Chuck Vs The Fake Name

Monday is dead, long live Chuckday!
March 1st saw the end of the 3 week Olympic Hiatus and a brand new episode of Chuck, not only that, but we had the tantalising fact that we would learn Sarah’s real name in this episode – Chuck Vs The Fake Name!


This episode, more than any other we’ve seen, was a showcase for how brilliant an actress Yvonne Strahovski is. What she doesn’t say is as, if not more important as what she does. I’m quite sure that she could play someone paralysed from the neck down and still out act everyone in the room. Of course, it also doesn’t hurt that she’s not too bad on the eyes either.

The fact that Sarah/Sam talks to Shaw about Chuck, her fears about Chuck, Chuck this and Chuck that, must irritate him something stupid. It’s too difficult for her to see Chuck with someone else because you can see in her eyes that she is still deeply in love with him. Shaw seems to be happy to be used as her distraction for the moment, but with personality crises for both Walker and Bartowski, how long will that last?

Sarah has been surprised and dismayed by how quickly Chuck has taken to the spy life, as is said - he lies efficiently, he burned an asset relatively easily, and he was very convincing when pulling out Casey’s tooth. She doesn’t know that Chuck promised Jill that the spy life wouldn’t change him, and I think it took Hannah – telling him that he’s the best liar she’s ever known – to realise that it has changed him, and he’s not too keen on who he’s becoming.

On the ChuckYouTuesday podcast they talked about this episode having broken the ‘fourth wall’ – the barrier between the show and the audience. For me, the wall wasn’t just broken; I’m still picking bits of it out of my hair. However, it undeniably shows the writers, particularly in this case Ali Adler, have been listening to what the fans have been saying.
In some ways it was gratifying to see that the fans have had a largely unobtrusive impact on the show, but I felt that the ‘shipper’ scene in the Buy More detracted from the immersiveness of that first viewing. I like to lose myself in the show, suspend disbelief and to wrap myself in the world of Chuck; that scene brought me out of the Chuck world and back into the world of fandom and crazy shippers.