5 out of 5

GARAGE SALE

Well, shine on, you crazy diamond and shove a crowbar up my nose! We’ve known it was all coming for a while. Of course, it’s been old news that Steve Carrell is leaving the show and we’ve kind of just been sitting around waiting to find out how Michael leaves. With Holly’s return, their engagement was pretty much inevitable; after all, you’ve gotta give a character like Michael closure. Saying good-bye to Jim and Pam is easy, really. They’re married to the love of their lives, they have a kid, they still manage to effortlessly outwit Dwight; they’ve got it all! Season finale, Jim gets a phone call, new job, moving truck, teary hugs good-bye. Done. Michael is not that simple.

There has been so much delusion and irrational ambition in Michael over the years and none of it has managed to come through. If we hated the guy, he could just get fired and be left wandering alone and we’d be good with that. Smeg, that would work with Dwight. The farm burns down, the office park gets foreclosed on, Dwight throws a backpack over his shoulder and starts hitchhiking to nowhere. You can’t do that to Michael because, while he is insane and delusional and humiliating, he’s also naive and romantic and kind of innocent. We want naive dreams to come true. We hate that we’re so jaded by our failed dreams or apparent inability to formulate any ambitions in the first place. Seeing some naive fool get everything he wants is cathartic.

So, ultimately, Michael has to get the girl. Although, it would have been hysterical for him to get fired, drive away as a broken man, only to have his car slammed into by a semi a block down the road. Cut shot to his closed casket funeral. Everyone starts to leave and someone says “see you at work, tomorrow”. The End. There’s a series finale no one’s going to forget for a long time! People would universally hate it, but it would still be better than seeing the main cast chilling in a universalist church waiting to “pass on”.

Anyway, tonight was the beginning of a perfect closure for Michael. He’s got the girl, he’s made the absolute perfect proposal. Seriously, when those doors opened and there were candles, I was tempted to roll my eyes, but bloody hell was an awesome proposal. And it was, of course, made perfect by going horribly, yet predictably, wrong without actually being ruined. The build-up was very well done. Michael’s failed proposal ideas weren’t over-played and the sub-plot involving Holly’s parents was affective without being ridiculously tear-jerker. Plus, we got to see Pam and Jim having a couple little moments, which I’m always a sucker for.

The other bits, the game of ‘Dallas’ and Dwight’s exchange quest, were equally brilliant. The characters we like and care about were out in force doing their thing. Note the general lack of Gabe. Please, note that and remember what a great episode this was. I did miss Erin slightly, though.

Gentlemen, Spring is here and the bar for proposals has been set for 2011. Good luck!

3 out of 5

CRITICAL FILM STUDIES

We love Community for the quirky characters for the same reason we love Mad Men for its stoicism; we see a magnified version of ourselves in it. Which, I know, is one of those ridiculously pretentious things film people say when they want to sound deep while talking about a George Clooney movie. In this case, at least, it is genuinely true. The characters in Mad Men are so repressed it hurts and it’s safe to say that everyone is a bit repressed. After all, we live in a world where we have to accept everyone’s opinion and not argue with it; it’s true for them, my opinion is true for me and ironic-pseudo-deity forbid that one should dare to say the other is wrong. Of course, believing A is right and B is wrong is the definition of an opinion, which means that we are no more allowed to have unique opinions in 2011 than we were in 1961. It’s the same thing in reverse. Hence the repression. Community too is the same thing in reverse. These characters are the people we allow ourselves to be in the bathroom mirror.

So, what we love about Community is getting to see those insanely neurotic other selves we have run wild. Many of us wish we had the mad combination of fear and courage to live every day spouting our thoughts and to hell if people don’t like us. I’d say a lot of us wish we could be so passionately consumed by one thing that it dominates our thoughts night and day. And who hasn’t, at some point in life, wanted to be ridiculously vain, yet dearly loved? It’s good times, Mr. Winger! Good times.

