This review may contain spoilers.

Sarah and Chuck have given a huge amount of money to a wedding planner and she’s vanished with that tidy sum. There are some twists and turns in this story but the main reason for it to play out is to let us see Sarah feeling better about her con artist dad and to see how she was raised to be a con artist as well.

Gary Cole does a fine job of making us believe he is a happy go lucky rogue who isn’t cut out to be a family man but who does love his daughter even so.

The twists and turns the plot takes are pretty fantastic in nature and are hard to buy but it was still fun and we like knowing that Sarah’s dad isn’t all bad and that we can be almost certain a wedding episode is in the offing.

This is a calmer episode than many of the recent ones. The sub-plot involving Casey, his daughter, and the decision to tell Kathleen he is alive takes a back seat to the wedding planner mishap and yet, when you think about the episode sometime after watching, you just might think this is the most endearing and enduring element.

Points of Interest

1. Showing us Sarah’s childhood not only shows us that she was not treated properly but also that she was smart -- smart enough to take what her con man father taught her and turn it into something good.

2. The humor in this episode is subtler than in most. It’s Yvonne Strahovsky who gets the funniest bits this time around. Sarah’s Styrofoam cake decorating ability is amazing and cute. Her ability to mimic the way Zachary Levi portrays Chuck having a flash is wonderful and quite funny.

3. The way the secondary plot concerning Casey and the love of his life Kathleen was given closure was very well done. It was done in a very toned down way that seems completely appropriate for the characters involved. We like that there is no huge, tearful confrontation scene and that the revelation of the truth about Casey is quietly made clear.

What Worked

The end scene of Sarah with her long lost childhood piggy bank neatly closes the book on the sad story of herself and her father. In life, we don’t often get closure in the form of huge sums of cash but this is a fantasy and in a fantasy, it works.

The Casey/Kathleen sub-plot was so deftly written that it seems as important to the episode as the wedding planner plot that consumes most of the air time. It was beautifully accomplished.

What Didn’t Work

The one sticking point is Chuck and Sarah using the C.I.A. resources to find the wedding planner. It was just a little too silly, even in a basically light program. It would have seemed more believable if Chuck and Sarah had just gone to General Beckman and asked. She believes in love and she probably would have figured a way to make it appropriate.

Giving Credit Where Credit is Due

“Chuck Versus the Wedding Planner” was written by Rafe Judkins and Lauren LeFranc and directed by Anton Cropper.

“Chuck” airs Monday nights at 8 ET on NBC.