CHUCK Recap: Chuck vs. The Helicopter

Episode: “Chuck vs. The Helicopter”
Original Airdate: 10.01.07
GMMR Recapper: SB

Okay, I have a tiny confession to make. Two, actually. The first one is that yes, I was a few minutes late to Chuck this week because I went out to dinner. And if you read my Age of Love recaps, you know it was usually Mexican making me late. Not this time. This time, it was a pizza place in the suburbs that brings your drinks to you on a little electric train. I can’t help it! I’m weak! And it is, as Captain Awesome would say, AWESOME. But don’t worry, I sped the whole way home in a way that would make Casey proud.

Second confession? I really didn’t like Chuck as much last week as I wanted to. Don’t get me wrong, I liked it, but I thought the humor was possibly going to be too broad for me. And, to be fair, it is a little broader than what I’m used to, but as there weren’t any “Astro Diapers” scenes this time that made me cringe a little (and I know that was a big hit for a lot of people, and I respect your opinions, even if they’re totally wrong). Morgan was way more tolerable for me this time, funny even, and I LOVE John “he’ll always be Jayne to me” Casey as a sales clerk. What’s not to love?

So, as a quick plot recap, Chuck is supposed to see a doctor who will cure him and help extract the government secrets from his brain. And where else would this all go down but Buy More (d’uh where else would they be).  Chuck has a lot of secrets in his head, but none more important than what happened to Oceanic Flight 815.  I’m going to kidnap him just to get that info for myself.  Keeping Chuck’s identity is the only way to ensure his safety so the doctor only knows him as ‘Patient X’.  After accessing Chuck’s brain, the doctor works his magic and thinks he found a way to help Chuck. But then as fat would have it the doctor is killed when his car explodes via a cell-phone bomb.

John Casey and Sarah think that the other is responsible for the death of the doctor and in turn try to keep Chuck from having secret conversations with each other, which of course doesn’t work. Meanwhile, Chuck is training Casey to be a salesman at the Buy More, while Sarah, now his pretend girlfriend, sends him an IM to come secretly meet her at the Weinerlicious, where she now works (and has pre-teen boys drooling over her all day). Sarah and Casey spend the episode trying to convince Chuck that the other one is the bad guy which leads to Ellie’s “let’s meet Chuck’s new girlfriend dinner” to go horribly array when Casey shows up to crash the party.

The mind games continue as we try to figure out if was Sarah or Casey that killed the doctor. Who should Chuck trust?  Well it turns out that both are good options as we learn that the doctor did not in fact die but only pretended to so he could resurface as the bad guy running around shooting secret agents with tranq darts all over town in an effort to determine who “Patient X” is. Sarah is shot with a tranq and is kidnapped by the evil doctor.  Casey is also tranq’d  but forces Chuck to pull it out, despite his “strong aversion to needles.” Thankfully, Casey doesn’t pass out, since I am guessing that if these tranq darts were meant for normal people, it would be like shooting a grizzly bear with a tranq dart made for a house cat.

Chuck and Casey track Sarah down with a complicated formula of making Casey think like a bad guy and a GPS system, which leads them to some heliport where Sarah is being tortured about the identity of Patient X . Although it looks like she is less being tortured and more being handcuffed and duct taped, but whatever. Casey has big plans of shooting everyone that gets in his way of the doctor while Chuck stays in the car, a plan Chuck is down with, that is until he sees the doctor sneaking into some back room and then he has to go follow him. Stay in the car, Chuck! He gets caught hiding, but only after giving Sarah something to pick her handcuffs’ lock.  Chuck ends up getting shot with (surprise!) a tranq dart, and dragged on the helicopter.

Sarah and Casey are on the ground trying to figure out what to do, when Chuck wakes up to discover that the tranq dart got stuck in his pocket protector and he must have just fainted. After Chuck takes out the pilot (oops) and the bad doctor, he is left to try to fly the helicopter. Uh oh!  Casey calls Chuck and gives him hilarious, horrible, accurate instructions on how to fly.  Realizing that this approach isn’t working, Sarah takes over and tells Chuck to think of it as a video game. And because it’s only episode #2 and the title of the show is CHUCK, Bartwoski successfully lands the helicopter. He tries to high-five them over his awesomeness, but they both rip into him about not listening to them. Sarah was especially bothered and said that Bryce went against everything she believed in and that if Chuck won’t trust her, they’ll call off the mission and he can be on his own…which is not what he wants. I like how it turns out they’re both good guys.

The episode ends with Chuck going to Bryce’s funeral (wait, wasn’t he from Connecticut?) and seeing Sarah in the back. Meanwhile, Casey gets a phone call about how the new system to share information will be up in six months and Casey asks what will happen to Chuck then, and the lady on the other end says that Casey will do what he does best. (Which is KILL PEOPLE, in case you missed that.) Casey looks a little sad and conflicted.

Favorite things about the episode, in an easy to read bulleted list:

• How they really brought Morgan around. He was not my favorite thing about the first episode, but he was really funny this time with the hilarious Ramones/teenager impression and “The Morgan Door”.
• The spy vs. spy element, especially in Wienerlicious when Casey and Sarah had that huge fight and we got to see him punching a girl and more of her awesome Asian fighting tactics.
• The dinner scene with the tablecloth trick and the flaming “poisoned” dessert.
• Where the cell phone bomb doesn’t go off right away and they think it was a false alarm but then it gloriously explodes.
• New variety of nerd porn, via Sarah in the naughty German get-up, and working at Wienerlicious, no less. And acknowledging the porn element with the preteens taking cell phone pics of her.
• John Casey—everything about him, from knocking Morgan over during his sales training to never joking around about quiches to possibly not wanting to kill Chuck in six months. I feel like they’ve given his character a lot of potential.
• Everyone’s sexy new hair. Even Morgan’s looked better, even if it was overshadowed by the incredible hotness of Ellie’s bangs and Sarah’s pigtails.
• At the end, how Chuck put a big black wiener in his mouth.  Okay, so I know it was a burnt corndog, but COME ON.
• How I SO don’t care about plot holes. Like, how many times are they going to keep giving Chuck the Nerd Mobile, when it always comes back destroyed? But it doesn’t matter, because I am never taken out of the story because it’s just so fun and entertaining.

I am officially a fan.

SB has many interests, including photography, her pets, entertainment, traveling and writing. She does have a day job, but that mostly amounts to her being a sarcastic young woman with a lot of time on her hands, which is why she appreciates the opportunity to recap.