By Buzz Byrne

This week the team has to help a DEA agent steal a priceless diamond from an Afghani opium cartel. The new kid, red headed vixen Katrina, has a past with Agent Casey and knows about Sarah’s past with Chuck’s nemesis Bryce. She takes the time to insinuate herself into Sarah and Chuck’s “cover” and go on a date with Morgan, Chuck’s geeky best friend. Her presence throws Sarah and Chuck’s fragile, budding, unspoken romance into question and the episode as a whole is starting to make this initial fan of the show reconsider.

Maybe that’s because there was so little of Captain Awesome in this episode. It all starts with a board game that shows that as much as Chuck and Sarah make googly eyes at each other, they really don’t know anything real about each other. Chuck picks up on Sarah not liking olives on her pizza and we do learn that Morgan’s worst nickname was “Organ,” but other wise, nada. Once Sarah puts off Chuck’s clumsy attempt to gauge their real romance, Katrina shows up in full ninja stealth gear and she and Sarah have a quick foxy-boxing match to break up some lamps and have Sarah’s nightie flop upwards.

So far, I’m fine. This is sort of what one is looking for from this show.


Morgan meets Katrina and begs to be set up with her. “Let me be a fourth wheel,” he pleads. They double date, pizza and a rental movie. Sarah still won’t eat the olives and Chuck notices (trust me, we noticed the first time he noticed. All this extra noticing is insulting). Morgan asks Katrina a few personal questions to get to know her a bit better. “Have you always been this hot?” and, “Do you like to travel?” Chuck snaps that she just got back from Argentina and can we please get back to the penguin movie!

Katrina lures Chuck to her hotel room because only someone with level six clearance would know about her Argentina mission. She tries to seduce him, mostly because she in some competition with Sarah, and when that fails she lets it slip that Sarah and Bryce  were an item.

During the mission the next day, this comes up. Right after they steal the diamond from Peymon Alahe, who turns out to be financing Afghani terrorists with the diamond, not an opium cartel. Chuck hands the huge diamond to Katrina to spite Sarah for her dishonesty and Katrina takes off with it. Oops.

Sarah and Casey go after the diamond but both are captured by Alahe. Chuck winds up with the rock and gets Katrina to help him save the team. They do, they all hug and Chuck accidentally FedExs the diamond to his new bosses in Washington.

Chuck and Sarah get together to hash out the trust issues and get a better background story together. Chuck begs to know something real about her, something that will assure him that if his feelings are being returned, he might know it is genuine. “Tell me anything, where you grew up…what’s your real name…what’s your middle name?” Sarah remains mute, but pleads with her eyes for him to stop. When he gives up to get a slice of pizza (NO OLIVES WE GET IT!) she whispers her real middle name.


Not bad, right? The acting was very good in this last scene. Sincere but not over the top. The writing was able-bodied and direct. However, focusing on the romance is killing the show. The love affair is bound to happen so it should develop, not be focused on. It is the pitfall of the modern hip show that tries to cross the fourth dimensional line of genres; it’s a comedy, it’s a romance, it’s action adventure…it’s a romanomedyture! With ninjas! Oh, and it’s sexy!

Chuck is a likable character. The premise is fine and the jokes are funny. The romance will blossom because Sarah makes it believable. The capers cannot be the after thoughts they were in tonight’s episode. Last week I said they need to find a quality bad guy instead of the revolving door, criminal of the week we have now. It seemed there was promise here, as Katrina was clearly Sarah’s sister but this idea was backed off of. Maybe she returns and that will be the big, yet obvious twist. Maybe Bryce isn’t really dead. As of right now, he is the only character that could actually bring some danger to this quickly stalling show.