NBC Synopsis: SARAH MUST KEEP A SECRET FROM CHUCK IN ORDER TO ACCOMPLISH A MISSION — ANGUS MACFADYEN GUEST STARS AS ‘NICHOLAS QUINN’ — After a harrowing mission, Sarah (Yvonne Strahovski) returns to Chuck (Zachary Levi) with a huge secret. Meanwhile, Ellie (Sarah Lancaster) and Awesome (Ryan McPartlin) are presented with a new opportunity that could change their lives.
Chuck This Ranking: 26
Dave’s Ranking: Much Lower
First Impressions: Chuck vs Sarah and Goodbye First Impressions
Full Write Up: Episode 5.12 by Dave, Joe and Thinkling
amyabn
atcDave
Ernie Davis
Faith
joe
thinkling
Chuck This 
I hate Sarah’s amnesia, but despite that, I’m beginning to appreciate this episode more. I think the acting was superb. Yvonne was a tour de force in every way one can imagine; Zac was passionate; and for me, Adam Baldwin’s best scene was when Casey brought over the video log and his understated, almost minimalist way, told Sarah that Chuck had made them both a little soft, and that, in the last five years, he and Sarah had become friends. “Take care of yourself, Walker.”
I loved Chuck’s “speech,” when he laid it all out there to Sarah. Sarah’s own response of saying she did her job too well almost had me believing that she was beginning to believe him, but the fact that she nearly got to the point of shooting Chuck before seeing their names carved into the door jamb suggests that she was still committed to her mission. I was so glad to hear her say, not as a question, but as a statement, “I wrote that,” referring to their names in the jamb.
What I don’t get is why Chuck told Sarah to “run” after he was shot. Yes, we see her packing her bags hurriedly in her hotel when Casey shows up, so she seems intent on taking that advice, but she shows up casually at Chuck’s apartment, and in my recollection of the finale, she is not charged with any crimes at all. From what was she supposed to run? Why did Chuck want her to run?
Sarah in her log says “I love Chuck Bartowski and I don’t know what to do about it,” and Sarah without her memories wells up in tears as she hears those words from herself. Afterward, she says to Chuck afterward that she believes everything Chuck told her about them, but that she doesn’t feel it. But of course she does. I think earlier reviews have said this, so I’m sure I’m not saying anything new, but it’s probably more accurate for her to have said, “I have these feelings but I can’t connect them to anything or anyone. I don’t know where they come from. I just feel lost.”
When Sarah says goodbye after telling Chuck she has to go find Quinn, there is a slight smile on her face. I know I am probably grasping at any straws of hope that I can find, but to me that is a small positive sign. In front of Chuck, steel-eyed resolve is no longer her go-to expression. She may not realize it, nor does she remember it, but Chuck’s presence is already making her, as Casey put it, “soft” again.
When it was originally broadcast, after watching v. Sarah, how hopeful was I for the finale….
I completely agree the performances were excellent, among the best of the series. We are very much on the same page for all of this.
The only thing I can figure for Chuck’s “run” instruction is just he feared for her. At this point that might have included from Casey or even Ellie (!). He sure didn’t want her caught in any crossfire when she was still unclear on what was going on. But obviously things de-escalated pretty quickly in the aftermath.
Sarah watching the v-log is easily my favorite part of this episode, and I think it makes her “I don’t feel it” statement to Chuck a pretty clear lie. I don’t think you’re wrong at all to suggest the hint of a smile is from Sarah’s deep, if currently orphaned, feelings for Chuck. And I think some of the discontent we see at the end starts with missing that inconsistency between Sarah watching the v-log and what she tells Chuck. That she IS feeling something and will wrestle with that and her pre-Chuck world view through the whole next episode is a major part of why I now like the end just fine (well, THAT may be overselling it; but I’m no longer so worried about “what comes next”).
But it does make me feel better to know Sarah is fighting with her own feelings, until she gives in to them at the beach. I will always wish this had been more clearly shown in the next episode; and this will never be a favorite arc of mine; but I can live with the end.
I liked the ending on the beach more than the arc. Beach gets a C+ / Arc an F. I still think, had the Beach been an A+, definitively sappy, shipper’ee, happily ever after, IMO the Arc works much better too, cause when you do a nasty arc, it sets you up for that type of ending, the ending is ‘earned’. The ending would have been quite awesome, along with the arc, for a show say like Alias, which was darker and in general more serious.
