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Agent Superman gets himself in a bind to start this episode. By "bind," I mean that he gets trapped in a vault without oxygen. He needs Chuck to come in and flash on the computer system to save him before the oxygen runs out. Chuck does (with an assist from Hannah, who followed him to the Nerd Herd assignment). Agent Superman still needs the mask he was trying to get, so he sends Chuck and Hannah back there to fix the computers, while he and Sarah pose as a couple at the mask unveiling at the museum. It all goes wrong when Agent Superman sees a Ring guy whose face he burned off, and has to leave. So, Chuck has to join Sarah to complete the mission, totally abandoning Hannah just moments after she kissed him. They get the mask, but Hannah just wants to be professional with Chuck after that one. And, hey, can you blame her?
The bad guy sees Chuck kissing Hannah on the surveillance camera, so locks her in the vault to lure him back there with the mask. Unfortunately, Sarah and Agent Superman get themselves locked in Castle with the real mask, after accidentally setting off the chemical weapon inside it. Casey and Chuck head to the museum to save Hannah and get the counteragent to save Sarah and Agent Superman. Chuck manages to do both, but Agent Superman helps out plenty by carrying Sarah to the museum -- despite being poisoned himself. In the end, Team Bartowski tells Chuck they're just training wheels and will leave him on his own eventually. Then Chuck and Sarah have a heart to heart and let each other go to their new respective hotties.
Morgan and Ellie, who are still trying to figure out what's up with Chuck, find him making out with Hannah at the episode's end. Ellie's thrilled that his secret is a new girlfriend, but Morgan's pretty much broken-hearted. As Agent Superman gives Sarah a massage at Castle and tells him how safe he is, the Ring agent tells the Ring Tribal Council (or whatever they are) that he definitely saw Daniel Shaw. They tell him they'll do the same thing to Agent Superman that they're going to do to him. Then they shoot him in the head. This show sure knows how to leave us wanting more as we head into the Olympics hiatus.
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Want more? The full recap starts right below!I know a lot of forum posters didn't like this episode, because they're die-hard Sarah-Chuck shippers and HATE Agent Superman and Hannah, or because they wanted more Casey, or because they miss Chuck interacting with his friends and family outside of his spy life. But I loved it. I think this show has really hit its stride, and I greatly prefer a genuine reason for a relationship not to exist (which Hannah and Agent Superman give us) than just having Sarah and Chuck stare at each other angstily all the time. And, heck, some of their interactions in this episode were cuter and more genuine than they ever have been. Plus, I love Agent Superman and Hannah -- and I think at least one of those relationships isn't exactly what it appears to be (and poster Teitr Styrr might just be a genius for discovering that Yvonne's given Sarah a tell when she lies, and that she used when she told Chuck she likes Shaw). Although I'll relent on the Casey issue: More, please. And I miss Chuck's family dynamic, too. They seem to really be focusing on his spy life this season, so new viewers probably wouldn't even get who the crazy people trying to figure out his secret are anyway. We've seen no reason this season to care about Ellie and Morgan in Chuck's life, and that's just not right. Maybe I'm just an apologist for this show, but I'm loving it as much as (almost) ever -- almost, because the last few episodes of season 2 were just amazing.
So, here are a few things Chuck wants us to know: Hannah got fired, but was happy to meet Chuck, so he offered her a job in Burbank. Morgan liked Hannah. Ellie and Morgan both thought something was up with Chuck and Awesome, so they decided to team up and figure it out. We open on spy music and Agent Superman in all black, including facemask and gloves. After glowering at a gold mask from above, he lowers himself by rope into a vault, but when he reaches out to grab the mask, his hanging mechanism starts to give out, and a nail falls. When it hits the ground in the vault, it sets off alarms. So he tries to reel himself back up (using a remote!) but the ceiling door shuts -- and, uh, why is there a ceiling door other than for burglars to break in and try to steal things? -- right as he gets to the top. So, he's basically stuck in there. What else to do, then, but take off your mask? Which makes me wonder what the point was of wearing it, since now is the time people might actually see him. Anyway, he doesn't seem panicky, and just mutters, "Perfect," then calls Casey on his arm thingy and asks him quite casually to please tell him the Intersect isn't busy...
That segues right into Chuck replying to Hannah with, "Busy? For you? Never!" She tells him she wants him to teach her, and he assumes she's referring to the long and difficult road of Nerd Herding. She asks to go on his install, but he tells her she must learn to crawl before she can run. She says maybe he'd prefer to go with Jeff then, cramped into the tiny car, and he's like, "Well played." He promises her she can ride shotgun on the assignment. She's happy. Then Sarah comes in, and Chuck approaches her, clearly annoyed she's bugging him at his cover job. He asks if it can't wait, and she says, "Not unless you want him to suffocate to death." Forum posters: "Okay by us!" But Chuck seems more concerned. Morgan accosts Hannah and gets flirty, but she just wants to know who Sarah is and, when she finds out she's his ex, she wants to know the deal. Morgan tells her she dumped Chuck, broke his heart, and now keeps stomping on his heart. The whole time, Hannah watches them talking seriously. Chuck comes over and says he's gotta run, "Nerd Herd emergency." Morgan thinks it's curious he didn't get the call, but even a real Nerd Herd emergency wouldn't go through the store assistant manager, would it? Chuck's already run off, though, and is not listening to Morgan. Hannah runs off after Chuck, and when Morgan asks where she's going, she hollers back, "You heard the boss: Nerd Herd emergency." Morgan says okay, but then, "Wait a minute: I'm the boss." But she's already gone, too.
