Chuck starts off by VO-ing an explanation of some basic stuff that happened last week, and then we get a quick re-introduction of the most main characters. We also get a re-introduction to Chuck's Cons, which are apparently sticking around, much to my delight. First there's a sequence that feels just the tiniest bit ham-fisted -- apparently LargeMart, which I think I mentioned is a competitor of Buy More, managed to set up a table in the Buy More store, with one of the UnderNerds' help? Or at least tacit approval? I think? So the asshole Asian guy berates Chuck, and then Morgan attempts to save the day by "magically" pulling the LargeMart tablecloth off the table without disturbing the stuff on it. Let's just say Morgan is no Doug Henning, which is too bad, because there are times I'm finding myself wishing he'd disappear. After exposition about Bryce we already know, there's an amusing sequence with Casey chasing down a shoplifter, catching him in a flying tackle and almost going medieval on his ass before Chuck stops him. Also, Sarah is working at some nearby fast-food place called "Wienerlicious," which is fine, and posing as Chuck's girlfriend, which is better, at least from the hot geek's point of view. However, his excitement at her proximity gives way to his whole anxiety about the secrets in his brain that have caused a target to appear on his back, so she reassures him that they have a plan -- "Jonas Zarnow," who we'll learn is the NSA's top scientist, is coming to town that night to help Chuck. Elie, ever-supportive and succeeding in making memories of Madison even more ephemeral, helps Chuck get ready, and then gets pissed when she hears Morgan already has met Sarah. Morgan skeeves that Chuck tells him his secrets, and she could too. Elie: "Here's one. I loathe you." Chuck: "That's...not a secret." Hee. Elie orders Chuck to invite Sarah over for dinner the night, and almost zaps Morgan into dust with her eyes on the way out.
Female red-haired NSA general from last week: "Our most valuable secrets have been sent to an idiot." Tony Todd: "Well, at least they weren't sent to his friend." HA! Tony Todd, if you want a good meal, I think there's a place for you at Elie's table. Tony Todd and the general are monitoring the two of them on a surveillance camera, and it seems that Chuck is holding up the red LargeMart tablecloth for Morgan, who paws the ground and charges it like a bull. It's just too bad Chuck doesn't pull a Bugs Bunny and hold it in front of an anvil. They express their hope that Zarnow can fix the Chuck situation...
...and then Sarah pulls up and orders Chuck into her car. Wow, I just saw that Robert Duncan McNeill, Tom Paris from Star Trek: Voyager, directed this episode. I always knew that you could do better than boring Harry Kim, Tom! Chuck is a little let down when Sarah brings him to the Buy More for their date, and that does seem kind of like a busman's holiday, particularly since Chuck has to drive that Nerdmobile around all the time. Sarah explains about the doctor, saying that he worked on the interface for the computer that Bryce destroyed, and he's going to examine him. Chuck worries about the examination will involve "needles, or perhaps probing of some kind." Chuck, nothing to worry about -- he's interested in your head, not your ass. Now if we were dealing with Morgan, he'd have to examine one to get to the other. Sarah rhetorically asks if Chuck wants to get the secrets out of his head, but Chuck's unconvincing response reveals that he knows he'll lose Sarah in that eventuality, and he's not okay with that. Cut to the home theater room, which Sarah says they've rewired so they can identify the images in his brain. Chuck has a Super Size Me headphones/mike thing on, and Sarah instructs him to simply say what the images are when they appear on screen. Chuck asks if that's it, and the heretofore unseen Casey snarks, "I'm sure you'll find a way to screw it up." Hee. If Adam Baldwin plays crotchety this well now, I can't wait to see him in twenty-five years or so. Casey adds that the doctor's there, and Sarah tells Chuck he won't meet him, as it's important Chuck not see him, as he's too valuable. Outside, the agents greet the doctor. Cut to him tapping away at a computer and wondering why he can't meet his patient, but Sarah says for Zarnow's safety, they're keeping "Patient X"'s identity a secret, which is not exactly what she told Chuck. But hey, just because spies lie all the time is no reason not to trust them! There's a bit of meta business about how it would be "ridiculous" for the keeper of the government secrets to work in a Buy More, which you'll want to be careful with, show. The test is uneventful to start, but then a yellow flower causes Chuck to start spewing government secrets right and left. The doctor is happily flabbergasted at Chuck retaining all the information (including Oceanic Flight 815 being shot down -- HA!), but when Casey asks if they can be extracted, he gets shifty, although he says yes. When Sarah takes him home, Chuck invites her to dinner the night, and then is again sad to realize that if he loses the information, he'll lose Sarah, and she covers but doesn't seem all that psyched about that revelation either. However, it doesn't look like that will come to pass, as after his car rounds a turn out of our sight, the doc's cell phone mysteriously explodes, destroying his car with him in it. Can't you just picture Chuck's "Oh good...I mean, that SUCKS" reaction? Now, if you observe closely, you can hear the doc pressing a keypad in the front seat before the cell phone on the back seat starts ringing, so this would be fishy even without the well-timed disappearance around the bend.
