Farmer Franco's Prize Cow Daisy

S04E10

Alexei sends Agent Frost's best guys after Charles Carmichael, but she follows in secret and takes the bad-guy team out. Putting her into custody at Castle for awhile doesn't really prove very instructive, but once Alexei shows up -- thanks to a horny Jeffster mishap -- a few things become startlingly clear: Number one, he's crazy in love with her. Number two, she's willing to confess Chuck's true identity to save him... And then somehow they all get invited to the Awesomes' for Thanksgiving. It's dumb, but so fun -- and so weighted on our side of the Awesome/Jeffster divide -- that the insanity never lets up long enough to notice.

Meanwhile, Casey and Morgan -- all Die Hard adorable in his altogether -- get kidnapped trying to relax Alexei's hold on the Buy More and save Jeffster, whose stupid scheme this week involved selling stolen Black Friday merch on eBay. Regrettably, everybody lives. On the upside, Alexei's team is pretty sweet to watch and Morgan gets a lot of screentime.

Back at home, with Ellie thinking it's a non-spy situation and Awesome conscripted to lie about it, Sarah and Chuck have to deal with a suddenly family-friendly Alexei and an increasingly wilted-looking Agent Frost. Awesome gets Ellie out of there, and a quick standoff later Frost has told Alexei in no uncertain terms that she'll only return with him to the life of villainry if he promises to stay away from all of Chuck and Ellie's people. Because of love or something, Alexei does; because of love or something, Chuck finally trusts his mommy.

...Which is good news for our little emasculation storyline: The eagle-eyed forum posters who surmised that the Awesomes' laptopicon would help neurologist Ellie figure out her brother's Intersect problems are proven right. Downside, Awesome is pretty offended when Chuck's spy games once again affect his marriage and Ellie's safety. On the upside, Chuck is once again fully Intersected and ready to do whatever happens now... But without all that weird boy/girl stuff this story was created to solve. Now we just settle in with our Kleenex and wait for the big proposal, I suppose...

Watch the episode below, then discuss it in our forum. Then see some of our favorite Chuck guest-stars.

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So everybody's back in Cali, gender roles radicalized and reaffirmed, and now all Agent Carmichael can think about is locking that blonde she-male down with the perfect Intersectless proposal of that thing we call marriage, while Sister Ellie's in possession of a magical Roark 7 laptop just chock-full of something that will no doubt take us all the way back to status quo.

And yet! See the former nudge Alexei summoning his best girl Agent Frost née Bartowski and telling her to take Chuck out. For like the fifth time. Alexei's like, "So, two episodes ago we tied him to his girlfriend and then planted them in the center of a beautiful exploding bouquet of death and then... Something happened?" Frost is all, "Yeah, it's so crazy. We hate that guy! Ugh, why won't that guy die? Am I right!?" Alexei gives Frosty his three best killers, Pierre, Victor and Hercule, and asks her please to not fail in killing Chuck again. She says she won't, but she totally will, I bet. Mostly I just feel sorry for Alexei, because you can tell he takes this stuff way seriously. Poor thing blames himself.

Morgan and Chuck get their training gear montage going, and Morgan is all about how exciting it is to be training for hand-to-hand, the old mano a mano, and Chuck of course can't help but remind us all that he had six whole months of training in Prague before he could call himself a fake pretend spy. Morgan calls his Intersectless buddy "Chuck unplugged," which Chuck kind of likes the sound of, even though it is tainted by feelings of castration.

Morgan is similarly stressed out about Black Friday, which is I think today, because he's heard tell of managers in big box stores getting murdered and trampled and such. They head inside to their bootcamp class, and it turns out that they're actually doing "Strip Kick," which is a combo of Krav Maga and poledancing. I don't know if that's a real thing but if it is, I might just marry a lady after all. A Strip Kicker will make an honest man of you whether you like it or motherfucking otherwise. "All right ladies, let's grab a pole and make that booty clap!" Just like grandma used to say. That, along with "Home again, home again, jiggity-jog," were her two favorite sayings.