This week’s episode was a bit of a kick in the head because it was precisely a play on the opposite of that. The grand joke of the episode was that Abed was breaking from his usual gimmick which was weird, unsettling and kind of annoying. Sort of like the first twelve minutes of this episode. Or absolutely any episode of Cougar Town. Seriously, who is watching that show?

The greatest of Community episodes is one that lets the quirks take over and run wild. That was “Modern Warfare” and “Advanced Dungeons & Dragons”. Even when the show comes down to real feelings, it’s the mad quirks making it work (see: the bottle episode). Tonight was an exploration of what happens when those quirks get reined in and people get down to real feelings. Abed’s attempt at “real” conversation gets him an earful of Jeff’s insecurities and childhood trauma. We all have insecurities and Jeff’s calling a phone sex line claiming to be morbidly obese is pretty damn plausible. But that’s why we have quirks. We know that most of our insecurities are irrational, so we embrace somewhat irrational behaviors as a coping mechanism.

Just laying it out there not only makes us vulnerable, it makes us actually crazy. I think the point of tonight’s episode is that, while it’s great to be open and honest about yourself, there are some things about you that absolutely no one ever needs to hear. Again, kind of like this episode.

I think the dark horse here, though, is Britta. That no one really likes her has been a running gag since the beginning, but the bit in the diner felt like the writers seeding an important idea for later. So, be on the look out for Britta getting real about her unlikability, isolation, feelings of rejection and compulsion to care about everything all the time.

4 out of 5

FALL FROM GRACE

We all bemoan the well-worn House formula to some extent. Two perfectly happy kids launching a rocket. One of them is going to sudden start seizing, right? Oh, they started a fire! One kids will get burned, the other starts running and sudden starts seizing, right? Oh, they lit a hobo on fire. Bazino Bazino, The Kid Whose Hair Is On Fire is going to turn out to be a genius fleeing his own fame or something, right?

This week is further proof that House is on its last leg. Not because its formula has reached pathetic, but because the writers are going nuts with it.

After last week’s dynamite decline and fall of the heart-broken House, I was really dreading this week. The decline and the mourning are dramatic and powerful, but we have to have Dr. Greg starting to bounce back which, of course, means outrageousness and, I at least, am more than a little tired of that. Seems the writers are, too. House deciding to punish Cuddy by unleashing all the juvenilia he’s been suppressing/masking for the last few months fizzles without much spark. The obvious dig of marrying the Russian immigrant was genuinely predictable (he spent last week plowing through the hottest tail-for-sale the east coast has to offer, it’s actually a fairly logical next step). Then the segue, flat screen, wedding in the hospital chapel, monster truck… who cares?

The most legitimately irritating thing he did was messing about with the helicopters in the lobby. The dullness of the pranks really hollowed out Wilson’s speeches to Cuddy. His argument that House needs boundaries makes sense when House is endangering patients and threatening to burn the hospital down. Seriously, he didn’t do one even remotely dangerous thing to the patient. All of his misbehavior was, at worst, a mild nuisance. Which is not to say that I wouldn’t love to see Gospaja House popping into the hospital for help understanding her new hubby.

I was prepared to give this episode three marks for being uninteresting without actually becoming dull. The sub-plot of House’s on-going post-break-up, over-hyphenated rebound was boring, but necessary and I really couldn’t think of a way to do it better. Mercy points for necessary evils. Then, there was the patient. Boxcar Jones, the Boxcar Benjamin Disraeli, refuses to give his name because his abusive pappy might be looking for him. He syncs his responses to the doctors to manipulate them into trusting him, which was either deeply sociopathic or a savvy hobo who knows how to get food. Then there were the bone chunks and the needing more meat, less veggies.

The writers tend to juxtapose the patient against whichever doctor is getting focus, emotionally speaking. See: last week. So, with House spiraling however superficially into conscious meaninglessness, it makes to have a patient embracing a second chance at meaning from God, post-O.D. This is the formula. Now, when Masters was having her last interview with Orphaned Reynaldo, the Child with Haunting Eyes, I was still pretty sure he was about to go all Ol’ Barb Stab-You-Quick on her. No joke, I really thought No-Banjo Burnes was going to suddenly introduce a sharp object into the girl genius’ throat right then and there.

