Recap – Chuck 3.5 “Chuck vs. First Class”

If you missed last week’s awesome episode of Chuck, check out a recap here.

To the strains of “Respect” (non-Aretha version), “Chuck vs. First Class” begins with Buy More employees avoiding the gaze of the Ass. Man. himself, Morgan. He enters the employee kitchen, but not before arming himself with an oven mitt. It seems Lester and crew have heated up the doorknob to scalding temperatures as retribution for Morgan’s coming down on the crew’s fight club. See, Morgan knows all the tricks they could try to pull on him because he taught them all everything he knows, including Jeff’s attempt at putting laxatives in Morgan’s coffee. There is something he’s not ready for though: the old glue-on-the-chair gag! Morgan sits down, and when he is unable to get up, he realizes he is now at war with an “evil cabal of tricksters.”

On the Buy More floor, Chuck pesters Casey for information on Agent Shaw. Casey informs him that Shaw is living in Castle(!), and since he is now in charge of all Ring operations, Shaw can do whatever he wants. This includes conducting performance reviews like the one Shaw is currently giving Sarah. He asks Sarah if Chuck is a “real spy.” “Of course he is,” she, a bit uneasily, replies. Sarah asks Shaw why he is asking these questions. He responds that he needs to know if Chuck is a liability. When Sarah doesn’t answer, Shaw texts Casey that it is time for Chuck to be interviewed. With the whole team assembled in Castle, Shaw announces that he has completed his review. His verdict? The team has been “dysfunctional,” and it is not because of Chuck. The problem is Sarah and Casey: they haven’t let Chuck evolve as a spy. Chuck, always wanting to be the hero, is buoyed by Shaw’s critique, “Let me out of the car! I’m ready!” (Let me pause to say that the “stay in the car” gag that has run throughout the series is one of my favorites, so I loved the callback to it here.) Sarah insists that Chuck is, indeed, not ready at all, although it is clear she is speaking out of her personal concern for Chuck’s well-being, not his spy aptitude. Shaw responds to Sarah’s overt emotions, “Duly noted…and ignored.” Shaw is sending Chuck on his first solo mission — to Paris.

Before Chuck leaves, Shaw wants further confirmation that Chuck is ready to fly solo. He gives Chuck a pen that contains a liquid tranquilizer and asks Chuck to, subtly, tranq Jeff’s coffee. Chuck is successful, so Shaw declares him ready for the mission. Morgan, seeing a fresh cup of joe on the counter (and having not had his regular cup thanks to the laxative Jeff and Lester placed in his earlier serving), takes a big swig…and subsequently passes out on the Buy More floor. Morgan eventually awakens inside an arcade claw game amongst a number of plush animal toys. Casey frees him, and when Morgan is awed by the respect Casey receives from the Buy More employees, Casey teaches him that respect is not earned — it is taken.

As Chuck packs a new CIA phone that allows him to call Castle while on the plane, and nunchucks for the mission (he hates guns after all, but needs an offensive weapon), Sarah pleads with him to rethink the mission: “Please don’t go now. You need more time.” Chuck avoids her plea; he is too psyched about flying first class to Paris! He will be Charles Carmichael, businessman extraordinaire. On the plane, the stewardess shows Chuck to his seat next to Hannah (played by Kristin Kreuk), an IT professional with one private client who flies her back and forth from L.A. to Paris to fix his IT problems. (Note: I noticed immediately that the stewardess was played by Josie Davis, middle child Sarah from the amazing Scott Baio/Willie Aames vehicle Charles in Charge. Now, I don’t know if it was intentional or not, but the casting of someone from a show called Charles in Charge, in an episode where Chuck is posing as “Charles” and is “in charge” of himself on the mission was absolutely brilliant. The uproars of laughter when I saw her probably frightened my neighbors.) Chuck and Hannah hit it off, and move to the first class bar for further conversation. Over martinis (shaken, not stirred of course!), Chuck sees a large brute in the form of Stone Cold Steve Austin. Chuck flashes that this is Hugo Panzer, assassin for The Ring. Chuck excuses himself and heads for the bathroom. He calls Castle to tell Shaw and Sarah about Hugo. Shaw lied to Chuck: his mission isn’t in Paris. It’s on the plane. Hugo is carrying an important Ring key (a key-ring, perhaps?) in his luggage in the cargo hold. Chuck is to knock out Hugo with the tranquilizer pen, steal Hugo’s baggage tag, go down into the cargo hold and retrieve the key. Sarah warns Chuck that Hugo is a master of close combat. Chuck, rather confidently, assures them that he will have the key before the lobster is served, which he is very much looking forward to, by the way. After Chuck hangs up, Sarah protests because of the danger Chuck is in. “Now we find out if Chuck is a real spy,” Shaw notes. When Sarah wonders who the heck Shaw actually is (as neither she nor Casey has ever heard of him), Shaw interrogates Sarah over her whereabouts during three days of Chuck’s training in Prague. She was supposed to be close by, but he knows she went off the grid to Lisbon. Were her feelings for Chuck the reason for her disappearance? Sarah, quite annoyed, leaves this question dangling in the air.