The day, Chuck is getting ready when Elie comes in and shows Chuck an article (billing Bryce as a bank executive) announcing Bryce's death in a robbery. She asks Chuck if he's okay, and he admits that he doesn't know -- he spent so much time hating Bryce for getting him kicked out of Stanford (...interesting) that he's not sure how to feel. "But it's hard to be mad at him now." Oh, come on, Chuck, you're not even trying!
Casey and Sarah are at the scene of the explosion, and Sarah finds the cell phone (intact except for a hole in the middle, like aside from the physical impossibility, the designers would want to leave no evidence behind, so I DON'T THINK SO, show) but doesn't tell Casey about it. Casey, for his part, tells the female general that he suspects the CIA, and she counsels him to stick close to Chuck. Cut to Buy More, where after Big Mike gives them a speech about customer-service training, Chuck then hilariously works with Casey, who's his typical psycho self, telling him not to have any meetings with Sarah without him, and even threatening him by putting the checkout scanner to his throat. I have to mention the best line, though, which is when Chuck says that the scanner is an expensive piece of equipment, and Casey replies: "So's a stealth fighter, and somehow I managed to fly that." HA! The brilliance of having Casey there making these comments is that Chuck can't tell anyone about them, because it's not like anyone would believe him. It's like Casey's the Oliver from The O.C. (I'll never forget Season One, Josh Schwartz!) of this show, only geometrically more bad-ass. Chuck counters by getting Casey and Morgan to do a role-playing exercise so he can slip out and see Sarah, whose ass seems to be the best thing that's happened to her hot-dog joint's traffic in years. Sarah shows Chuck the phone, and his brain files ID it as an "NSA incinerator, a special-issue weapon designed to eliminate all biological traces." That's...awfully convenient. Not to mention it could put exterminators around the world out of business. Sarah tells Chuck that Casey was responsible for the doc's death, and gives him a reciprocal order not to see Casey alone. She adds that he should act like he knows nothing. "You can do that, Chuck." Hee. But Casey, after awesomely ending the role-playing exercise by grabbing Morgan by the forehead and shoving him to the floor, cottons on and goes to confront Sarah, saying that the only two people who knew the doc were coming were the two of them, and he didn't kill him. They waste no further words in having an awesomely choreographed, extended, knock-down drag-out, in which they use anything they can get their hands on -- chairs, mop handles, plastic utensils. Sarah is on the verge of winning as she clocks Casey in the face with a vicious body-rolling kick, sending him over the counter, but she's interrupted by the appearance of some horny boys who snap her picture. This allows Casey to escape, and the thing you know, Lester is reporting a call that Chuck needs to go out and field, but when he stops to consult a map, a rather battered-looking Casey nudges him from behind. I suppose that would qualify as probing, but it didn't look so bad for his first time. After a chase in which Chuck's car sustains some light damage, Casey catches Chuck and tells him that Sarah's the one who killed the doc -- the NSA bomb is easily purchased on the black market. Great "S" in that NSA, Casey! The two of them get into Casey's car, but a cell phone on the back seat starts ringing, so they go running. The music swells, and then dies, causing the two of them to look at each other all, "?" Then the SUV blows up. Hee. However, I must point out that that's some great fucking weapon that needs to ring multiple times before it detonates. Even terrorists in Third World countries would be like, "I think we can do better than this, thanks."