Didn’t happen and I was thinking “Yep, three marks.” Then, the last thirty seconds took the episode to a whole different level. All the pieces were there and, in retrospect, it was a no-brainer. Yet, somehow those last three lines of dialogue, punctuated by Amber Tamblyn’s brilliant expression work, put the whole thing a stone’s throw from Keizer Soze.

5 out of 5

OUT OF THE CHUTE

Make no mistake, I really hope this is the last season of House. The medical cases have become so predictable that even the writers don’t care anymore. We’ve exhausted the relationship interest in Taub, Foreman and Chase. The House/Cuddy relationship is running the course we all kind of knew it had to, but desperately didn’t want it to. No relationship could possibly be as dynamically engrossing as House/Cuddy in this series. Yes, they’re bringing back Olivia Wilde (who has had zero screen time this season and is still billed above Amber Tamblyn), but that’s going to be fun for maybe three episodes. And Masters isn’t a strong enough character to carry any kind of an arc.

That’s why it needs to end. What they are doing right now is dredging up the last story fuel they can scrape from the bottom of the barrel. However, that doesn’t change the fact that they are nailing it! Last week gave us the single most amazing musical number we’ve seen on any series in the last year. Possibly longer. Cuddy’s anesthetic induced vision of Come On Get Happy brilliantly choreographed, gorgeously shot and straight-up visually spectacular. When you realize that all of the other cheesy movie-trope scenes earlier were a build-up to this… SO WORTH IT!

This week, a bull-rider has a bunch of vanishing symptoms or something, but really, no one in the production actually cares what’s wrong with this guy. Meanwhile, House is recovering from his recent break-up by hitting the vicodin again, boozing it up and funding a long string of the most attractive hookers, ever. Also, Masters (that’s the girl) kind of has a thing for the bull-rider, which is cute.

There’s nothing surprising here, but much of it really is inspired. The use of music has always been a strong suit for House and this week was in top form with Blacklab’s This Night awesomely foreshadowing the tone of the whole episode and Peter Gabriel’s cover of My Body is a Cage taking us home. Two brilliantly moody pieces with a dignified calm, earning their crescendo. Just like the episode.

The thrust, of course, is House trying to cope with Cuddy’s rejection, which begins with pampering himself and escalates from there. He gets the concierge to track down a hooker who plays the hurdy-gurdy (fans of BT’s score to Monster smile smugly), then has some fun with a bow and arrow, yet nothing satisfies. House is legitimately depressed and everything that should make him happy is failing to do so. Again, this is nothing new, but they so artfully build him a quiet desperation for a thrill that it’s much more engrossing than it’s been in a while.

Masters’ crush on the patient is genuinely cute and very funny. She’s finally getting some dimension, now that the writers are tired of Taub. Knowing these guys, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a little something between her and 13. The bookish nerd fussing over the hillbilly jock is a good lightness against the density of House’s coping. Also working as a good reversal. While House can’t find any of his old thrills, Masters is just discovering the primal ones for herself.

This is a dull story, but it is told incredibly well. It’s a pattern we might see hold out until the end of the season, but there’s no way they’ll be able to keep it going for an entire season.

4 out of 5

RECESSION PROOF

After many weeks of feet dragging, it seems House is finally pulling itself together and has delivered what is probably the best episode of the season. What is simultaneously both sad and awesome is that best-ness is all in the last ten minutes. I think we can all stop pretending that the medical mystery matters anymore. What drives the show is that the characters, particularly the patient of the week & friends, live in these patterns. Something in their normal lives is unhealthy, literally and figuratively. What we are tuning in for is seeing how disease disrupts their normal and brings the figurative unhealth into the light. That’s what fueled the first three seasons. Of course, this is most exciting when it’s the doctors we know and love, but they’ve been fairly well exhausted at this point (why do you think we’re looking to House for that, these days?).

