Moroccan Madcaps Ep. 4.14 – Chuck Vs The Seduction Impossible

Written by Kristin Newman & Chris Fedak

Directed by Patrick Norris

Acknowledging the shallowness of this statement I bow to the same device that other reviewers have knelt to:

Sarah belly-dancing!

Beyond that a detailed review of this episode seems superfluous. Especially for an episode that embraces the fun and silly with reckless abandon. Freed of the shackles of this season's shaggy spy story arc, Chuck Vs The Seduction Impossible is a straight out Roan-led romp that lands in the upper tier of Chuck's more fun episodes. The showrunners should seriously Get Smart and tailor Chuck to follow the tone of that show and steer clear of any further convoluted spy mythos based stories that sunk shows like Alias.

The hilarious incongruity of the image of a RPG'ed Beckman makes trips like this into comedy a hoot. It was really great to see Beckman from behind the desk and the show harken back to, and expand upon, the inferred history she shares with Roan Montgomery. Beckman in the 80s as a dirty blonde was another priceless moment – though I wish they had taken the opportunity to adorn her with a Farrah Fawcett styled mane of hair.

Roan returned with that smooth style still intact. His double seduction showed us, that while Roan may grumble at Adam West Batman style wall climbing these days, he has not lost a step in romantic subterfuge. His romance advice to Chuck and Sarah helped them to take that needed step back. Plus seeing his advice to Chuck about seducing Sarah into dropping her elopement request preemptively thwarted by Sarah using the very same tactic was niftily carried out. Her near total disarmament of Chuck was all the funnier because of that earlier setup. Did I mention Sarah belly-dancing?

Morgan, with the best of intentions, nearly caused a family incident by asking Casey to reconnect with Kathleen. The sadness felt by Casey when he steeled himself to visit Katherine, only to discover she is seeing someone else, was made even stronger by his unilateral stoic congratulations to her. (A microcosm of the pacing issues this season has had, imagine how much more powerful that beat would have been if the storyline of Casey re-uniting with Kathleen had been sprinkled throughout the first 13 episodes?) Beyond that everything else Casey was involved with was comedy gold. His attempted 'seduction' of the guard inter cut with the painful reaction shots of Chuck, Sarah, and Roan was well played.

Back to Morgan. He gave Chuck dubious relationship advice about not backing down to Sarah on the elopement idea, motivated more by Morgan's desire for a big wedding best man opportunity rather than altruistic motives. This advice leads to some funny pieces of inter-play as Chuck starts saying no to Sarah over mundane issues until it leads up to Chuck giving a stunned Sarah an ill advised Woman declarative.

Episode Flashes: Add your own in the comments.

• Roan gets a Casablanca entrance. Sweet.
• Casey beats strategic retreat at first sign of trouble from baby Clara
• Casey doing a slowly building tower of menace when he believes Morgan is trying to tell him that Alex is pregnant.
• Chuck & Sarah face their greatest challenge – family marriage pressure
• Beckman and Roan's Never Ending World Wide Love Tour
• Beckman belts from the bottle
• Roan – now a silver fox – is still sooo smooth
• 'You always over pack for missions.'
• Morgan devastated by Sarah's elopement plan
• 'No to Sarah...'
• Chuck with a laser!
• Whoa! Casey using a tranq gun!?!?!?!
• 'Naughty little turn coat.' , 'Naughty little turn on.'
• Alex invokes the Casey death stare
• 'No... woman.' versus 'Mr. Sarah Walker.' Hmmm... which was more awkward?
• Casey's seduction of guard versus reaction shots from Roan, Chuck, and Sarah
• 'Tranq and explode!'
• Roan as a Green Shirt suffers polyester stylessness chafing.
• Winds of Change – Berlin Wall Fall and dirty blonde Beckman
• Sarah strikes first in the seduction game against Chuck
• Belly-dancing!
• 'Yeeeaaahhh...'
• Casey faces 127 Hours arm amputation scenario
• MamaB modifying spy missions for Clara baby stories
• Bazooka Beckman. DUCK!
• 'Never go on a mission angry.'

Not as sexy as Sarah bellydancing but Bazooka Beckman sure strikes an unforgettable image.

MamaB and Ellie had some nice bonding moments but the swift abruptness that Ellie arrived at the decision to give MamaB her blessing to go back into the spy world was jarring to the extreme. Especially since the show has spent the past four seasons making an unrepentant stance of saying how it important it was to have Ellie keep the show rooted in the real world. How much longer will the show keep up the unaware Ellie storyline about Chuck? It would not surprise if it played out that Ellie finding out about Chuck being a spy concluded with all the explosiveness of a soggy fire cracker.

Chuck and Sarah played off of each other well this episode. Their dual reactions of wanting to escape family marriage pressures via a mission was expected and still funny. It was disconcerting for the show to have the two of them come so far together and yet have Sarah still not reveal anything about her family background to Chuck. No doubt this will turn into one of the story threads going forward. We all look forward to such revelations and the hopeful return of Gary Cole. Who knows, maybe even Mama Walker too? Let the casting speculations about her resume.

Last, but certainly not least, it was most awesome to see Team Bartowski back together again!