Elie's bustling around as Captain Awesome opines that the dinner is going to be "radical." Kidding! Morgan turns up, followed shortly thereafter by Sarah; meanwhile, Casey is trying to tell Chuck he's going to take him to D.C., but Chuck escapes and heads home. Chuck, understandably swayed by the explosion, makes some pointed comments to Sarah that reveal he no longer trusts her, but everyone else is oblivious, and Sarah tells Chuck that his sister is "awesome." Captain Awesome: "In-DEED." Hee. After some talk about Bryce that feels a little forced, Casey, whose face in this one shot seems to have miraculously healed, crashes the party with an excuse about having moved in upstairs and wanting to bring some mini-quiches over, and when he gets Chuck alone, he tells him how Sarah killed a bunch of French diplomats a couple years earlier. Chuck gets a memory and sees that she poisoned them, which freaks him out, because she's brought dessert. Chuck, attempting to stall, gives a fumbling, freaking-out toast, and then tries to yank the tablecloth out, Morgan-style, in an effort to spill the soufflé -- only the tablecloth comes out without disturbing anything on it. Ha! But Casey thinks quickly and kicks the table, which drops a candle onto the soufflé and lights it on fire. He hilariously comments, "Flambé!" Hee. Adam Baldwin is all kinds of awesome, and I know at least one person who would agree with me in those exact words. After Chuck "smoothly" puts the soufflé out in the shower, Sarah gets him alone and manhandles him; she admits she killed the French guys, but says they were assassins. She then realizes that Casey must be innocent and has a revelation, and she leaves, followed by Chuck and Casey, but she runs into the doc, who's predictably not dead. He pops her with a couple of shots from a tranq gun, and when Casey and Chuck rush out, he hits Casey with one for good measure before driving away.
Over Chuck's objections, owing to his aversion to needles, Casey gets him to pull the dart out of his shoulder; fighting to remain conscious, he says that if they don't get to Sarah, the doc will torture her. He goes on that he put "microbots" in the quiche, and they can use them to track her. Chuck realizes he isn't kidding. Casey: "I don't kid about quiche." Hee. We learn that Casey made some enhancements to the Nerdmobile when it was in the shop, and he pops out a fancy GPS system from somewhere hidden on the front console. They get going...
...and then they're at Buy More. Casey tells Chuck to wait there, and then falls over from the tranquilizer. Heh. He gets right back up, though, and then they hear screaming from the home theater room -- only it's Morgan, watching some movie in which a woman is screeching her head off. Realizing that Morgan is the one who ate all the quiche, Casey looks disgusted enough to blow Morgan's head off right there. I wouldn't approve of that, but I wouldn't mind him shooting the fork out of his hand so he'd stop stuffing his face on the remains of Elie's dinner. Chuck and Casey leave...
...and then Casey reports that he's got nothing. Chuck asks him to think like the doc, and Casey says that if he were him, he'd try to escape by chopper, using the closest airfield he could find. Chuck haltingly gives Casey some search parameters, and Casey comes up with a probable location. Chuck floors it...
