&auto=webp&s=70501a3cb91602f565f7863a6b01cf4c8d5cede8

Damn it I spoiled myself again and I found out about the ending of the show and am afraid to finish it now. I've never hesitated finishing a show cause of an on-screen relationship or something like that. But hey, if I never finish it, they always stay together right? Right... Edit: I just realized I also had this with Modern Family a few years ago. Weird though, these aren't exactly the same style of shows.