So, House is running on the vapors of House and Cuddy’s relationship for drama, because Masters (Amber Tamblyn) certainly isn’t helping. Nevertheless, those fumes delivered this week. The patient of the week was uninspired. Former real estate agent turned crime scene scrubber due to the recession… has a genetic disorder. The trouble with medical mysteries is that you pretty much have to a medical degree to be able to make any kind of guess at the answer before the detective (which is the fun of a mystery). So, because the solution to a House mystery always feels like it came out of left-field to we laymen, this one felt especially obscure.

Running alongside this is House planning something special for Cuddy’s award reception. Everyone assumes he’s planning a prank (i.e. hiring a mariachi band because who in hell like mariachi music), but it turns out he really is trying to do something nice for her (i.e. hiring a mariachi band, because Cuddy apparently has the worst possible taste in music). So, when the two stories finally collide with House blaming himself for not saving the patient, it doesn’t have the power that it could.

To my mind, rather than robbing the final scene, with House telling Cuddy oh-so dramatically that loving her makes him a bad doctor, of it’s power, it’s the front end that falls flat. We’ve had seven years of House being a great doctor, we don’t need the episode to build us up to that moment. When House turns it all and says losing a patient or two is worth it to love Cuddy, that’s a moment informed by the entire freaking series. The fact that the episode itself didn’t really add much is a weakness in Acts 1-3, not the epilogue. So, it’s a mediocre episode with a dynamite epilogue. I can only assume that will end up being symbolic of this entire season.

3 out of 5

SUBJECT 13

I love the 80s opening credits. Something about them makes me all nostalgic for Quantum Leap. No, the QL credits looked nothing like that, but still. I can’t explain my nostalgia, sorry. Part of me wondered if this was the beginning of a Lost-esque trend and that next season we’d be seeing rotations of the three opening sequences more and more. However, tonight’s fairly dry, plot-hole-spackle episode leaves me with little hope for that.

The last time we saw 80s Fringe, it was the dynamite revelation that the Peter we know and love is from the alternate universe. Recalling season 1 and Walter’s frequent confusion about Peter’s tastes, it was pieces of the puzzle falling in place. It also went a very long way in informing, basically, the entire series. That one event began the chain of events that destroyed the alternate world and is bringing us to the grand showdown.

However, tonight’s episode really didn’t flow like the previous ones. Last week, we had the terrifying, yet inevitable beginning of cracks in our world and the slightly eye-rolling revelation that the cracks are tied to emotion. Two weeks ago, we learned that Fauxlivia is preggers with Peter’s baby. These are major factors in the rising tension before the finale. Tonight…? Um… We learned how Walternate figured where Peter was kidnapped to.

Seriously, that’s it. Olivia’s childhood was nothing knew and Peter’s trouble accepting where he was has also been covered. As near as I can tell, tonight’s episode existed solely to explain how Walternate knew. Now, we are dealing with sci-fi and sci-fi fans have a tendency towards a high detail orientation, so something like “How did Walternate know Peter was in the prime universe?” has probably popped up on a few forums, but I don’t think it really deserved a full episode. Yes, we also got to see Olivia and Peter imprinting a bit on each other, which just made me think of Korean TV series which always do that. (Seriously, no dramatic, romantic TV couple in Korea has ever not known each other in childhood.)

This imprinting event, just like those in K-dramas, has absolutely no real bearing on the main story line. In Fringe‘s case, we’ve already seen two and a half years of Peter and Olivia getting to know each other. We saw them meet and not know each other. It was completely irrelevant and just a bit too sappy for me.

The only character we got any real information about is Mama Bishop. (Tonight was the first time I realized how much she looks like ginger Anna Torv.) Mama Bishop has been little more than a footnote in the series and what development we saw in her tonight didn’t make her feel any more significant. Season 1 established quite well what Peter’s up-bringing was like and there was nothing new in Mama hitting the sauce.

