I probably shouldn't be posting when I'm several days overdue on replies to comments from last week, but I need to clear my head.

I'm a casual and irregular viewer of <em>Chuck</em>, but I was really thrown by the season premiere episodes.

So Sarah asks Chuck to run away with her, and he says no? Because he wants to be a spy? Wow. I thought the lesson from the first two seasons is that the spy business is deadly and dehumanizing, it means keeping secrets and hiding your identity from your loved ones, the bosses treat agents and assets as disposable, if Chuck gets on their bad side they'll just lock him up in an undisclosed location and throw away the key, and his connection to the spy world perpetually puts his friends and family in danger. Why on earth would he choose that over Sarah? I just don't buy the idea that it's to make a difference and protect the people he cares about -- it felt more like a selfish, childish glee at the prospect of running around playing secret agent, especially now that he knows kung fu (sometimes). And why wouldn't what Sarah wants -- not to mention her greater knowledge of what the life of a spy really entails -- factor into his choice?

I don't know, that kind of ruined the character for me, and I'm left feeling that Sarah is better off without him.

Also, was it just me, or did Yvonne Strahovski look completely non-plussed in the scene where Sarah & obligatorily hot female guest star were shot lasciviously in their bra & panties? After a certain point, that stuff stops being "ironic" or whatever it was supposed to be in the first place.

And I don't know if this was ever a plot point or canon fact earlier, but Chuck's decision to be a spy felt even more grating in the context of Casey recounting his past assassination attempts on a foreign leader. Maybe I'm naive, but -- didn't there used to be at least a superficial consensus that assassinating foreign leaders is a bad thing that the U.S. shouldn't do?

Separately, a couple of posts worth linking to:

solitary_summer on Torchwood, slash, fetishization, and RTD

smirnoffmule: On Slashing While Straight and Writing While Queer

Lastly a SHINee music video for More Joy Day eve: