Chuck – Recap & Review – Chuck Vs. The Anniversary

photo: nbc

Chuck
Chuck Vs. The Anniversary

Original Air Date: Sep 20, 2010

Jeff L – Staff Writer
JeffL@thetwocentscorp.com

Welcome back, mother Chuckers. It’s been a long four months of hiatus without our friends from the Spy More. Please tell your friends to watch Chuck live as often as possible this season (Mondays, 8/7 central on NBC) because the Peacock Network still hasn’t picked up the option for the back nine episodes and our friends from Buymoria are living in fear of cancellation.

We open in Chuck’s bedroom circa 1984 where Chuck’s Tron poster looks a little less vintage. Sarah Conner Bartowski tells our young hero a bedtime story about the “frost queen.” At the end of the story, Chuck asks his mom if she’s going away again. She is, but like the frost queen in the story she promises to return. A promise we know she wasn’t able to keep. Flash forward to 2010, Chuck is in the underground Bartowski bunker going through his late father’s files — searching for info on his missing mom. Chuck confides in the one person he knows can help him in his secret mission: Morgan. Back at their apartment, Sarah is preparing for a mission to Russia with Casey. While she’s gone, Chuck and Morgan should have plenty of time (four months!?) to search for his mother. So while we didn’t get to see Chuck and Sarah over the summer, we can empathize because Chuck didn’t get to see Sarah for all that time either. Nothing much could possibly have happened in Buymoria in the meantime. We’ll see how wrong that statement is later on.

Morgan and Chuck make their way all over the entire globe, we follow their Nerd Herd logo across the map on their Family Circus-esque unrelenting (almost Terminator-like) quest to find Sarah Conner. Unfortunately, their trek takes them right back to California where they started. The former spies are at journey’s end in an abandoned facility of some sort. Chuck plugs some codes into a secret wall hoping, against hope, to reveal his mother’s whereabouts, but alas the compartment is empty. All they find is a menu for some Chinese restaurant. As the two men leave the facility, Morgan tries to discuss how two unemployed former spies can afford to go on a four-month long, globe spanning mission and we pan out to reveal a surveillance camera monitoring the facility. Who should be watching the surveillance feed? Momma Bartowski herself.

Outside, Chuck and Morgan are about to get in their car, when they are approached by an armed man. It turns out to be Bud from Repo Man only much older. He’s taking possession of their car, since they haven’t made a payment in four months. Why would he wait until Chuck and Morgan come home to take the car? Because then we couldn’t see brilliant stunt cast #1 of the evening. Morgan laments that the mission has put them in about $43,000 worth of debt and Bud tells them to “Get a job!” as he drives off in their ride.

On the other side of the world, Ivan Marco-Drago opens his fancy briefcase to reveal a device. Before he can activate the evil-looking machine, Casey and Sarah kick in the door, weapons drawn. They order him to put down the device, but he activates it instead setting off an EMP which takes down all electronics and power in the vicinity. Sarah clocks Drago (one punch, nicely done, Rocky). Casey grabs the device and they parachute off the building just as Drago’s henchmen arrive.

The next morning, Chuck awakes as Morgan is snapping iPhone photos as he sleeps. Morgan knows Chuck misses Sarah, so he wants to introduce the couple to the practice of “sexting“. Chuck brushes Morgan (and his baby oil!?) off, before heading out for the job interviews Ellie has set up for him. The interviews don’t go well, until Chuck reaches Vandelay Industries where’s his interview with Leon goes well, until Leon receives a phone call prompting him to quickly end the interview and have Chuck escorted from the building. Somebody doesn’t want Chuck to get a job.

On the bus home, Morgan and Chuck are out of ideas. The bus stops and Morgan beholds the answer to all their problems. The Buy More has been rebuilt from the ground up after last season’s explosion. The two former spies enter the shiny new store and walk around dazed by the wonders they behold. If you thought the store looked great, wait until you get a load of the new Nerd Herder: Greta. If Jeffster! were around fist-fights would surely ensue. Chuck heads back to the manager’s office to enquire about a job. He sees the back of Big Mike’s chair and tells whoever is facing away from him he’d like to ask about a job at the new Buy More. The chair spins around and guess who’s running the store? It’s General Grandma upgraded from guest star to series regular. She tells Chuck that he already has a job at the store and explains that the new Buy More is totally constructed for and run by the CIA and NSA.

Chuck tries to backtrack, telling General Grandma that after the death of their father, he’s promised his sister he won’t be a spy anymore. General Grandma is having none of it. She tells him that the President has made Chuck and the Intersect a priority. Meaning Chuck doesn’t have much of a choice. She explains that she’s been the one pulling strings behind the scenes to keep Chuck from getting another job. Downstairs in Castle, Casey and Sarah arrive home from their mission. Sarah calls Chuck and he tells her he’s upstairs in the Buy More and he’s just told General Grandma to take her job and shove it. Sarah asks how she responded and gets her answer as Grandma taps a button and Chuck is dropped through the floor of the Nerd Herd kiosk straight into Castle.

Chuck and Sarah exchange their “I missed you” kisses as Casey grunts nearby in disdain. Sarah explains that General Grandma wants Chuck to look at the EMP device they just secured and see if the Intersect flashes. He does, revealing the device was manufactured by Volkov Industries in Venezuela. Casey and Sarah must head to South America immediately, but not before Sarah tells Chuck she got the pictures he sent. Chuck tries to explain about it having been Morgan behind the lens, but Sarah says she thought it was cute. Upstairs, in the Spy More, Greta — tired of being hit on my Morgan, drops the little man down a trapdoor of his own into Castle. As Sarah and Casey leave, Chuck notices a logo on the Volkov Industries briefcase that matches the logo on the Chinese food menu he and Morgan found earlier. The two men head off to find the menu which was in Morgan’s car when it was repo’d.

