I have traveled extensively around Europe. This is not a boast, not me taking the opportunity to show off my jet-setting, worldly-wise ways. It’s just a statement of fact, which leads inevitably to another statement of fact: there is not a single train in Europe that looks like the one on which Chuck and Sarah find themselves in this episode. Oh, sure the Orient Express is pretty fancy schmancy, but I don’t think that even runs the Paris-Zurich route anymore, having been long replaced by a TGV line. And did you see the size of that sleeper compartment in which they enjoyed days and days of uninterrupted connubial bliss? It’s even less believable than the size of Buffy and Willow’s dormroom at UC Sunnydale.

Speaking of days and days… exactly what train takes upwards of a week to get from Paris to Zurich? Mine did it in about seven hours! I’m pretty sure we didn’t even have a snack trolley on board, let alone a whole dining car with full bar. This vision of European train travel is misleading and irresponsible; it’s like Before Sunrise. Yeah, buy a Eurail pass, meet Julie Delpy, have sex in a park. Then again, if there is one thing Chuck patently is not it’s a documentary, so we’ll just take this romantic rail journey from a time gone by as a lovely and idyllic -- if completely ridiculous -- fantasy and move on.

So, Chuck and Sarah. They have decided they want to be together forever. This is all to the good. But as part of the whole togetherness deal, they now think they have to run away from their lives and responsibilities, despite neither of them really wishing to give up their glamorous covert careers. But why exactly do they think they needed to “run away” in order to be together? That might have made sense back when Chuck was her “asset” and their relationship was strictly verboten (which was established often and often in the first two seasons), but now Chuck’s a fully fledged spy! So why can’t they be together? Why can’t they be spies and in a relationship? Sarah and Shaw (Brendan Routh, may he remain hated) did it; Sarah and Bryce Larkin (we miss you, Matthew Bomer) did it.

Chuck, you puzzle me, sometimes.

Anyway, as a result of their having run away, Sarah and Chuck happen to see known militant Basque separatist Juan Diego Arnaldo (Carlos Lacamara) on this fictional train of theirs, and both decide to investigate, unbeknownst to the other. This investigating leads to one of Yvonne Strahovski’s best performances on the series to date: her rendition of a bubbly drunken Texan newlywed is hilarious and sexy and adorable, and one can’t help but hope that she is given more such chances to use these unexpected comedic skills. There’s only so much irrational angsting and eyelash-fluttering introspection that we require from her, thank you very much.

So, Chuck and Sarah manage to take Basque Separatist Guy into custody, only to learn that he was already in custody, and the bodyguards they had drugged were actually Interpol Agents. Oops. Happily, Morgan and Casey had previously managed to board this long slow train to nowhere in an attempt to catch up with their AWOL teammates, and take responsibility for the terrorist so that Chuck and Sarah can, once again, run away in order to be together. (And I ask again: why?)

Morgan is so awesome in this episode! He was officially signed up as part of the gang in the previous episode, and what a way this was to ring in the new era of Team Chuck +1. He not only tracks down Chuck in Paris using some heretofore unsuspected computer skillage (not to mention his intimate knowledge of his best buddy’s reading habits), but he also figures out that the retrieval team sent to take back Basque Separatist Guy is actually Up To Something.

Up To Something they most assuredly are, which Chuck and Sarah fortunately figure out too; they take out the bad guys, decide they want in on the whole spy caper after all, and we head back to Burbank, with no harm done. (Well, except for the death of an Interpol retrieval team which occurred off screen, but as no one seems to be especially upset about these two innocent lawmen who lost their lives in the service of Chuck and Sarah’s stupidity, then why should we?) Sarah and Chuck tell General Beckman (Bonita Friedricy) that they’re together, she gives them her tacit approval (“It’s about damn time.” -- see, what were they so worried about?), and as Nina Simone sings over the closing montage, I can’t help but smile, looking forward to a new era in the annals of Chuck: he’s a proper spy, happily in love, with his main enforcer back in the fold and now he (and consequently, we) will get to see a whole lot more of his best friend.

It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day, it’s a new life, and I’m feeling good.

-- Rachel Hyland