Reading what you both wrote about 5×12, I think this final arc had a great deal of negative synergy going on, in this case (5×12), the individual pieces far exceeded the overall effect for me. This was true of all three of the final eps, but probably esp true of 5×12 for the very reasons you both said.
Finally, in my seemingly weekly comments about other tV, this week’s ep of the week was probably SuperGirl, a show I don’t regularly watch. I don’t exactly know how a tv show generates ‘chemistry’ (I tend to think it is two parts acting / two parts writing / two parts something intangible), but the ep oozed of it, with the Flash and Supergirl hamming it up the entire time. I mention this, cause it seems to me, more and more I see (maybe am looking for) shows that are finding ways to write stories with lead type characters in the ‘friend zone’ that works for me. This was one that did.
I completely agree with how you grade the arc and beach scene.
We also really liked Supergirl this week. It’s been a pretty up and down sort of show; occasionally excellent, occasionally not.
My favorite line, from Supergirl while trying to rebuild her damaged public reputation, “I helped a family assemble their IKEA furniture the other day…”
I’ve been watching Supergirl as well. Some of the dialogue is absolutely cringeworthy, but that line about assembling IKEA furniture was indeed priceless. And in case, anyone hasn’t drawn a connection between Supergirl and Chuck yet, Laura Benanti who plays the dual role of of Kara’s mother (Alura) and aunt (Astra) in Supergirl, is co-starring with Zac Levi in She Loves Me.
I didn’t know the Chuck connection!
Finished a complete rewatch a couple of weeks ago with the Mrs. in an effort to relight the ol’ engines of Chuck creativity and get back to writing it again. One episode a night when time permitted. This arc is still hard to watch, still left me in a funk when it was done; though not as bad as the first time I watched it. Of course, the story’s ambiguous ending led to a fan fiction reading binge again, starting with two of my favorite post-series stories. I’m sure you can guess which ones.
I won’t elaborate on the many elements of these last chapters that bother me and always make me feel incomplete when I finish reading the Chuck and Sarah story they presented to us on TV. That’s right, I said reading. Chuck has become a book to me, a graphic novel if you will. One I can pick up daily to read a random chapter. I’ll only say that my biggest sense of incompleteness comes from knowing Sarah isn’t complete either when this dark arc ends.
She’s been horribly violated and it still shows. I needed to know, and still need to know Sarah is going to be okay more than they showed with that kiss. What a powerful character Yvonne brought to life that she does that to me. This show was called Chuck, but Sarah became such an important part, she deserved so much more.
The funny thing about the way Chuck influenced me as one who found himself carefully reading every nuanced spoken and expressive word of Chuck and Sarah’s shared story, was how it effected my TV viewing as well as my writing. I barely watch TV at all anymore. Don’t see many movies either. It’s practically all the written word now.
Films and TV have been left for wanting, their formats wholly inadequate as a form of storytelling for me. It continues to astound me daily when I sit in front of my notebook or a keyboard, that a TV show was the catalyst that caused this to happen; and how those with whom I shared the experience affected me along the way.
It is interesting how many of us feel changed by the Chuck experience. I still watch as much television as ever, but with a generally lower investment level. I still feel so burned, so betrayed by that end I struggle with commitment. And gee this starting to sound like therapy…
It will definitely be good news if you get back to writing though!
I’m trying to write, Dave. Heh. Yeah, I know exactly how that sounds.
Group therapy always helps.
Hey we’re all friends here, even if it does become one of those “us against them” discussions!
angus – I have complete writers block, I have one unfinished story and one idea I’d like to write, I can’t. The words used to flow out. IMO, for me only, I’m pretty sure the source of my wordiness was unhappiness with the actual series, esp the ending and s3. And my ‘block’ came as I started to forgive and forget or at least get over my bitterness about how unhappy I was with the final arc.
Maybe like Casey, you just need to find your angry center again, OR. It’s not my style, but if it works for you… : )
Contrary to what some may think based upon what they see me posting here, I only have a few real problems with Chuck. Most are trope related. A couple of them are as big as Midwest hailstones. Although not big enough to put much of a dent in my love for the story. Team Bartowski and their ‘one for all. all for one’ dynamic eclipses most of the hiccups in the plot and storytelling for me. And four years after the show ended, it should be obvious that those of us still here do care immensely about this story despite any criticisms we may have.
I doubt I would have given a hoot about writing my series sequel if my affection for the show was that severely damaged. As it turned out, Lost Years was a richly rewarding personal experience, and for quite a while I was having an absolute ball on the Farm. I want to believe I will again because these characters are that much fun.
They’ve been so much fun this dark episode and the dramatic ones surrounding it would have been just fine too if the payoff was longer and stronger at the end. These darker episodes really needed it. And I think I may have stumbled on a cure that *could* put the fun and humor of Chuck back where they belong. I’ll share it next week. Some more fan fiction… sort of.
I agree almost exactly Angus. I’ll have a Complete Overview post up the week after Goodbye, but in a nutshell I would say the wt/wt going a season too long and pretty much everything about the Red Test are the only BIG problems I have with the show. Everything else is small potatoes.
magnus – you are missing my point, or lets say my response to you was poorly written, such that I didn’t make my point well. My point was the incomplete nature of the ending made me unhappy and led me to write fanfiction.
When I completed the story to my satisfaction with a series of stories, two full length amounting to seasons 6 & 7, three one offs 5-15 yrs in the future, and a 4 chapter story set off as Chuck and Sarah are approaching 60, then I lost my edge.
I was asking if some of your own good work as a writer, might have led to satisfying some of the things that drove you to write in the first place. Anyhow, sounds like not.
Funny, I watch more tv now not less. I love making comparisons to Chuck with other shows, both how some things are better, along with what is worse. Few shows are able to generate the chemistry of Chuck and Sarah s1/s2/s3 Honeymooners / most of s4 / a couple of s5 eps. When I see it, I now try to enjoy it, rather than focus on the almost certainty that it is going to be taken away at some point.
Oh yeah, writing did help make the series complete for me in my head, OR. I did understand what you were saying, and I was trying to have some fun with it. Like you, I can watch a lot of Chuck without the angst meter of foreboding pegging now. Making Sarah whole again (and more) through a story cured a lot for me too. I do still have a hard time watching these last three episodes, though – which you also seem to do. I always have to let headcanon step in at the end. Wish I didn’t have to, but it did inspire me to write.
The reason I want to continue writing for Chuck is simply because the Farm AU world was so much fun to build from elements of canon. I miss it and want to see it continue to grow. Other outside forces dulled my edge and ability to write it, not any real change in how I perceived the Chuck story over time. If anything, thinking more about the story over the four years since the series ended has only broadened my perceptions and made ideas grow. Now I only have to get them on the page.
Writing these stories and original fiction made me realize I’d rediscovered something much more personally enriching than film and TV could provide. Visual media lost its cachet, leading me to read and reread a lot more from our already large home library and build my own characters and worlds or expand on those of others. For me, thanks in part to Chuck, it’s become more rewarding than a medium forced to compress a story into a limited timeframe once was.
TV and film are still a nice way to relax with the spouse after a busy day, as Dave mentioned, but Mrs. M and I both watch a lot less these days than we once did. Instead, we trade books back and forth and discuss them over a meal and a glass of wine. Time once set aside for the TV is now spent sharing other diversions like the gym or hiking, etc.
I probably still watch a fair bit of TV, but after Chuck I find I’m less committed to seeing a series through to its finale/cancellation. In the last four years, I’ve dropped quite a number of series that I had watched since their inception.
The positive side of the sense of incompleteness in Sarah’s story has absolutely been the flourishing of post-finale Chuck fanfiction, a forum for writing I was completely unaware of prior to Chuck. In fact, on Facebook there is a group that goes by the name of Chuck vs. The Movie and in a post earlier today in which a first time watcher of the series wrote about his initiation into the finale, which he felt left him “hanging,” I offered the therapy of four different post-finale Chuck fanfics: “Sarah vs Finding Herself” by Thinkling; “Chuck Versus the Lost Years” by Angus MacNab; “Chuck Versus What Happens in Vegas (Chuck 6-01 and 6-02)” by anthropocene; and “The Long Road Home” by BillandBrick. These are the four that immediately came to mind for me. (My apologies if I’ve failed to mention some others by authors who also participate in Chuck This.) As Angus MacNab points out, reading provides potentially a much richer experience of a character than TV or movies since the writer has the opportunity to explore the inner person with greater depth and nuance. Although, mind you, Yvonne Strahovski has the ability to bring more depth to the expressions on her face than any actor I’ve ever seen before.
