CHUCK Recap: Chuck vs. The Truth

I’m so glad SB loved this week’s episode of CHUCK as much as I did.  I mean we had Summer Roberts and Marshall Flinkman…can you ask for more?  Zachary Levi is absolutely charming and he brings so much warmth and honesty to the show.  Seeing Rachel Bilson this week gave me the warm fuzzies, but I don’t want to see Chuck and Sarah end their fauxmance. How do we get this fake twosome back together?  Well, I’m getting ahead of myself…SB, I turn it over to you.

Episode: “Chuck vs. The Truth”
Original Airdate: 11.12.07
GMMR Recapper: SB

Well, I must say that I enjoyed my Tuesday recapping reprieve, but I am not looking forward to when all my shows, including Chuck, go off the air, which is why I support the WGA along with GMMR, and I love that the TV bloggers decided to have a day of solidarity with no new content. For me, the writers are the most important part of television. There will always be plenty of actors and directors and producers who can get the job done, but without writers, what job is there to do? Without writers, there would be no Chuck, no The Office, no It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia or Battlestar Galactica or Supernatural or any of my other favorites. Without writers, there is Age of Love, and we all saw what a disaster that was.

Anyway, I was in love with this episode of Chuck. So we start out with a guy wanting some super secret codes or something (even more secret than up-down-up-down-A-B-select-start?) and poisoning the person who knows where they are, and when that guy returns with the codes, the first guy will give him the antidote. Pretty standard, awesome spy stuff! Meanwhile, I know that all over the internet, there was discussion about how this guy was on Alias (GMMR note: Yup, he was the beloved Marshall Flinkman), which I have regrettably not seen. I hear it sucks after Season Three, but I find that if Dwight Schrute likes a television show, I pretty much do too. I do, however, have my own soft spot for this guy, because he is the Lord of the Rings fan from Clerks II who puked when Randall made fun of it too hard. Loved that. Long story short, the guy with the codes ends up dying, but not before Ellie sees him on the street and rushes into doctor mode and tries to save him. Before he loses consciousness, he slips the codes (which are, inexplicably, on a necklace) into her sweater pocket. The Poisoner comes to her house dressed as a cop and—surprise!—poisons her with pentathol, which will make her really honest for awhile and then lose consciousness and die. Dum dum dummmmm! Also, I just looked up pentathol on the internet (and whatever the internet says is true), and it does seem to have some roots in fact so that’s pretty cool.

Meanwhile, back at the B-plot, Chuck fixes Rachel Bilson’s phone, which apparently holds her entire life, and gets a crush on her. This is obviously complicated by his fauxmance with Sarah, who shows up at the exact wrong time, and who also decides that they need to have fake sex, which pretty much means Sarah spends the night with Chuck and they sleep huddled as close to their respective edges of the bed as possible. I would like to say here that although I’m a fan of Chuck and Sarah, I also love Rachel Bilson. Or, as Morgan calls her, “Licorice Hair”. As I’ve said, I’ve never seen The O.C., but I’m kind of considering watching it, especially if this show gets picked up for more episodes or seasons at any point in time. I did, however, see her in The Last Kiss with Zach Braff, which I thought was a totally underrated movie and I really liked her in that. I don’t know how much I really ever see her winning an Oscar (or an Emmy, given that we’re talking about TV), but I do think she’s likeable and SO cute, so she works for me.

Oh, and back at the C-plot, Big Mike is making Morgan help Tang’s wife pick out a present for him. Zzzzzz.

Alright, so things start to come together when Team Chuck lures The Poisoner to the hospital, but it turns out that isn’t such a hot idea when he manages to poison all of them and then lead them on an ill-advised chase through wires and machines and sick people and needles, all while waving guns around. They do, however, come out with one antidote, which Chuck runs off with to give to Ellie. Sarah, Casey, and Chuck sit around waiting to die (is that the best plan the CIA and the NSA could come up with?), when Chuck notices that The Poisoner has dropped his phone, and I am magically transported back to A Cinderella Story starring Hillary Duff where she drops her cell phone and Chad Michael Murray finds it. And how many times have I now referenced that movie in my Chuck recaps? Anyway, Chuck’s brain flashes tell them that this guy is a former gymnast who now sells hard-to-find things to hard-to-find people. They find out where he lives and go to his house for an antidote.

There are fake poisons, there are struggles, and of course there are gymnastics, but eventually Sarah fires off one badass shot to the knee and takes The Poisoner out. But before they take the antidote, Chuck asks Sarah if their relationship is ever going anywhere and she says no. He thanks her for being honest, even if she didn’t have a choice, and the do their little antidote shooters and the day, it is saved.

So after Chuck’s near-death experience, he decides he and Sarah need to fake break up because the longer it goes on, the more the person he’s fooling most is himself. He leaves the Wienerlicious and heads across the parking lot (I guess?) to go over to Licorice Hair’s deli shop to sit across a table and smile at her in the window that Sarah can see from across the parking lot. Now, I am a simple mid-western girl who has never been to California, so pardon my ignorance, but I had no idea that everyone in L.A. worked in the same parking lot and lived in the same Melrose Place apartment complex, which apparently has units available at a moment’s notice. Casey calls Sarah and asks if she said anything to compromise her cover while she was drugged, and she says no, but that she might have if she hadn’t been trained to resist pentathol.

Okay, now here is where my major problem comes up with this episode. I forgive plot holes on Chuck ALL THE TIME. I really do not go looking for them because I largely do not care, but when one comes up and slaps me in the face and then laughs at me and calls me a little bitch, I kind of have no choice but to take issue. If Sarah had been trained to resist pentathol, and the government clearly knew what it was enough to train their agents with it, don’t you think they’d have an antidote, for crying out loud?

This was a totally funny episode, especially the obvious truth-telling sequences which managed to be funny even though they were expected. I especially loved Casey’s truthful moments of Sarah being better at picking locks and how he was all talk in his Chuck threats, and when Chuck told Casey that his jaw was sculpted by Michaelangelo, I could not have been more in agreement. Lester and Jeff as a weird Nerd Herd Duo really crack me up, and I was glad that they sent Harry Tang off with one last “Tang Joke” (the Lady Tang). I guess him being sent off to Oahu means the Assistant Manager search is back on. Awesome. Is anyone else hoping that Morgan gets promoted? OH! And I almost forgot that I got one of my perfect little Jeff moments when he commented that his mom always said, “Knowledge is powder.” The comedy was very on this week.

Mostly, though, I really like angst, and this episode was full of it, especially at the end. Once again, awesome job of this show giving us the sweet little moments, like Sarah calling Casey her partner and him being all touched by it, and Awesome and Ellie being the world’s cutest couple, and Sarah being secretly jealous of Chuck liking Lou. I feel like we’ve finally hit stride! And right before we get prematurely interrupted. Grrrr … come on, producers! Give these people what they want, I need more Chuck, and a couple more episodes is not going to cut it!

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.