Morgan and Chuck manage to retrieve the menu, barely escaping being shot by the Repo Man. They notice some odd menu items and Chuck flashes that it’s not a food menu at all, but a menu for ordering black market weapons. Why would Momma Bartowski have something like that? They call the phone number on the menu, posing as members of “The New Ring.” They are told they must come to Moscow in order to purchase any weapons from Volkov Industries. We see the globetrotting Nerd Herd logo heading to Moscow as Casey and Sarah’s plane flies toward Venezuela.

On their plane, Sarah tries to make conversation with Casey about long-distance relationships, but as usual, Casey doesn’t want to hear it. He heads to the bathroom, leaving Sarah alone. Taking advantage of her alone time. Sarah snaps several sexy photos to send to Chuck. In the cockpit, though is Ivan Marco-Drago the agent Sarah knocked out when they retrieved the EMP weapon. He orders the flight attendant to release the sleeping gas and re-route the plane to Moscow. We see on the map, Casey and Sarah’s hijacked plane landing in Moscow just as Chuck and Morgan’s Nerd Herd logo arrives.

Casey and Sarah awake tied to chairs in a frigid warehouse. Sarah wonders where they are and Casey responds “Desolation. Frostbite. Must be Russia.” Marco-Drago enters telling Casey “I must break you!” Casey doesn’t have time to respond with the appropriate “go for it,” when we cut to Chuck and Morgan arriving upstairs at Volkov Industries posing as members of the “New Ring.” The receptionist calls Marco-Drago away to deal with Chuck leaving only one guard on Casey and Sarah. She quickly disables him but drops her phone in the process so they can’t call General Grandma.

The best Sarah can do is try to text Chuck with her toes. She sends Chuck a picture with the caption “Need U” and Morgan, who’s holding Chuck’s phone things Sarah has finally caught on to the whole sexting craze. Chuck, meanwhile, flashes on the floorplan to the building and he and Morgan sneak off to the server room so Chuck can hack their computers for data on his mother. Morgan finds another EMP briefcase, but Chuck tells him not to play around with it.

Casey wonders if Chuck is getting their distress messages, but Sarah explains that Chuck thinks they’re sexting. Casey wonders what that even means. There’s some more Three’s Company back and forth between Morgan and Sarah before Chuck finally finds a file labled “Frost,” causing him to flashback to his mother’s story about the Frost Queen. He plugs in a drive to download the data as Morgan finally gets a message saying Sarah is in Volkov Industries and in trouble. Morgan tells Chuck their two former partners are in the building and in trouble. Chuck runs off to save them while his data continues downloading.

Margo-Drago returns telling Casey and Sarah he wishes he could just kill them, but they aren’t the two agents he’s been looking for. He’s actually after Morgan and Chuck who’ve alluded capture this long because they’ve flown under the radar and used public transportation for the last four months on the quest to find Chuck’s mom.

Agents surround Chuck and Morgan, Marco-Drago orders his men to kill Chuck and his partner and Sarah hears gunshots and screaming then silence over the open radio. “You obviously have no idea who I am,” says Chuck over the radio “You only sent 10 men to take care of me.” Marco-Drago, enraged orders his remaining men to find Chuck. They run off, but Chuck eludes them and drops down behind Casey and Sarah, quickly untying them. Casey asks what Chuck is doing in Moscow and Chuck responds “saving your lives.”

The spies run back to the computer room, where Chuck’s file is almost finished downloading. Chuck tells Sarah about his mother. They promise no more secrets and no lies between them as Marco-Drago comes over the loudspeaker. He informs the spies that the building is on automatic lockdown and they will not be able to escape. Their only means of escape is to use the EMP device, but that will delete all the data Chuck has been downloading. Chuck says he’s already lost his mother once and he can’t stand to lose Sarah (and Casey and Morgan) so he agrees to use the EMP. In the dark, the spies shoot their way out of the building. Outside, Sarah wonders where their getaway car might be stashed, but Morgan and Chuck nod toward the public bus that’s just pulled up across the street. Our four favorite spies ride the bus toward the airport as Chuck wishes Sarah a happy anniversary.

Back home Ellie’s pregnant. First the Big secret, then thewedding, and now a baby. How cliché.

Somewhere in the world, Marco-Drago is holding Mom Bartowski at gunpoint. He informs her that her family has been looking for her. She asks if Drago has told Volkov anything but he has not. “That’s good,” she says grabbing his gun, “very good.” She shoots the men leaving only Marco-Drago. He pleads for his life. “Please, I have a family?” “So do I,” replies Sarah Conner Bartowski, pulling the trigger.

Commentary
Some great stunt casting for the show’s first episode of the fall season. Olivia Munn FTW! What did you think of Harry Dean Stanton as the Repo Man? Dolph Lundgren as Marco-Drago? I even liked seeing Leon from Deadwood although I wouldn’t call that one stunt casting. Does anyone care about Ellie and Captain Awesomes’ little baby Awesome? Where’s Jeffster!? What’s up with Chuck’s mommy? Pleae leave your comments and questions below. I’ll be back next week with Chuck Vs. The Suitcase. Until then, I’ll sext ya later.