Back on the plane, Chuck asks if the seat next to Hugo is taken. See, the girl next to him was upgraded from coach, and Charles Carmichael just hates to sit with the riff-raff. Hugo puts on his headphones and tries to ignore the interloper. With Hugo’s eyes closed, Chuck attempts to inject the tranquilizer into Hugo’s drink, but it won’t fire. Hearing the clicks of the pen, Hugo informs Chuck that the low air pressure in the plane is causing the pen to malfunction. Chuck is fearful that he has been caught, but Hugo is just talking about the ink. Relieved he hasn’t been made, Chuck tries to put the pen away, but inadvertently sprays the tranq in Hugo’s eye. When Hugo realizes that he has not been sprayed with ink, he grabs Chuck by the throat and wants to know who Chuck is. Chuck sprays the remaining tranquilizer in Hugo’s mouth, which knocks him out. He takes Hugo’s baggage ticket and heads down to the cargo hold.

Casey calls Sarah for an update on the mission. Sarah informs him that Chuck is doing fine, so far. As Casey hangs up, Morgan asks Casey for help. Morgan just can’t seem to win the war against his unconventional employees. “Insurgents,” Casey grins. “I hate insurgents.” In Castle, Shaw and Sarah are still debating the wisdom of sending Chuck out on his own. Shaw insists that he is always right. It’s annoying, but true. He tells Sarah that the big difference between him and her is that he pushes his agents to perform; Sarah tries to protect them. Well, it appears Sarah’s tack may be necessary — Hugo’s watch, detecting his low blood pressure, shocks him awake, and he heads out to find Chuck. In the cargo hold, and with Shaw and Sarah on the phone, Chuck locates Hugo’s baggage: a large metal coffin. Shaw tells Chuck the key must be on the corpse as the airline would not have checked the body at the airport. Chuck, totally skeeved out, pats down the body and finds the key. Shaw tells Chuck he has done good work, to get back up to his seat, and hangs up the phone. One problem, Hugo has made his way into the cargo hold. Chuck decides to hide in the coffin with the body! He tries to call Castle, but Shaw refuses to let Sarah pick up the phone. Chuck calls Casey for advice. Although he has chosen the absolute worst place to hide, Chuck should wait for Hugo to open the coffin, scream like the girl he is, look for a weapon, and flash how to use it. What if he doesn’t flash? Well, then he’ll be dead. Chuck does exactly what Casey says and screams bloody murder when Hugo opens the coffin. Hugo throws Chuck across the hold and pulls out one of his favorite assassin’s swords. Chuck finds the bags for a member of the Yale fencing team (seems he and Hannah were correct in their assumption when they saw some preppy guys boarding the plane), and pulls out a sword of his own. Chuck flashes some mad fencing skills (I’m not sure if it was Capo Ferro, Thibault or Agrippa style. Perhaps Inigo Montoya would know?), disarms Hugo, and knocks him out by cutting loose some luggage that falls on top of The Ring operative.

At the Buy More, Morgan has convened a staff meeting. He informs them he has named Casey his Lieutenant Assistant Manager (Lt. Ass. Man., if you will). He tells them to start listening to Morgan, or they’ll have to answer to Casey. In case they think he’s kidding, and forget Casey’s “volleyball incident” at the company picnic, Casey illustrates the seriousness of the threat by putting out a lit cigar in his palm. As Lester leaves the meeting, he tells Morgan that the war is not over. Bad move. That night as he sleeps, Lester has a chloroform-laden rag placed over his face. He is subsequently bound to a chair and is hypnotized by Casey to understand “Morgan is your boss.” Don’t mess with the (Lt.) Ass. Man.

Seated next to Hannah again, Chuck explains all of the awesome things he’s done in Paris. Hannah, noticing Chuck is speaking with the excitement of someone who has never been to Paris, asks Chuck if he has actually been there before. Chuck, caught in his lie, admits he has not. He just wanted to fit in with the other members of first class. He actually works at the Burbank Buy More in the Nerd Herd. He did a large home theater install for a rich guy who is flying Chuck to Paris to do the same install in the guy’s Parisian home (very smooth Agent Bartowski!). Wanting to be truthful too, Hannah admits that she actually lost her IT job with the private investor; she’s on her way back to Paris to clear out her office. As the two toast their (relative) honesty, Chuck tastes something weird in his drink. A drink, in fact, that he did not order. Hannah jokes that Chuck looks like he’s been poisoned. Ha ha! Chuck looks around for help and sees someone waving. It’s Hugo!

