Chuck 5.09 ‘Chuck vs the Kept Man’ review: Verbanski and her beefcake

I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed the first half of a Chuck episode as much as I did tonight with “Chuck vs the Kept Man.” Last week, I basically wrote a love letter to anyone associated with the show, and if I could do it again, I would for the first half of this episode. It was absolutely on point: hilarious, action-y enough, romantic, and, very unusual for the show, quite… well, risqué. It’s too bad Chuck and Sarah never shared scenes like Casey and Verbanski did tonight, because I don’t think I’ve ever been so engaged into a late-40-year-olds scene as I just was tonight.

You can’t deny it: they were sex. ay. With an “a,” yes.

Meanwhile, Sarah was going through all-too-blunt symptoms of pregnancy, which I don’t mind because they provided much hilarity, but have you noticed how much I praised the former half of the episode? That’s because the payoff in the second half was sort of a let down.

I’m glad that Sarah and Chuck have continuously been making this journey into developing a family (as was evident in the previous episode) and it seems natural, organic, but once we found out she wasn’t pregnant, it almost seemed useless. I suppose I shouldn’t have expected her to actually be pregnant, but perhaps if it was handled just a wee, bit better I would have been okay. For instance, there is absolutely no way Chuck would have not noticed Sarah was acting strange. No way! It’s completely out of character. I could understand if he was obsessing over something and it didn’t catch his attention (they tried to do this with how “intuitive” he was and trying to help Casey but that started way too late in the episode to be established as something to distract him, though I suppose “C.A.R.E.”[*] could have been it…) but otherwise: no. And Chuck and Sarah’s respective “spiraling” therefore seemed too rushed and wasn’t developed enough.

[*] Did the writers declare this the unofficial season of acronyms? First T.I.T.S., then P.A.N.T.S. and now C.A.R.E.

However, with their spiraling already been had we now know two things Sarah doesn’t want: she thought she didn’t want the CIA because it comes with too many secrets to raise a family, but now she’s realizing that any type of spy life provides too many dangers to raise one too. Will the end of the series see Chuck and Sarah being — gasp! — normal people? (One thing’s for sure, Casey’s last scene will see him flying to be with Gertrude Verbanski if their final scene in this episode means anything.)

And in the B-plot, Smart Jeff and Lester are putting the puzzle together, which again was good in the first half (and including Lester dressed up as a woman, oh my goodness so funny), but then it went too far when he actually figured it out. I know Smart Jeff is really, well, smart, but was it too much? I wonder how they’ll explain themselves out of this one… seems like they might have to poison him again.

If it’s anything, I’m still not tired of Awesome (and Ellie who wasn’t present) continue to spy role play. I think there’s actual comedy gold here. How will they do it next!?

Other (spy gun) bullets:

• Loved Sarah and Chuck’s last scene: “…and with such a huge nerd!” But was she not the one that was nerding out about her baby? Aw.
• Loved Sarah explaining how skimpy she’s had to dress for “the team.” Methinks there was some meta going on there.
• This was an absolutely hilarious episode! Even Devon dressed in a white tux made me laugh aloud. Kudos to the writers and director (and actors!) on this one. Really good.
• Alex and Casey have such great chemistry together. And who knew Casey could become a Downton Abbey fan? Guess I gotta queue that one up!
• Three weeks left. I think I just wept a little (okay, like, a lot).