First things first: a thirty-second recap of the end of last season, where Chuck spontaneously flashed martial arts abilities from the new Intersect in his head and took out a group of bad guys. “I know kung fu.” Fade to black.
Six months later. Prague. A hood is pulled off Chuck’s head. A group of Russians led by “Yuri” has him captive in a dark, shabby room. They have a briefcase that belongs to his boss, Chuck says, and politely asks for it back — “or else”. “Or else what?” the lead Russian sneers, pulling his weapon. Chuck flashes kung fu and turns the tables. Ignoring an order from the general in his earpiece to shoot Yuri, he beats down the Russians, grabs the case and runs. Outside, the general tells him to use an electrical wire as a zip line to another building as his escape chopper is too far out. Vertigo prevents him from completing his escape as he tries to flash the zip line knowledge (think Peter Parker trying to use his web) but fails, and the bad guys surround him. The general wraps up the simulation and Chuck is fired. “You don’t know what I said no to to be here!” he yells as he’s tranquilized.
The camera pops back to “six months earlier” where Chuck finds out he’s going to spy school. When he tells Sarah, though, she asks him to run away with her to Prague and be normal. Apparently he doesn’t, because Chuck tries to call her later but she’s on another assignment. She tosses her cell phone into the swimming pool where it shorts out.
Back in the present, Chuck goes from bed to couch, stopping only to pick up a giant plastic barrel of cheese balls in the kitchen. Over the course of a couple of weeks the only thing that changes is that his beard grows out. He barely comes to himself enough to recognize Morgan, who’s stopped by for a visit. Ellie drags him back to consciousness but – alas! – the barrel of cheese balls is empty. Off to Buy More to reload, still in his bathrobe. With the new beard, a pair of sunglasses is all he needs to complete his disguise and not even Jeff recognizes him. Emmett captures him and when Chuck reveals his identity, ridicules him in front of the rest of the Buy More crew. Chuck barely manages to restrain himself from killing Emmett with his bare hands, flashing various methods of assassination and stifling them in turn while Emmett laughs at “how the mighty have fallen”. After this humiliation, though, Chuck moves quickly when he learns from Jeff and Lester that Sarah is still in the area. Sadly, the only one at the yogurt store is Casey, who is …not helpful. Chuck begs Casey to let him prove to the general he can still be useful. Casey asks what happened between Chuck and Sarah. “Something I need to fix” is all Chuck says — he’s caught a glimpse of where Casey and Sarah are going on their next assignment. We next see him shaved, in his Nerd Herd regalia, bluffing his way into the restaurant where Casey and Sarah are staging an undercover operation. The two meet to romantic music and Chuck says he’s just there for backup. Sarah’s mark walks in and she says, “Kiss me.” He kisses her and she slaps him to defuse the arms dealer they’re using as bait for a courier. “He’s just my ex,” she explains. “He’s having some trouble letting go.”
In the back of the restaurant, he apologizes to Casey and Sarah, but they shut him out. He flashes on the name of the courier they’re trying to meet, one Javier Cruz, and his protests that the “courier” is an assassin are unheard. Chuck accidentally flashes kung fu as he tries to get back into the club and knocks a musician unconscious in the alley. He doesn’t know the disguised troubador is Cruz, and takes his guitar and suit to use as a disguise of his own to get back into the club. He flashes the ability to play guitar from the Intersect and wows the crowd. The assassin comes to outside and sneaks in to complete his assignment. Chuck sees the assassin without his disguise, flashes, and barely prevents the death of Sarah and/or the mark, but the assassin gets away and Chuck has only made his situation worse. And then it gets worse still, as the assassin finds his Nerd Herd identification outside the club.
