Episode Report Card DeAnn Welker: A | 1 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT "Just Had To Reboot"
By DeAnn Welker | Season 3 | Episode 19 | Aired on 05.24.2010
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.After Ellie, Awesome and Morgan free Chuck, Sarah and Casey from the transport they were in at the end of last episode, thanks to Casey's James Bond car, Chuck promises Ellie he'll quit being a spy... as soon as he gets Shaw and the Ring for what they did to Bakula. He promises. So they send Awesome and Ellie off to safety somewhere, and Team Bartowski goes to work finding Shaw. It's not as hard as you'd think, actually, because they tap into General Redhead's cell, and she tells them about some conference where all of the Ring leaders will also be. They trick Shaw into revealing the leaders' identities, and then capture them all. Chuck and Shaw sort of fight, but Shaw gets away. Chuck's Intersect's hurting him pretty bad by this point, because Shaw stole the Governor his dad made for him, so he's passed out in Castle when Shaw shows up at the Buy More and calls for him. Sarah shows up instead, so Shaw chains her to the Buy More Nerd Herd desk (after they set off an alarm and clear the Buy More of the many "Going Out of Business" customers Jeffster! and Big Mike have lured to keep the store from... going out of business. Chuck and Shaw fight again -- to the sweet, sweet sounds of Jeffster! singing Bon Jovi -- and this time Chuck finally, finally wins. Jeffster! tell Big Mike they'll burn down the store to help him avoid it being closed (the logic is astounding), but he won't have it and leaves them. Inside, Morgan, with thumbs he broke to free himself from handcuffs, accidentally drops the detonator Shaw had rigged to bombs throughout the store. Everyone runs to safety outside the Buy More as it burns. Even Jeffster! think they somehow did it. And they're wanted men.
Happy family dinner in the end, with toasts to Bakula. Alex even shows up, after learning Casey's her dad. Then Chuck gets a text summoning him to his computer. It's a final message from his dad, who leads him back to their family home, into a secret underground lair, where he'd been working as his own type of spy for himself. It's bigger and more secure than any CIA facility we've seen, with wacky code names and villains and projects. And it's all about one thing: protecting Chuck and Ellie's mom. We even see the back of her head as she gets a phone call at the end telling her it's time to move. In other words, it's a whole new show. Again.
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Want more? The full recap starts right below!Without even a commercial, we pick up where the first hour left off, Ellie driving in pursuit of the truck carrying her brother. Then she flashes back to herself as a kid, telling Chuck that Mom's going to be so pissed. She tells a younger-looking Bakula that Chuck broke their mom's favorite necklace, and Chuck whines, "I didn't mean to." Bakula gets on his knees and tells them, "There's nothing broken in this whole world that the two of you can't fix, if you work together." He sends Chuck to get Ellie's art supplies and then tells Ellie that Chuck has a knack for getting into trouble, so she's going to have to protect him, and be there for him no matter what, because she's the big sister. He asks if she can do that. She looks seriously at her dad, but before she answers (as if we have any doubts about how Ellie answered that question) we cut back to present-day Ellie on the phone with Awesome, frantic that she lost the truck so he needs to call her as soon as he can see them.
Inside the truck, Chuck looks sadder even than the mopey-looking Sarah and Casey. Sarah tells him this wasn't his fault, but Chuck says it was because he chose to download the Intersect 2.0 and chose to be a spy. The truck comes to a stop and Casey wonders who's going to get them out of this one. Chuck says no one even knows they're here. But outside the truck, Morgan and Awesome are stopped, and Awesome's telling Ellie that they found them. Ellie tells him that these people killed his father and are going to do the same thing to Chuck, so they have to stop them. He knows, Babe. But he hangs up and asks Morgan what they're going to do, since they don't have a plan. Morgan, deadly serious: "No plan. Never stopped me before."
Agent Superman opens the back door of the truck and asks if everyone's good and comfy. They all glare, and Chuck notices the Governor on Agent Superman's wrist. He throws the keys at them, and tells them to uncuff themselves, so it can look like they were trying to escape when he killed them. Wow, that's motivation to do what he says if I've ever heard it. Back in Casey's car, Awesome snits that when one is facing a group of murderers, one should have a plan. Morgan agrees, in principle, but says they're here now, so what should he do: open up the glove box? Get the spy manual? They both stop and realize they're in Casey's car, so they might actually be able to do that. They open the glove box and find a gun. They bicker over who should use it. Awesome can't because he's a doctor, but Morgan's a "lapsed vegetarian." Is that even a thing? They notice two buttons in there, so Awesome hits one, and electronic target-looking things appear on the windshield. They hit the other button and a missile launches out of the front of the car. Lucky for them, it had locked in on the truck and it smashes into it, knocking it on its side and tossing Agent Superman away. Awesome finds Team Bartowski in the back of the truck, not too much worse for wear, and says, "We're here to save you." Casey looks shocked at the answer to that question he just asked, about who's going to get them out of this one, and then grunts. Just because he's Colonel John Casey.