Let's meet Chuck! He's an adorably floppy-haired geek, complete with pocket protector and a nerdy best friend named Morgan. We start out in a darkened room, in which Chuck and Morgan are seemingly planning some kind of covert commando mission, only when the light goes on, we learn that the two of them are escaping "Chuck"'s birthday party in Echo Park, which he claims is actually an excuse for Chuck's older sister Ellie to have all her friends over. Ellie is played by Sarah Lancaster, of Everwood infame, and it's a testament to the mellowing of my psyche caused by old age that I'm willing to give her a clean slate here. Maybe I'm taking the fact that she's a brunette now as a sign of her like desire to bury the past. Ellie informs Chuck that she's invited "real, live women" on his behalf, and the least he can do is come downstairs. "Morgan, you stay here." Ha! The hot girls Chuck gets introduced to all seem to think he's adorable, even when he confesses that he studied engineering at Stanford and now works for the "Nerd Herd." Talk then turns to a "Bryce Larkin," who was Chuck's roommate in college; Chuck tells one of the women Bryce is an accountant, but an extended sequence that's vaguely reminiscent of Mission: Impossible shows that he actually seems to be some sort of covert agent, as he gets into some kind of sensitive computer area and hacks away. Under questioning from the woman, Chuck babbles cluelessly about his ex-girlfriend Jill, and by the time he gets to the part about Jill ditching him for Bryce, the girl has moved on to less nerdy pastures. Or more nerdy ones, if she happened to stumble across Morgan. We then cut back to the Bryce sequence, in which it should be noted the guy is pretty cute despite being covered in more blood than Sissy Spacek in Carrie. In the white computer room he's in, he plants an explosive charge, then runs at the door, timing it such that he's running through just as the door blow off their hinges. Neat trick -- not sure if you escape without third-degree burns if you're not on TV, but neat trick nonetheless. The doors also fortunately crash onto some of the security officers that have been alerted to Bryce's presence, and he manages to get by the rest of them with some further moves that include running up walls and other acrobatic martial arts that would have made him right at home on Xena. In the stairwell, Bryce takes out his Blackberry to send an email, and I know from personal experience how addictive those things are, but when dudes are chasing you with machine guns, sending out chain mail can wait, you know? There's more acrobat-fu involving jumping from roof to roof, and Bryce eventually gives the cops following him the shake and pulls out the Blackberry again, only to be shot in the chest by some dude. And by "some dude," I mean ADAM BALDWIN! Awesome! However, Adam Baldwin is somewhat screwed here, because as Bryce lies dying, he sneers, "Too late, Casey," and we see him send an email...to Chuck. DUN!
...and we get confirmation of that, as the guy is blathering on, while in the back, the scary red-haired dude is pushing a cart with a silver cover over it. I know they play music at the Academy Awards if your speech runs over, but this seems a little excessive.
Chuck and the two agents come into the hotel at a dead run, but Sarah pauses to say they can't risk taking Chuck in, as he's too valuable. Casey agrees, but Chuck darts away from them, and soon they're in the crowded event room. Chuck quickly locates the bomb, and the agents expose the mechanism, which is connected to a laptop that reads only a minute and a half to go. After an ill-timed phone call from Morgan, Chuck realizes that the laptop is one they sell at their store, and it's got a DOS override. He quickly convinces the agents to let him work his magic, and gets on the internet and searches for Irene Demovar. In a hilarious quick moment that you might miss in the tension, Casey's like, "You're searching for porn!" Just so we know there's a bit of Jayne thrown in with the Hamilton. But the virus kills the computer with .01 seconds to spare, and Chuck enjoys his moment of badassery until he realizes how close he came to being in a million little pieces. Casey: "Don't puke on the C4." Ha!
Casey and Sarah have an argument over who's getting custody of Chuck. Mom and Dad, please don't fight! Chuck overhears a bit of this, and insists they leave his family and friends out of the equation. He realizes that the agents need him, and with that, declares his intention to go home. The morning, Chuck is sitting on the beach in the early sun when Sarah finds him; she tells him she's been there all night, which means he didn't go home. Liar! Chuck ruefully notes there's nowhere he can run, and says he can't figure out why Bryce chose him for this. He asks what happens now, and Sarah tells him he'll go back to his life, and they'll protect him while he works with them. This scene is cut with Chuck arriving home to have Ellie and Morgan animatedly chide him for making them worry. Sarah tells Chuck to keep his family and friends in the dark, and then Captain Awesome comes out in his scrubs on his way to work and stops to participate in the group hug going on in the living room, which he calls "awesome." Hee. Sarah asks Chuck to trust her. We see a shot of her back in her hotel looking at camera-photos of Bryce with tears in her eyes, and then she and Chuck sort of smile at each other. The episode ends with Chuck having a hilarious slo-mo face-off with his work rival, Chuck applying for an assistant manager job, and Chuck going to meet the new trainee -- Casey. HA! Also, Sarah's shopping in the store, and as Chuck passes by her, he gets some images of her killing some dudes on an assignment. Chuck, to himself: "Don't freak out." Why not? This show is awesome!