Chuck goes to the bathroom and calls Sarah. She tells him that he has to make himself throw up to get rid of the poison. When Chuck hears a knock on the door, he opens it to find the stewardess, Serena, pointing a gun at him and forcing him back into the bathroom. She is a Ring agent as well, and wants the key in exchange for the poison’s antidote. Chuck tells her he hid the key in his own baggage with the other cargo. Escorted by Hugo, Serena moves Chuck to the hold. Shaw, hearing all of this, decides to help Chuck. He calls the CIA and has them give him control of the airplane. He’s not a pilot, but Sarah is. Sarah has to fly the plane to help Chuck! After some bargaining between Shaw and Serena via Chuck’s phone, and Serena pulling out the antidote, Sarah makes the plane dive, throwing the three in the cargo hold off-balance. Chuck secures the antidote in the chaos and drinks it. He grabs his nunchucks and flashes some Michaelangelo-level skills. Unfortunately for Chuck, he never gets to use those abilities as Sarah levels off the plane, and even more luggage falls on the Ring agents. With Chuck safe, Shaw explains to Sarah that he always protects his agents. He lost a spy once, and vowed to never let it happen again. He asks Sarah why she was in Lisbon. She admits that she was spreading Bryce’s ashes, a promise she had made to him long ago. She knows she shouldn’t have went AWOL, so if he needs to, Shaw should have her reassigned. Shaw explains that he needs Sarah on the team; he just had to make sure she wasn’t a member of The Ring. When Sarah asks if he believes her now, he replies in the affirmative. (Was it just me, or did we see Sarah betray a hint of attraction for Superm…er…I mean, Agent Shaw?)

Back in first class, Hannah tells Chuck that she wants to show him the Eiffel Tower. As he is about to respond, his phone rings. It is Shaw. He tells Chuck that the mission is over and that he needs to return immediately to California. Dejected, Chuck explains to Hannah that his home install has been cancelled and he is needed for an emergency back home. Recognizing the electricity between them, and even though she would be vastly overqualified, Chuck offers Hannah a job working in the Nerd Herd if she ever finds herself in the Burbank area. “It was great to meet you, Hannah.” “It was great to meet you, too.” Hannah departs and Chuck looks wistfully out the window at the Eiffel Tower as his plane departs.

In the Buy More break room, Jeff asks Lester how they’ll prank Morgan today. The hypnosis kicks in, and Lester has only nice things to say about Morgan. Observing this from outside the room, Morgan asks Casey how he did it, but Casey refuses to tell him. “Plausible deniability,” Casey informs Morgan. Down in Castle, Chuck gives Shaw the key. Shaw uses the key to open the “weapon” in the golden case the team secured from Karl Stromberg. It is not a weapon, Shaw explains, but rather a lock box that contains all of the information collected by a spy Shaw had inside The Ring. Along with multiple discs of information, there is a small envelope that Shaw takes. When he tries to open it in private, Sarah asks what is inside. He gives it to her, and she finds a wedding ring. It belonged to the spy Shaw had inside The Ring: Evelyn Shaw, his wife. “We’ve made the same mistake, Sarah. We fell in love with spies.” Upstairs on the Buy More floor, Casey and Morgan tell Chuck that not much happened while Chuck was away, although Morgan gave Casey a raise. Chuck, playing with his miniature Eiffel Tower, wonders though if anything ever really changes. He thinks things just stay the same. He is proven wrong, though, when in walks Hannah. The two gaze upon each other, and Chuck smiles.

Commentary

I had an interesting experience with “Chuck vs. First Class.” As I was watching it, I felt that the episode, while still very funny, was a bit lacking. The Buy More storyline just seemed shoe-horned into the episode, as opposed to being integral to the “A” storyline like in “Chuck vs. Operation Awesome.” In that episode, Chuck’s wonky Intersect kung fu skills led to the fight club, which led to the electrified fight cage, which led to Chuck’s escape. The two stories were well integrated. “First Class” gave us two separate worlds, which for me, does not work as well. The other thing that really bothered me was Sarah’s reaction to Chuck going on his first solo mission. I buy her being concerned for Chuck’s safety. That totally makes sense both because of her duty to protect him, and because of her feelings for him. However, it also led to a number of times where it seemed like she was rooting against Chuck’s success, just so she could prove Shaw wrong. This was not Yvonne Strahovski’s fault, but rather that of the dialogue and plot. Sarah’s whole stance just rang hollow for me.

The “interesting experience” I referred to above though came when I was writing this recap. I was remembering everything that happened in the show and I realized I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought. Perhaps it’s just my love for the show, but the things that bothered me while watching it were reduced to very small parts of the whole episode. Yes, I still prefer integrated Buy More storylines, but the Buy More scenes were actually really funny as I recalled them (they put Morgan in a stuffed animal claw game!). Plus, the possibility of a Shaw/Sarah match-up and the introduction of a real romantic interest for Chuck in the form of Hannah, has got me jazzed up. As we have discussed before, the “will they or won’t they” situation between Chuck and Sarah can only be played for so long without true obstacles they have to overcome to be together (no, the fact they work together is not a true obstacle anymore). Now, those obstacles exist. Kudos to Zachary Levi’s smile at the end of the episode. It was filled with such true happiness, and not a hint of hesitation about Sarah, that it really cemented the possibility of a Chuck/Hannah pairing for me. I loved it. I guess the light of the morning helps wash away minor imperfections.

OK, that’s it Chuck-sters. Please leave any thoughts, comments or theories below. Be sure to check out TVOvermind in the coming days for promos, sneak peeks and photos from next week’s episode “Chuck vs. the Nacho Sampler.” (alright, I just laughed rather audibly at reading that episode title. I just saw that for the first time and think that may be my favorite episode title of any show ever). Until then, I’m off to test my coffee.