There is cuteness aplenty as Morgan and Chuck work the pole, kicking around each other's heads and posing all over the place like the cover of every Image comic book from the '90s. They discuss "El Proposalito," as Morgan insists on calling it, but Chuck doesn't want to talk about it due to how Morgan cannot be trusted. He plays it off well, but you know that's what he's thinking. Well, that and how Colonel Casey can never ever know about the Strip Kicking, which thought shrivels their Roark 7s to a pair of 3s. On the other hand, think about John Casey on the pole. Do it. You have permission.

Heading home through the strip mall set that's always so reminiscent of 7th Heaven, Chuck sees a ring store or whatever, Blood Diamonds & Beyond, and I think he decides to propose to Sarah right there, amid talk of their late Thanksgiving with the Awesomes. Let's all say what we're thankful for; I'll go first: The Awesomes. Then Alexei's Order of Taraka guys show up and Chuck uses his poledancing skills for a second before Sarah has to take 'em all down. They get in over their heads with Pierre and Hercule and the other one, but then Mom shows up and guns them all down, because what is a Frost story if she's not constantly doing bad things followed by good things, and then she looks right in the camera and winks and flexes one giant Michelle Obama arm and goes, "Come with me if you want to live."

Then she impregnates somebody with future Shirley Manson DNA, and the circle of life continues. Just kidding, here's the plan: Take Mom into custody at Castle immediately, and yell at her. That sounds like it will work this time, right? Chuck keeps yelling at her about how she is untrustworthy, always shooting him or blowing up his childhood home or flashing mean things at his brain things. Walker asks Chuck to stop crying and pissing and get out of the interrogation room, and then he's just out there yelling at nobody about his hurt feelings some more. Sarah locks him out of there and he dissolves into a puddle of Adam Brody's tears.

The most fascinating part about Frost is how she acts totally reasonable all the time even though nothing she does ever makes any sense whatsoever. This is actually a learning oppo because, see, normally when you're an actor you know what your deal is. "In this scene, Casey's Big Question is Solve the problem, and his Little Question is, How come Jeffster, ever." But for Frost to work, they can't tell Linda Hamilton anything about her actual agenda. Every scene she's good or bad, depending on what we're doing to Chuck's poor little mind. As an actor that's gotta be some bullshit, but it is nice for us the viewers because you have to believe her every time -- which in turn leads into why this whole Frost/Intersect storyline went down the way it did.

Big Mike calls Little Morgan various "you are my son" sorts of names and they share in the proud history of their retail management legacy. The big item this Black Friday is the Bondesen 7G Smartphone. Well, that and delicious sandwiches, but that's sort of a given that we're going to be eating delicious sandwiches constantly on this show. Morgan's locking up a bit later when this gorgeous lady shows up outside the doors begging to come in and buy one of these phones and/or sandwiches. She makes it pretty clear that she is not above a handjob or two, which combined with how she's clearly a spy makes it clear that she is a spy. Luckily Morgan's taken and has this sandwich he needs to eat, so he tells the lady to come back tomorrow.

By Jacob Clifton

Jeffster though, those little assholes, are also hiding in the store because they are going to steal a bunch of these phones -- actually funny, if snide: "Smartphones that can also send and receive calls?" -- and sell them on the eBay, so they're bedding down in a room chock full of phones and sandwiches and Jeffster paraphernalia.

Since they had to cancel Thanksgiving until Friday, Awesome brings Ellie some carrots -- "Rich in vitamin A and good for retinal development!" -- and she informs him of her progress with the mysterious laptop icon. It's all about MRI-looking brain things. "He was using the brain to store data, but he was approaching it from an engineer's perspective, and human memory works differently than a computer." Ellie, of course, whipped this issue in under two days and, unbeknownst to her, can now fix Chuck's little starter problem.

Which means that whatever cathected thing is going on in Chuck's head that involves his relationship with Sarah and his relationship with Frost is going to get solved in this episode, so it's those things we have to watch out for. Part one was him realizing that he was having really sort of inappropriate emasculation issues that the Intersect was solving for him but have now cropped up again. Part two was Sarah realizing that she doesn't need him to be Bryce Larkin in order to see him as a man, basically. So part three is going to be zapping Mom somehow so that she'll stop being this dark goddess figure and go back to being a regular lady, which is what you do when you outgrow needing your parents to be more than human. Because if she's a regular lady, then Sarah is a regular lady, too, regardless of her powers, and they can get married after all.