Back on the couch at home, Chuck confides to Awesome that he was fired; Devon asks, “Do they just let you leave like that?” Chuck laughs it off but becomes paranoid, and when Morgan comes by again to try to encourage him, he tells him without telling him what a loser he is and what a chance he’s blown. “Amateur hour,” Morgan says. He was fired from Benihana, and the love of his life ran off with a prep chef. Now he’s living (how he gets in and out is not explained?!?) at the Buy More. Emmett sees them on the surveillance system and says, “I’ll let the authorities handle them tomorrow.” Sarah is also watching them, from the camera feeds in Castle. Casey chides her for how she treated Chuck and tells her to put him out of his misery.
The camera switches back to Buy More, as Emmett is leaving for the night. He sees someone walking around back of the store and accosts — the assassin. Unimpressed by Emmett’s mace, Cruz puts a bullet through Emmett’s right eyeball. Inside, Chuck and Morgan are leaving Buy More (which apparently never locks its doors!) and Sarah walks in. Their goodbye is interrupted by Cruz, now with henchmen, who knock Chuck out and spirit him and Sarah off to a remote Mexican location. There he tells Chuck he works for “the Ring,” and begins to interrogate Chuck. Hits him pretty hard, too — he’s pretty mad about getting clocked in that alley. Chuck travels back through semi-consciousness to finish the memory segment that was interrupted earlier, at the train station where he tells Sarah he isn’t running off with her. “Nothing is real,” she warns him as he tries to tell her how great it’s going to be. “This, this is real,” she says, taking his hand tenderly. He apologizes. “I can’t,” he repeats as reality flows back around him. “I can’t. I’m sorry,” he whispers.
Casey, back at Castle, takes another look for Sarah on the surveillance cameras, and spots Emmett’s body. Never can I recall ever seeing Adam Baldwin’s character come so close to an emotional moment as he snaps at a CIA operative who appeared out of nowhere to get a real-time satellite trace “on every car that’s been in that parking lot for the last six hours,” and to get the chopper. “On whose authority?” the suit asks. “On mine,” Casey nearly snarls, as he grabs, of all things, a minigun. “The Colonel.” I also do not remember him ever pulling rank on someone; we’re reminded that Colonel is, in fact, a pretty high rank in the military.
Chuck, back at el rancho diablo, is trying in vain to make himself flash. Sarah is able to make herself heard through the wall and encourages Chuck to quiet his emotions so he can flash. The door rattles and the assassin comes in. When Cruz tells him how he’s going to interrogate him and then Sarah, Chuck flashes and knocks Cruz out with one punch. Once outside, he and Sarah take on the rest of the bad guys, giving Chuck the opportunity to prove his zip line skills. They are seriously outnumbered and outgunned, until Casey shows up with the helicopter and minigun, and hoses lead in every direction. Miraculously he does not kill Chuck and Sarah while trying to rescue them!
The general reactivates Operation Bartowski and assigns Casey and Sarah to work with him to bring down the Ring. Although less than enthused, they go to work – and as Chuck and Casey head back to the Buy More, the general asks Sarah to help Chuck learn to keep his emotions in check. Morgan comes back to Buy More too, thanks to Casey (at Chuck’s request). Casey made up a story about Emmett taking a job with Buy More’s competitor in Alaska so no one misses him. Maybe that’s a poor choice of words…
Chuck and Morgan return to Chuck’s home, to discover that Ellie and Awesome are moving across the courtyard to a newly-vacated apartment across the courtyard (although I’m darned if I can remember anyone being there the first two seasons!), so Morgan will move in with Chuck. Chuck and Sarah talk, and he explains how bad he wanted to make a difference, and had to try to make the spy thing work. She, faced with the inability to cultivate her true feelings for him that his own feelings have caused, gently but firmly starts him on the path to enlightenment: “You’re a spy now – you have to keep your feelings to yourself.” As he contemplates this, Casey pulls him out of the courtyard to begin his “training”. A few moments later, the two dance in a circle with boxing gloves on. Chuck, breathing deeply, flashes on boxing maneuvers, and as he launches himself at Casey, the camera freezes and goes black with the ring of a boxing bell.