I’m going to be needing some group therapy again after Goodbye….
Group therapy is our specialty!
Those are excellent choices for epilogues. It’s always great if we can get more people on board with fan fiction too.
Like you Russ, I was unaware of it, or at least how much there was, until Chuck. This is certainly the first time I’ve read any of it. I first started reading, just a little at first, late in S2. At the time my appetite for Chuck simply exceeded what was available.
As far as the merits of reading vs watching, I’d just say they’re very different experiences. The written word can easily go deeper, more introspective, more profound, more information. But I generally find watching more relaxing, more entertaining for that winding down part of the evening. I particularly like how television can be a more shared experience. Sure my wife and I can and do read some of the same things; but television is simultaneous and shared. We can laugh and cry side by side; I really like that. Especially as the end part of our day together (gee, can you tell why I don’t like dark, high tension sorts of shows much!)
Thank you for the shout-out, Russ. Like Angus, I’m trying to get the writing muscles limbered up again, so I can finish up my S6.
And you’re talking about a full season order, right Anthro? 22 episodes or more?
Oh gosh, Dave! I’m just hoping to figure out how to get Chuck and Sarah and company from ep 6.07 to 6.11 or 6.12, at which point I do already have most of a “series (season?) finale” ep playing in my mind….
That would be awesome Anthro, I was just messin’ with you!
I really do appreciate the support you’ve always given my FF writing, Dave!
It helps that your stuff is a ton fun.
>_< Just flip that O and R at the end of the first sentence around.
I was pretty sure you were addressing a small Japanese submarine…
Thanks for fixing it.
I aim to please!
How much has this been discussed? Sarah wakes up in her hotel after having had her memory wiped and is told her assignment is to recover a pristine Intersect and kill Chuck Bartowski, a guy she has no memory of. Before returning to Chuck, she learns that she’s been on a mission surveilling him for the last five years and that she has been living with him for the last two years, including a year or so as husband and wife. She’s presented with this as a fact, and so she accepts it, but I wonder whether that might not have raised more than an eyebrow once she heard that. Yes, there are intimations that female spies were prepared to sleep with their marks in the series: Carina’s engagement to Karl Stromberg in Three Words suggests that; but back in season 1 in Undercover Lover, when Victor comes into Ilsa’s room and, if I recall correctly, says something like “Ilsa, I can’t wait,” Ilsa drugs him to prevent any further “action.” Now, I’ll admit my bias on this matter has been significantly coloured by Arya’s prayers’ story, “Becoming,” where he creates and explores in great depth something of a horror story for Carina that explains a great deal about her sexuality, and also provides a foundation for a very much more sexually guarded Sarah. But my bias is that Sarah would know in her heart, memories or not, that she would not allow herself to be involved in that degree of sexual intimacy with a mark like Chuck, someone who has been (according to Quinn) responsible for the deaths of both Bryce Larkin and Langston Graham.
Comments?
We have discussed this some, it’s actually a pretty big point of contention for some viewers.
I haven’t been reading “Becoming”, the introduction makes it clear it isn’t for me; but I like some of that assessment.
My own take on it is that Sarah probably really didn’t like her briefing much. From her own self knowledge she probably has a hard time imagining how it ever came to that for her on a mission. But she also knows she’s missing five years and she’s being presented with a Fait Accompli. That is, it’s already happened. So even if she can’t quite imagine HOW this would ever come to be, she receives a briefing that it has. The example I use would be if I were missing five years and told me I’d killed some one. Sure it’s nothing I can imagine, but if you PROVE it, well huh.
And that’s what the start of this episode hinges on, how well convinced IS Sarah. It seems to me we actually see her pretty uncertain about it herself. She tries to mostly avoid any intimacy with Chuck and the situation she can’t quite believe she ever found herself in. I actually find it amusing HOW BAD she is at being affectionate in the bedroom. This speaks volumes about her character. Sarah is just not comfortable with this situation at all.
I also believe if Quinn had not kept her confused all night with the earwig she would have seen more of the holes in the story. I think she and Chuck would have figured things out together and Quinn’s plan would have fallen apart that first night. And man to I WANT TO SEE that piece of fan fiction! Chuck and Sarah overcome Quinn’s diabolical scheme before it even goes anywhere. This strikes me as a far better story.