Plot-wise, I can see some good yet to come out of this episode. For starters, putting on my nerd cap, what’s bugged me about the alterverse’s cracks is that we don’t have them, yet there have been just as many cross-overs on both sides (duh). So, why is it so bad for them? I suspect we’re soon to learn that Walternate caused the cracks in experiments to get Peter back. Which, again, doesn’t seem that significant. With only seven episodes left and the doomsday clock ticking, I feel kind of cheated, I guess. It’s like the writers knowing all this was ending and decided to answer a couple minor questions before things get rolling.

On the one hand, I respect the attention to detail in the writers. On the other, I just don’t think it deserved a full episode. Especially one so laden with such wooden scenes. Fringe is a fairly laconic show at the best of times, but it was just a slog to get through tonight. Here’s hoping we’re back to the story next week.

4 out of 5

TODD PACKER

Things have been rough on The Office since the mid-season return. Most of that roughness has had to do with trying to shoe minor characters into story leads and they just can’t keep it going. This all in preparation for Carrell’s departure which will likely mean this is the final season or that next season, we’ll be treated to a half season parade of the worst sitcom cliches in history.

The only hope for The Office‘s future is Jim and Pam. If there’s going to be a Season 8, it needs to be Pam getting Michael’s job. Yep, Pam. We’ve already seen Jim do it and that was fun, but to really keep the dynamic the show already has, Pam is the only person who can step up into that position. Especially if Toby does come back.

Tonight, we really saw what Pam can do. First, Pam gets Erin an iMac out of receptionist sympathy, which sparks Andy’s jealousy and leads to Andy and Pam scamming him up a new computer. A computer which supposedly came from a corner of the warehouse and Pam has to bribe Darryl with some sick days for his silence. Normally, that’s a fairly shrug plot-line (though the Andy-kills-his-computer sequence had a laugh or two in it), but the unrestrained cuteness with which Jenna Fischer executes it made it absolute gold. Throw in relationship foibles with Jim, Toby’s on-going crush and further mind games with Dwight and… yeah, we got a solid core for season 8.

Tonight’s main story of how-to-write-Todd-Packer-out-of-the-series was proving it needed to happen as it happened. Yes, Packer has always been abrasive and annoying, but especially now that Michael is moving on to the big world of being a proper grown-up, Packer looks less like “Michael could be worse” and more like “ugh, this guy again?” Jim and Dwight were in classic form and the season 8 episode where Jim is finally forced to prank boss Pam over some decision makes my mouth water.

The Office is back and it could just maybe stay for a bit longer.

You know how in teen drama series no one ever really seems to have classes. Or, at least, not classes that have any bearing on their lives besides moments for looking moody in a Death Cab for Cutie montage. Also, parents. 90% of TV teenage drama can be averted by good parenting.

Anyway, the last few weeks our community college gang has been taking it a little light on the college side of things. Not that we really noticed, but it was definitely about to get conspicuous. Which brings us to the first gag of the night: the study group trying to remember how to study. I mention it because it is probably the most consistent gag the show has. Only once have we seen the group actually study and that was for last season’s Spanish Final. And that gag sums up what this episode is about.

In a series, you’ve got the touchstone episodes (like last week’s brilliantly understated say-exactly-what-you’re-feeling-directly-into-the-camera/look-how-emotional-we-all-are episode) and you’ve got the quirky episodes (like last week’s Community-esque offering from The Office) and these are the episodes everyone talks about. However, you can’t make every episode a water cooler ice-breaker (even Lost had the episode with the ping-pong table). In fact, most of the time, an episode is just the characters doing their thing.

The thing is, since the mid-season return, we haven’t really had any of those episodes. We had the touchstone revelation of Shirley’s pregnancy, we had the Pierce-on-overdrive anti-drug play, the quirky D&D game, the everyone-on-overdrive Valentine’s special and the touchstone documentary. Finally, we have come full circle on Pierce’s pain killer addiction (a blessedly underplayed drama) and everything is fairly relaxed (so that we can build up to the finale).