...and then they're there. Casey orders Chuck to stay in the car, but soon after he's gone, Chuck sees the doc come out of a nearby door. Chuck repeats Casey's order not to leave the car to himself, but he listens to himself about as well as he listens to Casey, and soon he's inside ripping the duct tape off the chained-up Sarah's mouth. He gets her something to pick the lock, but then they hear the doc coming back, so he hides, although not before replacing the duct tape, and it's nice to see again that he can think on his feet. The doc tells her they're going somewhere where Sarah will be full-on tortured, and gives her the chance to give up Patient X's identity. When he produces an enormous needle, though, Chuck involuntarily blurts, "Oh crap!" The doc whirls and throws the thing at him; he misses, but then Chuck turns around and gets a swirl of images and says that the doc has been giving American scientific secrets to North Korea for years. I don't get it -- if the CIA and NSA has this intel, how is it that the doc is still working for the NSA? Sloppy. The doc says he's going to sell Chuck and his brain full of secrets for money, and then plugs him in the chest with a tranq dart. Chuck falls away, and, no longer having any need for Sarah, the doc drags Chuck out of there. Sarah quickly frees herself and has a rendezvous with Casey outside, and I won't be too hard on him for not saving the day when he probably kept keeling over every ten seconds. On the other hand, Sarah had twice the dose he did, but she probably found the torture bracing enough to bring her back to full consciousness. Anyway, as they lift off, the doc consults with the pilot about the upcoming trip, but what he doesn't know is that Chuck's pocket protector blocked the needle from entering his skin. Heh. Just for clarity, I'm assuming he fainted because of that crippling fear of needles...
...but that doesn't stop him from grabbing the gun and pointing it at the doc. He doubts Chuck's resolve and makes a grab for it, and the thing goes off, hitting the pilot. After some nerd-bitchery and helicopter-lurching, the doc hits his head on the ceiling and gets knocked out, so it's up to Chuck to fly the thing, which isn't lost on Sarah and Casey, the latter of whom calls Chuck, who seems to have a Bluetooth-type earpiece? When Chuck picks up, Casey grits, "I told you to stay in the car!" Hee. Thanks, Grumpy Dad. Casey tries to tell Chuck how to fly the copter, but Chuck's too freaked out to listen to technical instructions, and Casey quickly gets frustrated. I know, who would have believed it? Sarah then takes over and soothingly tells Chuck things will be okay; she asks him which flying games he's played, and when he mentions "Apache Chopper Patrol," she tells him to pretend he's playing that game in his bedroom and none of this is real. She doesn't add that he doesn't get a reset, but even in his panicked state he probably knows that. Anyway, it's all very tense if you haven't watched TV before, but Chuck does bring it in for a bumpy but successful landing. He gets out, and Casey goes to check on the doc while Sarah berates Chuck for putting himself at risk, saying he compromised everything when he stopped trusting her. Casey: "And when you got out of the car!" Hee. Sometimes I like a man who doesn't know how to let things go. Chuck apologizes, but Sarah isn't mollified, saying she's not Bryce, and she can't believe he'd think she'd betray him. Someone has attended the Chris Meloni on SVU school of Taking! It! Personally! Seriously, I'm okay with her feeling hurt, but at the same time, YOU'RE A SPY. Shut up your whining. She walks away, and Casey adds, "Way to go, ace."
Chuck is getting dressed for Bryce's funeral; Elie recognizes that he's wearing their dad's suit, and he ruefully says it's his only one. Elie tells him he doesn't have to go; we start cutting back and forth between this conversation and the funeral as Chuck replies that he and Bryce had a lot of history. We see Chuck hanging back at the funeral, and then he looks over and sees Sarah doing the same. Chuck opines to Elie that he blew things with Sarah, but she counsels him simply to apologize. At the funeral, Sarah gets overwhelmed and leaves. Meanwhile, Casey is keeping an eye on Chuck when he gets a call from the General; they agree that the situation is under control for the moment, but she tells him the "new intersect" will be up and running in six months. Casey, maybe seeming not to want to hear the answer, asks what happens to Chuck then. The Red-Haired General: "You'll do what you do best." Make more snarky comments at him? Awesome!
Chuck goes into Wienerlicious, and Sarah amicably greets him, although she does breezily say she was only at the funeral because Bryce was her partner. Chuck apologizes again, and she in turn apologizes for yelling at him. She adds, though, that with the doc gone, there will be more missions and more secrets about which he can't tell Elie or his friends, and wonders if he's ready to be a hero. He reluctantly nods, and then Elie, Morgan, and Captain Awesome enter, and Chuck sheepishly says that they thought they'd give the dinner another try. The episode ends with Chuck biting into a corn dog and making a "Your cooking is coming along nicely" face. week: Spy stuff!