Back at the party, Ellie is coaching Chuck not to mention old girlfriends and to move on, saying Stanford was five years ago, but I'm not really paying attention because I see Tony Todd is guest starring! I didn't think the show could raise its kick-ass factor much beyond Adam Baldwin, but the Candyman and that voice so deep it makes James Earl Jones jealous will actually do exactly that. As nice as Ellie is to Chuck, though, she thinks Morgan is such a loser she can't even look at him. I...understand, so far. The email from Bryce comes through, but Morgan leaves before Chuck plays it, which is just as well, because it's a blurry seizure-inducing jumble of historical images and somewhat disturbing shots, and while it plays, Chuck seems to be having a physical reaction to it. We flash-forward to morning, and it's just after 7:00 AM when he comes out of it...and promptly faints.
Morgan wakes a fuzzy Chuck up from his floor; soon after, in the shower, Chuck sees a flurry of jumbled images he's at a loss to explain, including what looks like a lemon pie. So not only did Bryce give him a constant headache, but he's continually going to be fighting off the urge to eat too much dessert? Thanks, Dead Bryce. Chuck's feeling too out of it to drive, but when he hands the keys off to Morgan, he says something about staying off the 5 due to the cops' "phased deployment," which causes him and Morgan to go "Hmm" for a second before going back to happily geeking it up. And speaking of which, we see what the Nerd Herd is all about -- they're a tech-support booth at a Best Buy-type joint called "Buy More," and Chuck is Head Nerd, it looks like. Well, Morgan's the head nerd, but that's not an official title. Also, there's a bit about there being a virus that can crash your computer named after a Middle Eastern porn star names "Irene Demovar." You may not believe me when I tell you that that Will Be Important Later.
TONY TODD! It looks like Bryce was CIA, and Tony Todd was his boss, but Adam Baldwin and some woman are NSA. The computer that Bryce hacked into had the marriage of the CIA's and NSA's intelligence, from which it mined patterns and encrypted them into images, so whoever received those images is now in possession of all the CIA's and NSA's secrets. No mention here of why Bryce went rogue, but for now that's irrelevant, as Casey is off to find Chuck in L.A.
Back at the store, a blonde accosts Chuck, and he's so flummoxed by how hot she is that he doesn't even remember to tell her about his ex-girlfriend. A distraught father then comes in with his young ballerina daughter; he screwed up shooting her recital, so Chuck shows us that he is a Good Guy by getting the Nerds to film her right there in the store, much to the blonde "Sarah"'s delight. Unfortunately, this also lets us see that Chuck's co-worker "Harry" has no time for making customers happy, so we have defined Chuck's adversary. Well, the adversary that wants his job, not the presumably multiple adversaries that will try to kill him before the hour is up. Chuck's really cute, by the way, did I mention that? He must be, for the blonde left him her card.
Ellie proudly gives Chuck some flowers and says he's "aces," which Chuck recognizes as a "Dad quote," so there's a little taste of backstory for you. Sarah's on the phone again with Tony Todd; she cocks her gun as she heads for the door and asks what to do if Chuck runs. Just as she opens the door, Tony Todd blithely responds, "Kill him." From Chuck's goofy smile, it doesn't look like Sarah has the volume on the earpiece turned all the way up.
So Sarah and Chuck are at an old-school Mexican restaurant, and Chuck is telling Sarah how he does in fact call Ellie's boyfriend "Captain Awesome," and it's completely unironic, as everything he does is awesome -- "climbing mountains, jumping out of planes, flossing..." Sarah thinks that last is funny, although when she sees CA smile, she'll realize flossing is actually the awesomest of the awesome things he does. Chuck proceeds to dorkily charm the pants off Sarah, although he does trip a little when he hears that Sarah has baggage from a long relationship that just ended, and he offers to be her "baggage handler." Hee. Of course, the implication here, especially given Tony Todd's earlier assertion that what happened with Bryce wasn't Sarah's fault, is that Sarah and Bryce were involved. Also, the fact that she refers to her ex as "Bruce" is another possible clue. Jeez, Sarah, you're supposed to be a spy, and you were only half a step away from calling him "Ice-Bray." Chuck, for his part, starts to talk about his ex, but remembers his sister's advice and cutely reins it in, prompting Sarah to tell him she likes him. Aw! Just don't make any sudden grabs for her, Chuck -- you're likely to puncture an organ.