As we see, Chuck’s actions on his DARPA mission seem to confirm her briefing. Which is something else I have some pretty big problems with (Chuck the domestic terrorist!).
Anyway, the biggest problem I have with this beginning is that Sarah didn’t confirm with someone she would have known. I realize that could be problematic for someone on deep cover, but I would think she would have tried to contact someone at Langley, or someone else she knew from before. And yeah that could be difficult too since she’s actually an ex-agent. But killing someone on the word of one handler you don’t know, on a mission you don’t remember is pretty problematic too!
She should have contacted Carina! Carina had a bit of a jaundiced view about love, but she knew Sarah had found the real thing. Oh well….
Absolutely!
Nope. Not going there. Don’t want to get dragged into this debate again. Uh-uh…
The only thing I will say about the ongoing debate itself is that, in a frequent effort to have it both ways, the showrunners of Chuck gave us ample evidence to support both sides of the argument. Because of that, the decisions about what we as viewers accept or reject from that evidence is purely up to the individual, and shouldn’t be construed as indicative of any character biases to be judged over out of hand.
I think my own position about it is clearly represented in Act 16, Scene 1 of Lost Years. And I wrote it that way out of deference to both Sarah’s character and the real people who do her job.
*But*, Chuck isn’t anywhere close to real. It’s spy-fiction with a sci-fi spin, often portrayed in all its hyperbolic and trope-ridden glory. As such, the themes it presents both appeal to and repulse the sensibilities of a broad range of fans. I’ve long thought the comedy is the glue that holds it and us together. But there was nothing funny to me about this episode. Nothing. The humor was as missing as this dark Sarah’s memories of Chuck. It was painful to watch, and these final three episodes are not why I watch Chuck. For better or worse, they also set the more serious tone of my own story.
Maybe you still enjoyed it. Everyone sees the world differently. I don’t think being an optimist or a pessimist plays that much into it. When taking that into account, I sometimes think television writers are a perverse lot in the way they write screenplays. Because it does frequently appear they rudely think they can have it both ways. It seems that by writing a story in a bi-polar fashion, they think that somehow they are going to appeal to the broadest audience and always have an escape exit, when in fact it can often polarize the fanbase in a very destructive manner.
One only needs to look at Sarah’s changing attitudes and Casey’s cavalier way of portraying Sarah’s seduction missions to Chuck to see how they did this. The Sarah seducing Lon Kirk was not uncomfortable about it, IMHO, quite the contrary. She also used it to distance herself from her asset and attempt to tamp down her feelings for him.
We don’t want to think Sarah would take seduction that far or use it on Chuck like that, but Casey made it more often than not sound like SOP. Sure, he may have been trying to use it to get under Chuck’s skin, but he also sounded serious about it at the same time, almost like he was trying to give Chuck a warning. Through deft use of character actions and words like this we get this conflicting evidence.
I saw just as much of that contradictory evidence in what I prefer to call Chuck vs the Wild Card Enforcer. Because who we saw in 5.12 wasn’t a Sarah we’d seen anywhere before (except maybe in Chuck’s first flash). She wasn’t Chuck’s Sarah a wide percentage of the time.
Yvonne played her masterfully (and disturbingly) well, and the reactions we saw from every other actor/character reflected it. Whether the amnesiac enforcer was uncomfortable about the hand she was dealt, or not, it was so strong some of us still saw a Sarah capable of taking a mission that far when she said “I did my job too well” to Chuck in their dream home. It’s a matter of interpretation, and given the conflicting clues shown, I don’t think any of us were necessarily wrong in how we saw it.
I’ve also come to the conclusion it was done purposely this way; to support the artsy, dramatic, and ambiguous hero’s journey ending Chris Fedak wanted. It was an ending that demanded interpretation as we stood in the gallery staring at the canvas and tried to make sense of it. This ongoing debate is proof enough.
The result of all of this is that in both the writing of the show and in the fan fiction it spawned, Chuck, and every theme that it explored, could be and has been spun in a myriad of ways. A dizzying amount. Given all the different directions the series writers took us with this story, I can’t say any of them are really wrong.
It really is up to us as individuals to decide what we’ll accept and how seriously we are going to take any of it. Just tell your story, and tell it to the best of your ability. The writers tried to do that. Sometimes they failed. No one is perfect.