By Jacob Clifton

And the reason Ellie is the key is because she is married to Superman and is also Superman and thus has figured all this shit out without ever getting involved in spycraft at all: Just by being awesome. Or I guess Awesome, in this case. And because as much as we talk about Sarah/Chuck being sometimes a little too close to two-halves of a person, Chuck spent most of his life feeling just as overpowered by his sister, and most of this show figuring out how to be twins with her instead of little brother/big sister with her. The password clue is: "1 or 11." And even though Ellie's totally quoted the answer at Chuck before, she's not thinking of it now. Awesome brings up taking the laptop to Chuck, but she's still convinced he's out of the life for good and wants to protect him from getting pulled back in. Stalemate.

While Frost explains how she had to use the assassins to kill her son but then had to shoot the assassins to save her son, and that she disabled the Intersect to keep him from following down the rabbit hole of her loyalties and associations, and all this stuff, Chuck is calling Sarah on the phone every five seconds to bitch and bitch and bitch about his mother and try to derail the interrogation. Casey eventually shuts him down, but honestly he needs a neck-pinch for this part because he's not going to calm down. He has no reason to do so, honestly. And in any case, the new status quo is that once Alexei figures out that his men are dead, he's going to be coming straight for Castle to retrieve Frost, and that is going to get scary. In fact, already has.

Whichever one of those awful nerds brings the phone to the obvious killer lady in return for shaving his back. The other one yells at him about this, but then she pokes both of them with a syringe that makes them shut the fuck up. Her team floods into the Buy More and they start to set up for whatever assault is going to happen to get Frost back. Morgan, who is giving himself a bit of a footbath in preparation for Friday, sees this shit go down and immediately calls Chuck. Who is too busy douching it up to really pay attention until Morgan explains that Alexei is totally in the store with a bunch of guns and fantastic henches.

Casey makes all these amazing anti aircraft-looking guns come out of the ceiling of the Buy More and it's totally rad for a second, but then Alexei shuts all of that down too, because he's the best. So now they're stuck in Castle with Frost, Jeffster is hopefully being tortured to death, and Morgan is running around in a wifebeater looking very yippie-ki-yay, if I do say so myself.

By Jacob Clifton

"This is not a negotiation. Give me Frost or I'll kill you all, starting with the fat man and the Indian." I say let him prove it and we'll go from there. Casey ascertains that he can climb through the walls and patch into some kind of override system if they just stall Alexei long enough. And of course assuming that Agent Frost doesn't do some other fucked-up thing she's had planned from the beginning of the episode, because she loves that sort of thing usually. Well, it's kind of both: Turns out Alexei is in love with Frost. Like a big crazy Lex Luthor kind of love with her that makes him a bit of a pussycat in the grandest sense and more than a little like a blonde she-male in the specific.

Frost is like, "Yeah, he's sort of off the rez and is totally interested in taking on the CIA and this ridiculous Agency HQ and starting WWIII because of how he's in love with me?" They look askance at her, because does that mean she's evil or what, and she's like, "I could easily assuage that particular worry, but I'd rather stand around looking like the inside of my head is 100% that Johnny Cash cover of 'Hurt.'"

Alexei: "Are they treating you all right? Did they feed you? Was it good? You tell them they'd better continue treating you well or I'll make life very uncomfortable for them very soon... I'm not leaving here without you, my love!" That was the first but not the last time in this episode that my brother Lyle was like, "This is actually what this show is like?" Sometimes, buddy. Sometimes it is.

Chuck jumps to assumptions about how Frost left Steve for Alexei Volkoff and whatever, she's his supervillainess moll, and finally -- this is where you start to see it forming -- she literally goes, "Sarah, explain to him." (This again with the shared knowledge of the world that's denied to our hero; the reason it's a classic noir theme is because it's a classic boy theme, because boys actually think this way. Like there's a joke they're not in on, and the rest of us are. And they're not wrong.) So Sarah's like, "The world's biggest psychopath falls in love with you, and you're undercover with him?" Chuck gets it, with little prompting: That would make you a serious intelligence asset.

