Chuck Review: Chuck Versus The Almost Proposal

I welcome Chuck back into my living room with open arms, and there’s a simple reason for that. It’s just fun. I sit down with most of my favorite comedies, Modern Family, Community, Cougar Town, and How I Met Your Mother just to name a few, because I want to have a good time and laugh. And so far this season, Chuck has not disappointed in giving that and so much more. The writers have achieved the perfect balance of mythology and romance, action and laughter, and the CIA and Buy More. After the first half of the season being very Volkoff and Mama Bartowski heavy, it was nice to get some light storyline and hokey humor surrounding Chuck and Sarah’s deepening relationship. At least for a little while.

It all started with a pursued operative. He runs into a wine cellar, barricading the door to buy himself a few seconds. He starts to inject something into his arm but changes his mind. Instead, he injects it into a wine bottle. Floating in the liquid is a microchip, and it’s clearly more important than his life. He’s gunned down, but he saved something.

Back in Burbank, Chuck is nervous and adorable. He and Sarah sit in a lovely Italian restaurant, but he’s preoccupied. Immediately, I thought, “This can’t be happening?! Already?!” The entire scene was textbook proposal, and there was no hiding that fact. But, then, the writers turned it around on my snap judgment. Sarah has a bad history with proposals. Her father proposed in a similar restaurant with the usual candles and music. It was all over the top, and in the end, a candle lit a rug on fire, and her mother and family barely escaped with their lives. Her parents regarded it as a bad omen and called off the wedding. As Sarah said, “It was the beginning of the end of the relationship.” So Chuck had to rewind, shoo the orchestra, send the horse and carriage packing and break Morgan’s poor, little heart by telling him that his plethora of balloons were worthless. For Sarah, Chuck’s current plan is the anti-proposal. Pure, charming genius.

Luckily they get a mission, and Chuck gets a quick getaway. It turned out the earlier man was an agent transporting a nanochip that contained the secret locations and blueprints of CIA black sights in Europe. The chip is supposed to be injected when the agent’s in distress and extracted later, but they found nothing in the body. Casey, Chuck and Sarah have to return to the winery, which has a conveniently scheduled tasting gala, and find the chip. Beckman warns them to also watch out for Pierre Melville, a French radical-turned-terrorist, who also wants to find the chip.

In the chateau, Casey gets stuck underground with Melville and his men. Though he quickly uncovers where the chip is located, Casey only does so because Melville has really heightened taste buds. He licks the agent’s discarded, injector gun and instantly knew that it wasn’t blood and what kind of vintage wine he tasted. That’s the French for you. He orders a cellar lockdown but also sends some of his guys to find the bottle in question. Of course, wine tastings are for pretentious lushes and the microchip had to find its way into someone’s glass soon enough, and it landed right in the glass of a quintessential Frenchman. “Yes, there is something in the wine…two hundred years of French history. The blood and sweat of my ancestors. The pride of lords and peasants alike. You, Sir, wouldn’t know the difference between this and Two Buck Chuck.”

Chuck steals the wine and recovers the nanochip, but the mission isn’t over. Beckman even makes the trip to Castle to tell Chuck and Sarah, in person, that they’ll be going undercover as turned agents who want to sell the chip back to Melville. Of course, it’ll be a decoy, but Beckman reiterates that the mission is imperative. She even pulls Sarah aside and, ominously, restates that operation is in her hands and must run smoothly. Of course, before they head off, Sarah overhears Morgan forcing sub-mission two onto Chuck and forces him to spill. He confesses everything, even that Chuck had planned to propose at the restaurant. He assures her that she’ll be happy with the final result, but she’d rather commandeer the operation. Morgan was officially reporting to her and from that moment on he was a double agent. “We’re gonna make this proposal happen for Chuck’s sake…and for mine.”

The two return to the chateau, where Morgan clues Sarah in on the proposal plan and sikes up Chuck. Sarah is waiting for the drop and can’t shake the bad feeling she has. Chuck is playing lookout and wondering if Sarah’s more nervous than usual and on to sub-mission two, but everything goes off without incident. Still, someone’s lurking in the bushes and taking pictures of Sarah. Plus, they’re way more interested in her than the actual bad guy. Something’s up!

The two plan to meet up at the proposal spot, but Sarah is late and Chuck is ambushed by Melville and his men. With the Intersect’s help, he takes them out easy, just in time for a nervous Sarah to walk onto the balcony and meet him. Chuck had dropped the ring, but Sub-Mission Two Co-Captains Morgan and Casey guide her to it, and she slips it back into Chuck’s pocket. The moon is full and high in the sky. Everything is perfect. They kiss. He proposes…. Then, CIA SWAT drops in! The whole time I’d been so delicately prepared for this moment, and they got me. Again!

Apparently, the fishy feeling Sarah had was right. Whoever was taking pictures of her was doing it to “fabricate” evidence. They also found the real nanochip and arrested her for treason, ripping her away from Chuck before he could finish his proposal. It was all so sad. Obviously, Beckman knows more than what she let on when she charged Sarah with the mission. Could the CIA want her to be the next Frost, a deep undercover agent who’s supposed to have turned rogue? Quickly, we learned that was, in fact, the case. Sarah was going to infiltrate the operation. She said she was doing it for them as a couple but also to bring Chuck’s mom back. So sad, but aww.

I gratefully received a needed dose of Sarah-Chuck lovin’. I miss that sweet, almost saccharine, bumbling, awkward cuteness when it’s gone. It’s been there from the very beginning and is an integral Chuck component. Sarah’s mission will not only bring us closer to Volkoff, but it’ll free Chuck up for some fantastic, bromantic missions. And so the balance tips again.

I clearly loved this week’s Chuck, but there were some other little things I adored:

• Morgan’s “sub-missions” with pre-outlined intel including proposal locations at the winery in the Loire Valley, aka “The Garden of France!”
• The tiny but oh-so-real pecks between Sarah and Chuck while staking out the party as they take in the beautiful countryside.
• Chuck calling Casey Jon-Jon, his manservant.
• Lester trying to escape his arranged marriage. She was inevitably going to be hot. He’d inevitably screw it up. Yes, she was gorgeous, and he was pretending to be the perfect, insanely traditional Indian.
• “If you keep futzing with the ring box, you’re going to tarnish the sheen.” – Morgan
• Then, we saw the real Lester Patel, “uncut, unabridged, in living color.” That would be a leather clad Lester singing Whitesnake’s “Is This Love?”
• Casey sharing his grizzly, completely unperfect proposal. “There’s no such thing as the perfect moment or perfect spot, so forget about the balcony, Bartowski. All you need is the girl.” This is said through cigar smoke, of course.

Season 4, Episode 11: Chuck vs. the Balcony (originally aired January 17, 2011)

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Images courtesy of NBC Universal.