Reading this, I see I’ve already strayed from my original intent and said way more than I wanted.
I’ll have to more to say next week. I promise, it will be a whole lot lighter and hopefully make you laugh like Chuck is supposed to do.
Thank you for recommending of Lost Years to more readers, Russ.
I completely agree this episode is not at all funny, and not even remotely what I was tuning in to watch.
Yeas, that was probably my main complaint about both this and the final episode … a lack of humour. Quite a few attempts at humour, for sure, especially in Goodbye, but all of which fell flat for me given the wider context and mean spirit of the finale.
Yeah Wilf, too much of the humor in the finale is at Chuck’s expense. Which in context, doesn’t work very well for me.
You sent me back to Act 16 Scene 1 to re-read how you dealt with this question. And now I’ll probably just have to go back and read the whole thing again…which is anything but a burden, Mr. MacNab! Thanks for your comments and that you chose to write way more than you wanted. I appreciate your thoughts on the writers’ intentions, often trying to have it both ways, maintaining ambiguity, seeking to appeal to a broad audience (and alienating more fans as a result!)
It’s true that this episode was almost completely devoid of comic elements, but as I watched it, I thought of it as the prelude to a positive resolution in the finale, so it had me really engaged in and ready for what I thought was to come. That the resolution was so ambiguous was very disappointing…and bewildering…and confusing for me. As for the finale, yes, atcDave, the comedy there was largely disappointing and misplaced. Jeffster! doing their thing, singing and playing for their lives…literally, with Morgan conducting the accompanying orchestra, was perhaps the most humorous element, yet, it was deeply dramatic in its own way. Well, I’ll hold off on more of that until after next Sunday….
Jeffster was the funniest part!
I’m not quite so down the idea of having it both ways so much; I get they wanted to have outrageous fun, yet still have a real human element. As far as that goes, I like it. But no doubt they sometimes misjudged that balancing act. And when they failed they could fail pretty spectacularly.
I hope to have time to write a longer note later, but I have to agree that the final 3 episodes had little , if any, of the fun and comedy that we had come to expect. I am finding that too mant shows seem to want to go out in a blaze of artistic glory, and I think the fans often suffer for it. The final season of Burn Notice was enough to have my wife wishing we had never started watching it!. On the other hand last season’s finale for Castle was a kinder gentler ending. It had eveyone in a good place and a final meal together…perhaps a perfect fan’s ending. A critic might say “Ho Hum” but for us it was what we want when we have invested years in a series. We don’t want surprize twists and angsty endings. Bittersweet.. I can take that , but after seeing episode 12 we had high hopes for a great, satisfying ending….more on how that turned out next week 😉 .
I agree exactly with all of that. Now I will eagerly await your follow up next week!
Stupid government job. Been on the road need to catch up. Let’s see…
Bo- When I finished S5, I had two duds (Curse and Bo) and one almost dud (Bullet Train). I promoted Curse out of that club, eventually. While the opening of Bo, Sarah bouncing out of bed perfectly coiffed to avoid shooting the paperboy, plan her future with Chuck and convince Casey was beyond cute. I liked the gag with Jeff and Lester where they kept being dropped in the desert (if you look close you see the number of vultures go up each time). Sarah’s attempted joke about Bo’s “boobies” seemed OOC for her. Bottom line TOO MUCH MORGAN, so much that my brain blew up.
Bullet Train- Thought the B story was horrible to me. I never put an episode in the dud pile for the B story alone, but this was close. Plus until Sarah is tortured the interaction of Chuck, Sarah and Casey on the train is top line. Sarah’s “lap dance” fight seen was great (man, she is flexible). The capture and torture were a turn off but otherwise except for the B story (why >> was invented) it was an OK episode IMHO.
Now Chuck v Sarah- As noted above, while well acted it was just too dark, not fun. I could have gotten into an episode done like the movie “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” (Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie) right down to the fight and sexy make up. Just take Mr and Mrs Smith from the Hotel meet and dance through the fight/make up and it would have been funnier and better IMHO. The memory loss was a mistake but they could have made up for it with some better, lighter follow on episodes.
I don’t quite agree with your take on Bullet Train, but for 5.12 your bottom line is perfect.
I think 5.12 ultimately has EXACTLY the same problem as Superman vs Batman; in order to get to such a face off both characters must be idiots…