Sarah wonders why Frosty didn't just take Alexei out years ago, if that's all it is, but her mission is to take down the whole network, which is still a possibility apparently, if Castle turns her over to him. Or else they're handing over an enemy agent to her boss/BF with even more CIA secrets than usual. But this is the important bit, and you could miss it entirely if you weren't looking for it: "Chuck, going undercover for so long and staying loyal is an extremely hard thing to do as a spy, I mean... I got lucky. I was assigned to you. Your mom got Volkoff."

Since Alexei doesn't know that Chuck is Frost's son yet, and that Chuck would not let her get hurt no matter how confusing and hurtful she is, they can totally play hardball with her safety and scare him to death. So while they're worrying about that, Casey and Morgan run into each other in the ductwork and do some explaining of everything so far. Morgan is hiding or maybe trying to save Jeffster (why?) and Casey is looking for the override so they can kill all the bad guys with computer guns, and Morgan gets a gun again, points it at his head again, Casey gets to hiss muzzle! again. Only this time, Morgan's wearing workout gear, making it all fabulous again. Turns out he's a guy, under all those cheap suits.

Carmichael threatens Frost with "very bad things" and Volkoff's amazing reply is to wheel out a giant beeping Sputnik-looking thermite bomb that is terrifying and will apparently raise the temperature to 4000 Fahrenheit degrees: "Metal will boil. I'm gonna drop it down the elevator shaft, and it will incinerate every single one of you, including my beloved Frost." Alexei has won the threatening game for sure.

Morgan steps on a bunch of tacks and gets caught by bad guys, but then Casey saves him, and shoves Morgan into a closet with the stolen phones, which takes his mind off things, but then they take Casey, so we went from two good guys to no good guys. Chuck and Walker bring out Frost and apologize for starting shit, and then Alexei makes the sensible call of pointing a gun at Chuck's head, so Frost has to admit finally that Chuck is her son. Alexei does this sort of triple-take thing that was fairly cute as performed by the ensemble, but I can't figure out a way to describe it that's funny and not annoying, so let's move on.

Hugs for Frost, kiss on the lips for Chuck -- hey, smoke 'em if you got 'em -- and suddenly Alexei's playing Mom's Boyfriend and inviting himself to Thanksgiving at the Awesomes'. (Which is the second time my brother was like, "Seriously? This isn't a dream episode? I'm not high right now? This is happening?" Sometimes, kid.) Alexei does this whole "I can't have a relationship with your kids?" thing and she's like, "My kids work for the CIA. It's more about how you are a literal supervillain and less about whether you're boyfriend material."

But they've been working together for 20 years, right? And she never once gave it up? (To Timothy Dalton? Who is at least as hot at the age of eighty-seven as he was when he was forty?) And still she keeps him on the hook? (Frost indeed!) That is some lore right there. That's even better than being a spy. Do all the spy shit in the world, sure thing, but dicking around with Lex Luthor's brain for twenty whole years? That's power, my friends. That is worth learning more about. Is there a Prague training program for that shit? Because if so, my whole plan to marry Julian Assange just got about five steps shorter.

By Jacob Clifton

Heading into Ellie's house they're like, "Soooo we just brought a psychotic killer back to our pregnant sister's house, on the one hand. On the other hand, turns out Harvey Dent over here is smiley-face right now, so let's just remind him that Ellie and Awesome are civilians and shouldn't have to be involved in our whole spy v. spy thing." Alexei's like, "Totes McGoats, let's have some Latesgiving!"

In all the excitement you sort of miss out on the moment of Ellie and Awesome welcoming Mom into their house. I mean, it's there, but I was all pre-crying and then it was just like, "Hey, want some Chardonnay?" And then -- Stepfather-type threats from Alexei about how dinner better go fucking perfect or he's going to kill everybody -- we fast-forward to later. Which is a dooze. Short conversation about how Ellie wants to know about Frost's history since she disappeared, and he tells a shorthand lie that is also essentially the truth: "In our business, sometimes good people get confused for bad, and the bad for good. But fortunately, being your mother's handler, I was able to help convince the CIA that she is good. And that's why your mother is free to go now."

