Episode Report Card DeAnn Welker: A+ | 1 USERS: A YOU GRADE IT "I'm A Spy, Buddy"
By DeAnn Welker | Season 3 | Episode 9 | Aired on 03.08.2010
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Early on, Agent Superman and Sarah tell Chuck he can't be a spy until he flashes again, and what with his emotions roiling from the breakup with Hannah and the secret-keeping, who knows when that will happen again? So, Shaw puts his life on the line and goes out in the field in Chuck's place. They head to Malibu, where Awesome and Ellie are vacationing. There's a Ring agent there trying to infiltrate someone they think is an agent. Turns out it's Awesome, and the whole thing was just a set-up to get Team Bartowski away from the base (and away from Bartowski). While they're gone, a group of men in suits take over the Buy More under the guise of wanting to buy the place. They plan to interview everyone and will fire the nonessentials. They're Ring agents, of course, and they quickly figure out that Chuck's Agent Carmichael. Lester eavesdrops on enough of it to hear that they're going to "terminate" everyone but Chuck and Morgan (since Chuck told them Morgan's his best friend), so the Buy More crew locks themselves in the store to force the suits not to fire them.
Morgan ends up hiding and then following the Ring agents into Castle (which they find using high-tech, fancy scanners, of course. The security system there seems entirely too easy to hack, since the Ring guys manage to lock Team Bartowski out. After Morgan comes back up and tells Chuck everything he learned, they both end up kidnapped and Chuck has to tell Morgan everything, while they're cuffed together in the fighting practice room. Morgan thinks this is the best news ever, because it's way better than what he thought, which is that they were just growing apart. Getting to share everything -- even that he loves Sarah -- is such a relief to Chuck that he ends up flashing when the guys come back, and beats the crap out of all of them while Morgan watches (and bonks the last guy on the head, doing his part).
When it's all said and done, Agent Superman wants to put Morgan underground, but Chuck and Sarah convince him Morgan's totally loyal and will never reveal the secret. The best friends go home and play Duck Hunt. Awesome confronts Chuck about how he'd said they were safe but then the Ring used him as a decoy this weekend. So he tries to convince Ellie to go to Africa and join Doctors Without Borders. Shaw tells Sarah it was awfully weird that the Ring knew where he was and didn't kill him. Chuck and Morgan play Duck Hunt, and Chuck apparently flashes on it (the little dog laughs), then tells Morgan he would trust Casey and Sarah with his life. At his place, Casey pulls out a Ring phone and gets a call from someone he hasn't spoken to in awhile. Uh-oh. I can't decide if it's Chuck's dad, or if Agent Superman's really the bad guy and there's an undercover guy inside the Ring calling to tell Casey, or if Casey's bad. But no matter what, this episode proves that Zachary Levi's just as good a director as he is an actor, because it's one of the best episodes in the history of the show. More like that, please.
Watch the full episode here, then discuss itin our forums. Then see which Chuck character we want to spend 24 hours with!
Want more? The full recap starts right below!A few things Chuck wants us to know about him: He broke up with Hannah because she couldn't understand his life. Morgan wondered why his best friend Chuck is always running off somewhere. He and Ellie both thought Chuck was up to something. Awesome was sick of lying for Chuck's secret. Chuck's Intersect didn't work if he couldn't keep his emotions in check. Chuck and Agent Superman both hearted Sarah. Now, Chuck visits Castle, where Agent Superman and Sarah tell him what a problem it is that he hasn't flashed in a week. It's such a problem that until he starts flashing again, he's no longer a spy. Chuck says he gave up everything to be a spy, so it's all he has. [Except for his job and his sister/neighbor and his friends. Really, he just gave up Lana Lang, who is far from everything. Oh, and Sarah, I guess. So maybe he gave up every girl. - Zach] Sarah thinks time off might help, but he says that won't help, since he'll still have all these bottled-up emotions. Sarah says they can always talk to him, but he says that's not going to work for him. So, he's benched.
Sunny beach with people surfing. Ellie and Awesome are vacationing and kissing, all happy about how happy they are to be away and alone, just the two of them. Then Awesome's phone rings and he steps away to talk to Chuck, who wants to vent about breaking up with Hannah and being stressed by his spy life. Awesome tells him he's sorry, but he took this vacation to get away from Chuck's spy life. Chuck pouts and then goes to the Buy More, where he walks by a weird game in which Lester's betting all the nerds that Jeff can put an entire apple in his mouth. Then Morgan pages "Charles Irving Bartowski" to his office for disciplinary action. Chuck heads back, passing the betting, which is now to the point where the entire apple is in Jeff's mouth. It's gross.
In Morgan's "office," Morgan tells Chuck this is not an easy conversation to have, but they've been through all of their awkward life stages together: puberty, high school, college, and now the Buy More. So Morgan would like to know what's been going on in Chuck's life, since he knows it's something. Chuck asks if he really wants the truth, and Morgan does (like a slice of cheese on a tuna melt). But Chuck won't say anything, so Morgan climbs over the desk and gets out. He tells Chuck he's fired -- not from the Buy More, but as Morgan's best friend. So the disciplinary action was friendship-based, not work-based. Cake credits. Then Jeff Bridges' Hyundai commercial. Maybe he'll move up to a bigger, better brand now that he's an Oscar winner.