Annie is being all over-achievery, Jeff is jaded, Abed is oddly alluring, Shirley cheers them on, Pierce is vindictive, Britta is pointlessly earnest and Troy is three feet of rope short of a Mexican Halloween. We haven’t seen Chang in a while and, Temple and Arch, is that okay. Tonight also marked the return of the background characters, which was cool. We got a bit of them for Valentine’s, but they were really just there. Tonight, they had monologues.

Anff.

As we build up to the finale, we will see the return of Shirley’s pregnancy to some degree (although, she isn’t due until summer), but tonight was telegraphing the return of Jeffannie. Or Jennie. Or Anff. I’m not really sure what the proper abbreviation for that would-be couple is. Part of me is also hoping that Special Agent that-girl-from-Scrubs comes back at season’s end for more stilted romance with Abed.

Tonight, was not dynamite, which is actually kind of a relief. Yet, there were some absolutely hilarious bits. Of course, the Dean’s Uncle Sam get-up was awesome and I really hope the super-ambiguity of Vicky makes as return. Greatest hits include Troy’s “notches”,  Jeff’s Real World audition and the ticker from Troy and Abed’s political coverage (seriously, go read it!).

2 out of 5

BLAME IT ON THE ALCOHOL

Watch Glee drunk! Why didn’t I think of this before? It would certainly have made the sight of Heather Morris in cut-offs look less like blonde, half-drowned Juliette Lewis. Because if there’s one thing this week’s episode of Glee taught me, it’s that alcohol is awesome. Also, completely unavoidable. Seriously, there’s no realistic way anyone can stop drinking. That’s doubly true for anyone who doesn’t have much of a life. Actually, I have no idea what the writers were trying to get at. The “drunk dial” episode of Community was more anti-drinking than this was.

The thing that’s most confusing about this episode is that alcohol has never been a thing on the show before. I think the last time we saw Will consume any kind of alcohol was dinner with his now ex-wife. While it’s no surprise that Puck drinks, the way everyone else suddenly seems right at home with it is completely out of nowhere. As I’ve mentioned before, this show has no actual characters. There are some vague differences, mostly in levels of bitchiness, but really the writers come to the table every week making the characters act however makes the story happen with no regard for how they have acted before.

For starters, Rachel’s party dress. This girl has spent two years getting taped, tucked and pinned into pop princess costumes on a weekly basis. She even mentions the evidently lavish Oscar parties her Dads throw, which we can assume involves the red carpet “who are you wearing?” bits that will be all over the tabloid covers in the morning. This is a girl in a constant quest for glamour and name-in-lights-stardom. How the smeg does she even own this:

Again: total disregard for character. The girl who has never had alcohol of course must show up to a party dressed like a bridesmaid from 1968. In this drunken party scene, the writers again display a bizarre lack of self-awareness by having Finn lump everyone (read: the girls) into neat little stereotypes. Yet, in those cut-aways, the characters have more actual personality than they ever manage to at any other time in the show. Again, the girls have more personality. Finn skips over the guys because, we can assume, drunk guys aren’t that funny. (For a show coldly calculated towards a female demographic, Glee is misogynistic as hell.)

The show goes back and forth between “drinking makes you fun” and “oh yeah, hangover” without really picking a side. It’s possible they thought they were aiming at realism, merely saying “this is what happens” without any kind of agenda, but the ending goes into full pandering mode. The unnecessarily brutal accusations that Schuster has no life and therefore must drink not only made no sense but tacitly suggested that alcohol is, in fact, an acceptable substitute for ambition or significant social interaction.

Alcoholism is a serious thing, just like coming out of the closet. Yet, Glee passes it off like last season’s sweater and just skips right along. In any other show, I’d call this a ham-fisted set-up for some Schuster-goes-to-AA story arch, but this show way too fractured for even that. If it ever comes up again, it’ll only be when this same writer comes back into the rotation. Seriously, these guys can’t keep a story going for an hour, much less arch one.

Remember kids: the biggest drawback to drinking is the hangover.

