Episode Report Card DeAnn Welker: A | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Chuck 2.0
By DeAnn Welker | Season 3 | Episode 6 | Aired on 02.01.2010
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Chuck's mission this week is to meet a geeky tech loner named Manoosh and make him his asset. In other words: Try to focus on his weakness to get him to like him, just like Sarah did with Chuck. At first, Chuck comes on too strong, and both Casey and Sarah agree he's not ready for an asset, but then Chuck tries again. This time, he acts like himself (with a little help from a comic book, of course), and wins Manoosh over. Turns out what Manoosh has been doing is building a weapon for the Ring. And that weapon is... Intersect sunglasses. Soon, Manoosh realizes the Ring isn't paying him enough, so he takes his weapon to Dubai and to Casey's favorite relaxing event, Weap-Con. This is good news for Casey, who can write it off this year. Once there, they try to stop Manoosh from selling his Intersect glasses, but the Ring interrupts. Everyone has their guns on Manoosh, but Team Bartowski wins. The bad news? They have to take Manoosh back and put him underground to keep him safe. He knows too much, after all. Chuck almost can't do it, but then he can, so Casey and Sarah know he's becoming a real spy. Casey tells Sarah this is a good thing, but she's not so sure.
At the Buy More, Hannah's a huge hit, of course, so Morgan assigns Jeffster! to stalking detail. They figure everything out about her, which is enough to help Morgan win her over, but when she mentions Chuck's trip to Paris, Morgan realizes he has someone even more important to figure out: Chuck. So he puts his stalkers to work figuring out Chuck. Uh-oh. Ellie's also growing increasingly suspicious about Devon and Chuck. In the end, it looks like Ellie and Morgan are going to team up to figure out their dark secret. This will be fun while it lasts, but it can't end well.
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Want more? The full recap starts right below!Some things Chuck wants us to know: Awesome was a spy, but now he's out of the business. Much to his relief. Chuck met Kristin Kreuk on a plane. Her name's Hannah and he offered her a job at the Buy More. After the previouslies, we jump even farther into the past, weirdly. "Three Years Ago." Sarah walks in to the Buy More for the first time and meets Chuck, who's all "Vick, Vicki Vale, Vick, Vicki Vale." Morgan stands by. Back in the present, he's still standing by in the same spot by the Nerd Herd station, when he asks Chuck if it was love at first sight when he saw Sarah. He asks because he's currently watching Hannah walk in, all cute and slow motion. Chuck doesn't know, but he says it changed his life forever. Hannah walks up, and Morgan awkwardly says hi, then tells everyone to get back to work and walks off. That gives Hannah the opportunity to ask Chuck's advice about her first day. He says he's the Jack Hannah of this untamed wilderness: He's safe and everyone else is dangerous. Jeffster! creepily approach and get handsy with Hannah. Chuck introduces them as two Buy Morons, which is perfect. Lester kisses Hannah's hand with a "Namaste," which I'll take as a shoutout to that other show whose final season premiered the day after this episode. Chuck pulls Hannah aside, saving her from Jeff's creepy stares.
When they're alone, Hannah says she went through her Nerd Herd manual last night and has some questions. Chuck's like, "You read that in your offtime? Are you going to be a problem employee?" She just wants to be the best Nerd Herder ever, and he says the bar's not really all that high. She says Chuck must be pretty committed, though, since he went to Paris on an install. Chuck asks her to keep that between them, since he doesn't want the others getting jealous. Then Casey comes by and tells Chuck it's "yogurt time." Chuck tells Hannah that's the most important meal of the day, so he must go. But he'll give her the full Bartowski Tutorial soon enough. Jeffster! are still ogling Hannah from afar. Jeff says he's going to totally hit that, and Lester adds, "May the best stalker win." That's always been my motto.
Castle. Chuck asks where Agent Superman is, and Sarah exposits that he's on a covert mission. [One for which he will not be receiving any royalties. - Zach] General Redhead pops up on her screen to tell Chuck it's not his concern where Agent Superman is anyway. She calls him "Mr. Bartowski," and he tells her she might not have heard but he completed his first solo "mish" last night, so now it's "Agent Bartowski." She's not amused. Because she's, you know, General Redhead. Instead, she tells them about a large sum of money that came from an offshore Ring account into a civilian account. They want to know why. The civilian is Manoosh Depak (played by little-known comedian Fahim Anwar, who blogged about his experience on the episode, since it's practically as big a deal to him as it would be to any of us; I love that), who trained as a computer engineer, but dropped out of MIT after his freshman year. Casey: "Classic geek tragedy." Then, to Chuck, "Sound familiar?" General Redhead says they sent a virus to destroy his CPU and then bought every one within miles, so he'll come to the Buy More to have it fixed. She asks "Agent Bartowski" to develop Manoosh as an asset and find out what he's doing for the Ring. She turns herself off, and Chuck says it's a piece of cake.