emeraldstag | Chuck 4.16 "vs the Masquerade" (Reply)

The opening segment to the episode between Chuck, Sarah, Morgan, Alex and Casey was HILARIOUS. Between Chuck violating his pact with Morgan and witnessing Alex and Morgan's bizarre ritual, to Sarah's coat getting caught and forcing her to reveal her "wings", to Casey walking in on the bizarre scene. I have terrible recall memory but it's been awhile since I laughed that hard watching Chuck. The only negative to having such a fantastic first segment was the show could only go down from there.

The cynic in me had to say that the whole ordeal with Volkoff's daughter, had more to do with the fact that while Timothy Dalton made a great villain his price is definitely much higher than this unknown actress chosen to be his daughter and now to run the empire. That said, after Chuck's pep talk and Boris talking about how Volkoff was grooming her, Vivian's decision to take over seemed pretty clear.

This episode seemed to confirm that Ellie/Awesome have been filtered into the interacting with Jeff/Lester for the majority of their scenes. And on top of that they seem absurdly boring now. I don't know what is worse, what they are now or last season with Awesome being scared and running away from Chuck/Spy game with Ellie to that doctors without borders angle.

I really didn't like the handling of Morgan and the increased emphasis of having him "move out" so that Chuck and Sarah can play house and emphasizing that Morgan isn't grown up because he's still roommates with Chuck. They just moved in together what beginning of S3 when Chuck "moved out" from Ellie/Awesome. Be careful Morgan, Ellie and Awesome flew the coop and are now bit players of the show. Seems like the same formula is being used for you.