Even worse, Awesome has to pretend to get a code-red call from the hospital to get him and Ellie out of there, which means like five lies, which makes him most uncomfortable of all. Awesome lying to Ellie is just about the saddest idea, isn't it? I don't even like to think about it.

So the second the civs are gone everybody pulls guns on everybody else, and Frost pulls on Sarah, so Chuck starts whining, and but really she's just trying to talk Alexei down. "Alexei, we've had our dinner. You've met the family. We're leaving." Alexei, and you can almost find your way to his logic, thinks it's setting a bad example to make threats and not follow through on them. So then he's going to kill Chuck again, which is one way to teach a lesson to a person, but Frost pulls on him and manages to give the perfect speech combining pissed girlfriend, scary spy, guilt trip travel agent, and all-around awesome person:

"This is exactly why I didn't tell you about my family. You don't know how to love someone, you only know how to control them. But you should know that I could never love a man who would do anything to hurt my son. So drop it. Alexei, you know that I am loyal to you, but I will not return with you until you promise me that my family and their friends will remain safe. And if they don't... I will end you."

Just when you think she's gonna zig. Over the sound of Alexei's evil boner and his many henches loading up, Mom apologizes one more time for how she's always doing this shit, and Chuck finally trusts her, because he finally actually saw her. She is in the impossible position she says she is in, and the only reason for it is that Alexei is a bad guy and Chuck is not. So he forgives his mother and she actually smiles and takes off. (Which, he could have just started flashing right then and it would have worked the same, but I like the way the laptop thing plays out.)

Just as Volkoff's team is getting the bounce order and packing up, Morgan comes running into the room shirtless and akimbo, with his gun taped to his back, and then hilariously flails about trying to grab the gun and do something amazing, but finally he just simmers down and chills out and surrenders to them again. Of course, it doesn't matter, because Alexei already called off the whole thing and got Frost back, but it's gorgeous. And then they put Jeffster back in the closet with their stolen phones and they are crushed beneath the pile of phones and guts everywhere and they never come back.

By Jacob Clifton

Chuck hangs with Sarah at the fountain and admits he maybe should have tried being reasonable with Frost instead of being so pissy, and they talk about how she's never coming back until Volkoff's neutralized, and Sarah's like, "Literally she is the only thing keeping us safe right now." Which is a nice thought, isn't it? Like Alexei became momentary Bad Dad in this episode, and instead of being Hamlet's mom, Frost turned out to be the Dark Knight. You know? "I'm just going to keep on being a bad guy, again, so you can live to be a good guy. For the twentieth year in a row." That Frost was the Leftovers all along. But just when you're feeling warm about that, up comes Devon with the saddest hurtest face.

"Not only are you spying again, but you bring it back to our apartment? I had to lie to Ellie about the hospital, and I hate lying." He doesn't even listen to Chuck's explanation -- which I would imagine once you've heard one Agent Frost story you're like, "Nope, don't care, makes my head hurt, she's good she's bad, come with me if you wanna live, I will just assume it worked out in the end" -- and tells him to stop fucking up and bringing spy things around Ellie and their Awesome baby. For real this time. And also, can I remind you that Ellie doesn't want spy stuff around Chuck either, which is sort of her role at this point but still makes basic sense, and then Devon hands him the Roark 7. Like I guess Ellie won't notice that it's gone.

By Jacob Clifton

The second Devon mentions brainscans, everybody lights up from the inside, and with Awesome still trying to make it clear that if Chuck doesn't get back the division of church and state that once characterized this show, he is going to make that unacceptably heartwrenching angry-sad face forever, Chuck has snagged the laptop and run with it to Castle. Where he solves the last clue -- "Aces, Chuck." -- and then flashes and finally Agent Charles Carmichael knows Kung Fu. Again.

Watch the episode below, then discuss it in our forum. Then see some of our favorite Chuck guest-stars.