Nerd Herdmobile pulls up to a fancy museum, and Chuck runs in. Casey, disguised as a mover or delivery man with big boxes marked "FRAGILE," greets him. He won't explain why Agent Superman's broken in to the museum vault, because he only has five minutes of air left, so Chuck needs to get on the museum computer system and open the vault before Agent Superman suffocates (part of the vault security is that it depletes oxygen to the room). The museum will let Chuck on the server because Casey took the liberty of crashing it, so they think that's the problem instead of there being an actual alarm. Chuck greets the British curator of classical art, who's never touched a computer in his life. He needs Chuck to fix the server, which he says is in full lockdown mode, designed to protect the museum from fire. He says if Chuck doesn't fix it, they can't control the temperature or humidity, and some of the pieces are extremely sensitive. Agent Superman, still literally hanging by a thread, says, "So am I, Chuck." So I presume Chuck has an invisible earpiece. Casey and Sarah are both above the vault, and Casey's prepared to blow the doors if he needs to, but Sarah says that'll kill Agent Superman, since he's hanging right on the other side of the door. British curator hovers over Chuck's shoulder, until Chuck says he could use a little breathing room. Hannah shows up right then, and says he promised she could ride shotgun and she saw the Nerd Herder car out front. Casey tells Chuck to get rid of her, and Sarah adds that Agent Superman has only one minute of oxygen left, so Chuck thinks fast and asks Hannah if she's ever "restarted a server from the backup database." Hannah's adorable response: "Oh, now you're just insulting me." She gets to work on that, and Chuck tells her something else about a script and a server. He keeps giving her instructions and she works quickly while he works on the computer to her, but as the room's oxygen hits 8 percent, Agent Superman tells Casey to blow the hatch. They set up the explosive device and leave the room as oxygen hits 4 percent. Casey says, "Fire in the hole," and Chuck shouts, "No, don't!" But, see, he's in a room with Hannah and the stuffy curator, who both look at him like, "WTF?" He adds, "Don't, computer. I'm just talking to the computer because sometimes I feel like it helps." Chuck tells Hannah to reboot on the count of three and they both do. The doors open, and Chuck gets so excited, he and Hannah hug. The curator is happy with their work, and can't thank them enough. Casey and Sarah pull Agent Superman out of the vault. The curator offers Chuck and Hannah a job working there tomorrow night, when they're unveiling the Mask of Alexander, to make sure it goes off without a hitch. He hesitates, until Agent Superman tells him they can steal the mask then, so he takes the job with his new partner, Hannah. Opening credits.
Buy More. It's night. So night that it's closed. Ellie knocks ten times on the door, and Morgan counts them and then unlocks and lets her in. He congratulates her on the knock, and she seems genuinely excited about it. She asks if Chuck's here, and Morgan says he's slinking around somewhere. She asks why Chuck's here so late, and Morgan says he's into something weird here. They follow Chuck into the display room, where they plan to... intervene. They find him making out with Hannah. Ellie's ecstatic. They close the door, and she says it's such a relief that he has a secret girlfriend, which means he's not wallowing in self-pity and playing video games. But wait, how does this explain Awesome being in on it? Or knowing about Paris? Or forbidding her to go because of strings? Huh, Ellie? Huh? Morgan, obviously upset (though not obvious enough for Ellie to notice): "Such a relief."
Castle. Sarah and Agent Superman work and look at each other as Sarah chews her swizzle stick. Casey heads out and asks if they're coming. They both pretend they're busy and then give each other longing looks some more after Casey's gone. Chuck and Hannah are still making out on the Buy More couch. Morgan's in the Buy More, depressed. Agent Superman gets up and walks around the table to give Sarah a backrub. Chuck and Hannah stop kissing and look at each other and smile. Morgan looks at the room he knows they're in and then leaves. Sarah tells Agent Superman that they both know how dangerous this is, and he tells her to relax; he's the safest guy in the world. Cut to that room The Mummy talked to the disembodied voices in in Chuck Versus the Predator. Which was Fulcrum, we thought, right? But this means it's actually the Ring, and was even way back then? Interesting. Anyway, Vasillis walks in and a bright light shines on him. Five figures sit under a white ring (that actually seems to be moving, weirdly) on a dark blue wall. They ask if he's sure it was him. Vasillis says, "I'd never mistake Daniel Shaw." He asks what they're going to do to him, and the voice tells him, "Same thing I'm going to do to you." Someone shoots him dead, and then we zoom out on the Ring Tribal Council. You know, because they vote on who to eliminate. Okay, okay, I don't know if they actually vote, but what else are we going to call it?
week: Olympics. NBC was like, "Chuck will be back after the Olympics. Take a look," and then showed us a really stupid preview for a really stupid show that I refuse to mention now that they faked me out like that. Can't wait for the Olympics to end and Chuck to return. Does that make me a nerd?
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Has the show stretched the Chuck/Sarah storyline to the breaking point?
DeAnn, a writer and editor in Portland, Oregon, thinks it's okay to make out with a hottie while you wait for things to work out with your true love. You can contact her at twopmodmars@gmail.com.