Things just sort of happened without any real cohesion. It wasn’t a story, it was a series of themed vignettes in a loose sequence. The end scene, which gives clunky endings a bad name, was an afterthought, at best, and really made zero sense. It’s only function was to give the theme (not the story, this episode didn’t have that) something akin to resolution and create an excuse to never mention drinking again. We just spent an hour being told this was an important part of these kids’ lives (for the first time in two years) and it’s never going to get mentioned again. So… sign a pledge sheet!

As for the is-Blaine-bi sub-plot, I’m confused by how a relationship with a gay guy is song writing gold. How many songs are there about that? Getting cheated on, sure. But… turned out to be gay? Is that really a pop music trope? Because I’m drawing a blank.

3 out of 5

MASQUERADE

Just when you thought the Chuck writers couldn’t possibly contrive us any more family members: Volkoff has a daughter! With Timothy Dalton dead and his evil empire in snooze mode, the spy family has no nemesis and, therefore, no one to kill time with before Chuck and Sarah’s wedding. So, this is the most natural point in the story to discover said off-spring.

It is possible for a couple dynamic to carry a story. (Is anyone else wondering when the Nick and Nora Charles series will get rebooted?) However, the really great couples work well together, instead of having a seemingly endless string of issues to unravel. Seriously, the only time Chuck and Sarah ever have interplay is when they’re arguing. Couples banter. They spend so much time together that they create a secret language, almost. Where’s that?

Yeah, yeah, cleavage. We get it.

Sarah still doesn’t feel a part of Chuck’s life. She has no report with Morgan (a fact which got featured tonight, so the writers certainly know about this) or Ellie (something they tried to gloss over, last week), nevermind Awesome. After four years, Chuck’s sister and girlfriend have still never had “a moment”. No wacky adventure together, no “help me pick out a dress” trip, no “I just need to have a girl around”. Yes, there was the episode where Ellie accidentally took a truth serum and made awkward comments about Sarah’s breasts. There were even a handful of scenes where Ellie offered Sarah some advice, but the connection that could’ve been set up just got lost in the shuffle somehow.

Of course, Chuck is a spy show and you can get away with thin relationships in a spy show. But only if the spying is awesome. Which it rarely is. Today’s mission was “find and protect Vivian Volkoff”. Find her? Well, she is throwing a party. But it’s a masked party. Chuck grabs her drink five seconds in. She disappears into the crowd. Obviously, she went to groom her horse. Brilliant spycraft. Seriously, the powers of people-finding required for this were a rung above “Dave’s not here, man.”

For the protection aspect, we don’t even get a fight scene, just “Chuck, prepare to flash” and cut scene and “Get in the car!” “You guys are the best spies, ever!” Actual line. Later on, Sarah throws on a whig and poses as Vivian, only to get knocked out when her horse bucks. If you can’t make your character relationships compelling, you have to make your spies actiony; and we got neither tonight.

The real thrust wasn’t Chuck and Sarah, though, it was Morgan. Specifically, Morgan deciding to move out and be less of a man-child. Yeah, you know you’re scraping the story barrel when your static-sidekick character is growing. It’s not very touching, though they give it their best to milk some nostalgia from it.

There’s a lot of coincidence floating around, but most of it is in the first act, which I think is fine. A bit of contrivance to get the story going is certainly much better than contriving an ending. So, even though the actual plots are fairly dull, the actors know their characters well enough to make the scenes feel natural and sincere.

The sub-plot about Ellie and Awesome getting baby Clara to sleep was cute and the decoy-and-snatch they pull on Jeffster was the most exciting spywork of the episode. The opening Valentine’s Day romance was cute, with Morgan and Alex doing tantric foreplay on a bear-skin rug while Chuck and Sarah attempt something with chocolate-covered strawberries and it all going fiasco with Casey bursting in. It’s a nice moment, all around and Sarah’s lingerie was a great gag. However, the writers need to start doing something better: espionage or relationships. Because, right now, they’re both really weak and are going to make the next six episodes really hard to watch.

And no, breasts won't help.