Later, Chuck and Sarah are figuring out what to do while crossing an overpass when Chuck looks at the traffic and gets another jumble of images. He recovers quickly, though, and they head off. Unfortunately, they pass by Casey, who's got a couple of flunkies in the car with him; he tells them until they find out what "Chuck Bartowski" knows, he lives, but they're welcome to kill "the CIA skirt." Is this because she called you a burnout? How was she supposed to know you watch dailies?
In a music venue, Chuck and Sarah sit down and grin goofily at each other. We see the two henchsuits enter, and Sarah catches sight of them; her smile fades as she does some quick thinking and hastily leads Chuck to the dance floor in spite of his obvious terror. She uses some slinky dance moves to cover her drawing one of her knives, which she throws at one of the suits, pinning his jacket to a bulletin board. Heh. More suits are appearing, and Sarah takes the two long knitting-needle-esque things out of her hair. Chuck's too mesmerized by Sarah's blonde locks cascading around her shoulders to notice where the needles end up, which is in a leg of each of two different suits. She then grabs Chuck's ass, which makes him completely unaware of anything, even the fact that she stabs another agent in the gut and kicks him to the ground. She slides through Chuck's legs and swings herself up, but Casey is now on the scene watching with an evil smile, so she hustles Chuck out of there...
...and on the street, she asks for his keys. When he starts to babble about only Nerds driving the Nerd Herd car (and it says "Nerd Herd" on it, and I have to admit that's kind of secretly awesome) she produces some sort of skeleton key and opens it, and when he starts to realize from the black Jeep hurtling toward them that they're in trouble, he hops in. Sarah drives in reverse at high speed for quite an impressive length of time, enduring Casey bumping her on a number of occasions, but after a "my left/your left" mix-up, Sarah backs the car down several flights of stairs somewhere. When they safely land, Sarah comes clean about the pursuers being from the NSA, but before Chuck can really take that in, Casey and his remaining two people hurtle out of nowhere and ram them, which deploys the airbags. Sarah gets Chuck out, but as they run, Chuck trips over some wreckage from the car and loses Sarah's hand. She turns, and the car comes straight for her. However, she's standing right in front of a security booth with an "Emergency Blockage" button, and she grabs one of her knives and throws it into the button, which sends up the barrier in time to smash the car into a crumpled wreck. I hope they had passenger airbags too, not just because I don't want to see Adam Baldwin gone already, but because the NSA will look awfully shitty if they were too cheap to install a feature the Nerd Herd wasn't. Sarah calls for emergency air evacuation (although Tony Todd told her she was on her own with this one, it should be pointed out) and hurries Chuck away.
As Sarah and Chuck reach a roof on which a helicopter can land, she's telling him about Bryce being a rogue spy, and Chuck in turn tells her about Bryce's email, and confesses he looked at the pictures. There's a subtle shift as she softly warns him she may have to point her gun at him, and he shouldn't freak out, and then Casey appears, a trickle of blood on his forehead, and asks if they can get this over with. He tries to claim Chuck for the NSA, but Sarah points her gun at Chuck and says she'll kill him first. Casey in turn trains his piece on Sarah. Chuck: "Sarah? I'm freaking out!' Hee.
Still freaking, Chuck runs for the edge of the roof, but sees the images again, the most prominent ones being this dude in a general's uniform we've seen before, the guy that scared Chuck in the store, explosives that end up detonating spectacularly, and that damned pie. Forget Chuck -- now I'm getting hungry. Chuck tells them that "General Stanfield, the NATO guy"'s life is in danger; also, he knows things he shouldn't, like how there was a "Serbian demolitions expert" at the "Large Mart" earlier that day. Chuck goes on that the CIA found schematics of a bomb in Prague, the NSA found blueprints of a hotel nearby -- and the bomb is in the hotel. This revelation causes Casey to turn his gun on Chuck, thinking he was working with Bryce, while Sarah then swivels to point at Casey, explaining that Chuck opened Bryce's email. Sarah adds that the pictures Chuck saw were encoded with secrets, and now Chuck knows them all. Casey points his laser sight as Chuck's head as he remarks that all their secrets are in his head, and Chuck hilariously looks up at his forehead as he realizes that this is the very first PowerPoint presentation he has not thoroughly enjoyed. Sarah says that Chuck's brain is the computer now. Okay, yes, that's the most preposterous assertion in a host of ridiculous developments, but this show is basically a comedy, or at least is starting out as one, so I'm going to go with it. Casey and Sarah ask where the bomb is, but Chuck's computer brain stays in Error 404 mode until Sarah informs him that Bryce is dead. Casey again asks if there's time to defuse the bomb, but Chuck tells him the general is already on stage...