Chuck opens after the long break to Devon working out his body while Ellie works out her mouth, berating him for keeping Chuck’s “secret girlfriend” a secret and herself for being so worked up over it. Ellie goes to Chuck’s apartment and tells him how she feels about this through the bathroom door, only it’s not Chuck in the shower. Ha ha! Good one — you wish it was Morgan. Hannah excuses herself to get dressed and Ellie and Chuck (who showed up in the midst of the embarrassment) fall all over themselves apologizing to each other.
Shaw and Sarah are eating at an outdoor cafe and she’s trying to put a stop to their relationship before it gets serious, citing the extensive trouble she’s gotten into from mixing work and pleasure. Their target arrives, is tranquilized and captured. Chuck arrives in Castle with donuts; Rafe Gruber is introduced and Chuck flashes his dossier. Chuck is to assume his position and find out who the target of Rafe’s hit is supposed to be. He holds Casey off from interrogating Gruber with a handheld torch by protesting that he can absorb the role, and gets the chance to prove it: a call on Gruber’s phone. A suddenly icy fake voice and demeanor are rewarded with the location of Gruber’s rendezvous with the customer.
Buy More staff meeting: Jeff and Lester marvel at Chuck’s ability to get women. Chuck and Hannah fawn over each other. Big Mike prepares them all to sell Crock-Pots. Wait, what? Oh, Chuck has to invite Hannah over for dinner.
At Castle Sarah and Shaw secure the prisoner and depart on their mission with the dinner deadline hanging over their heads… The mobsters are in a bar (I think they were mobsters, but I was distracted – the Number Two is played by Louis Lombardi!). Sarah and Shaw chat while listening from the van: Sarah hardly remembers who the real Sarah is anymore. Waaah. Inside the head mobster fights a nagging memory, then remembers where he saw Casey before, a sniper gig in Central America some years previous. Casey’s made and Chuck’s cover is in danger. Chuck reaches out and takes the mobster’s drawn gun and busts Casey across the face with it. As he picks himself up, Chuck checks the load and says coldly, “If he’s a cop, I’ll kill him myself.”
Casey’s taped to a chair when we return from the commercial break. Chuck falters slightly now, searching for some means to avoid shooting him, and manages to stall by digging into Casey’s mouth with the mob boss’ torture tools. Just before the cavalry bursts in he holds up a bloody molar and Casey has trouble hiding his admiration. Everyone is under riot troops in a moment, and Chuck is under Sarah. She reminds him he has to be Rafe Gruber, and this apparently inspires Agent Bartowski. He flashes and fights off every single SWAT member, getting the mobsters out and reinforcing his cover. Expresses pride in his work. He’s able to return to Castle after parting company with the mobsters until things cool down just a bit and Casey offers congratulation. Then Chuck asks him about the persona the mobster remembered and the old Casey is back, warning him to mind his own business.
The trio at Buy More (Mike, Jeff and Lester) realize and state the obvious about Chuck and Sarah while slicing vegetables around the Crock-Pot display. Wait, what? Oh — they’re crying because of the onions.
Because of the mission, Chuck was unable to prepare dinner. Well, uh, yeah… but all is not lost. Sarah and Shaw sneaked back into his place and sets up a Chuck-loving smorgasbord. While emotions at dinner begin to get sloppy, Rafe picks the lock of his handcuffs with the clip off a Buy More giveaway pen.
At the Buy More, the next morning, Chuck is distracted and Hannah answers the Rafe phone and gives away his location to the mobsters. He must rush out the back, improvising a costume, just in time to intercept them. In return for saving their bacon they have tracked down for him the person he’s supposed to kill. They also give him a gift — a gold watch. Sadly, they extravagantly demolish his old one. It’s the communicator watch. Uh-oh, no backup. Meanwhile Sarah and Shaw are at his hotel room discussing her difficulty watching Chuck become a spy. The point of view of the discussion moves from the hotel room to the scope of the sniper weapon the mobsters have prepared for Chuck. He can’t believe what he is hearing as Sarah tells Shaw of her frustration about this, and about not having told anyone her real name in three years. She tells him her real name, though, and he kisses her. Now Chuck is so distraught the line between Chuck and Rafe blurs. He tells the mobsters the guy’s got his girl. The mask he wears is shocked, hurt, and, as his face fades to the commercial, uncharacteristically …angry.
Chuck pulls himself together just enough to find out the Ring hired him to hit Shaw because they had recently found out he was not really dead. (Well so are a lot of other people — how is that a reason?) At the same time, Casey breaks in to tell Shaw Rafe has escaped, and he’s going to GPS-track Gruber’s phone, since he’ll undoubtedly try to find Chuck. Chuck tells the mobsters he’s going to look Shaw in the eye to kill him and heads to Shaw’s hotel. They enthusiastically promise to cover his back with the sniper rifle. Chuck bursts in and tries to communicate the real reason for his visit: no one messes with Rafe Gruber or takes his girl, but forgets the line between Rafe and Chuck is quite blurry right now. Chuck starts a fight while Shaw still doesn’t understand but joins right into. This allows Gruber, who did in fact track his own cell phone’s location after escaping, to show up and kill both the mobsters. Unable to get a sight on the rolling fighters with the sniper rifle, he goes over to the apartment as well. That portion of the fight is a short one that ends with Chuck and Shaw beaten down and Sarah under the gun. Bang! She falls to the carpet.
Casey also tracked the phone and is one of the five people in the world who can take the long-distance shot with the sniper rifle. Heck, that ability almost got him killed fifteen minutes ago! Now a well-placed commercial for us to catch our breath and be glad it wasn’t Sarah who took the bullet! Not long enough, the writers think, for us to wonder — how did we hear the bang of a sniper rifle inside the hotel room from half a mile away???
Chuck comes to Ellie’s door – Ellie who thinks she knows what it’s about, but doesn’t, and tells him things are moving too fast with Hannah because he still has feelings for Sarah and therefore feels guilty. Clueless like Yoda. Chuck breaks up with Hannah and it hurts both of them even more because he can’t explain why. Unfortunately Sarah seems to be fully feelings-involved with Shaw at this point as Chuck walks down the street, dejected. Because of his love life, or because Edgar is dead again, we do not know for sure.
