Chuck"Chuck Versus the Alma Mater"
Original Air Date: November 5, 2007
Jeff L - TwoCents Staff Writer
Stamford, Chuck’s old professor is giving a lecture on subliminal message. According to him they can be embedded into a single image and transmitted into the subconscious brain. Funny, that’s what happened to Chuck when his old college roommate Bryce Larkin emailed him all that data he stole from the government after he got Chuck kicked out of school and before he got killed.
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Chuck
ReplyDelete"Chuck Versus the Alma Mater"
Original Air Date: November 5, 2007
Jeff L - TwoCents Staff Writer
Stamford, Chuck’s old professor is giving a lecture on subliminal message. According to him they can be embedded into a single image and transmitted into the subconscious brain. Funny, that’s what happened to Chuck when his old college roommate Bryce Larkin emailed him all that data he stole from the government after he got Chuck kicked out of school and before he got killed.
The professor cuts class short when he spots an evil spy trying to audit his class. He takes off and calls the CIA to request backup. Turns out he’s a spy too and he’s been one since back when Chuck was still going to school at Stamford. The professor lets the CIA know that he is in possession of a disc of important information that maybe an asset to foreign espionage agents.
Down at the Buy More there’s more trouble afoot. Morgan is upset about how Harry, the new assistant manager, is going mad with his newly aquired power. He wants to revolt, but Chuck’s busy in the back room with Casey and Sarah talking to General Grandma and The Candyman. They want Chuck to help find the professor, who’s disappeared and may be in Los Angeles. Chuck doesn’t want to help because this particular professor was the one who got him kicked out of school after Bryce framed him for cheating.
Once he gets home, Chuck finds Elle and Captain Awesome planning their trip up to Stamford for the Stamford/UCLA game. They want Chuck to come but he doesn’t want to have anything to do with his old alma mater. He finds a box of his old school stuff and flashes back to the day he was kicked out of school. Bryce was playing pool as Chuck was leaving and Chuck asked him why he did it, but Bryce says Chuck did it to himself. Chuck goes to throw out the box of stuff and flashes on his old college ID. He’s included in the information that Larkin sent him, which should be impossible since he didn’t start working for the government until after he downloaded all their top secret files into his brain.
Now Chuck wants to help find the professor to ask him how the government had a file on him before he was turned into an asset.
Morgan tangles with Harry some more at Buy More and Harry vows to take Morgan down, since he’s soft “like pudding.”
Chuck has another flashback, this time it’s of when he learned he was going to be expelled for cheating. The professor tells him he scored perfectly on the exam which included identifying subliminal messages embedded into a single image – just like how Chuck’s problems all started. The prof says he was tipped off that Chuck stole a copy of the answer key and that he was selling copies around campus. Chuck denies it, but since it was Larkin (everyone’s favorite big man on campus) who tipped him off, nobody believes Chuck.
Casey, Sarah and Chuck track down the prof hiding out in L.A. Chuck’s supposed to be waiting in the car, but that never works. He catches the professor while Casey and Sarah are off somewhere looking for him. He tells the prof that he’s with the government now and the prof says he should have used the secret call phrase “Are you going to the toga party?” to identify himself as a friendly agent. He’s just about to let Chuck take him into protective custody when he’s killed by the Icelandic agent. Turns out Iceland has spies who sell their information to the highest bidder. The prof tries to hand Chuck a note but Chuck can only get a peek at it before the bad guys grab it and take off just as Sarah and Casey show up.
Chuck goes home and Ellie still wants him to go to the big home coming game at Stamford. He won’t do that but he does flash back to his college days, playing Tag: The Assassination Game in the library with Bryce Larkin. Larkin is out of ammo, but he’s got some hidden in a secret location inside the library and manages to reload before Chuck can get his shot off. Larkin takes Chuck out and Chuck realizes that the note the professor was trying to give him was a library Dewey decimal system number and that he needs to go to Stamford to find Bryce’s hiding place and the disc the professor hid there.
Over in the B story, Morgan is going to great lengths to outwit Harry and to steal his master remote which controls every television in the store. Yawn.
Chuck, Casey and Sarah find Larkin’s hiding place and it’s already been ransacked by the Iceland guys. They thought they were looking for a book however, and Chuck knows that it wasn’t a book, but a secret compartment that Larkin always used. He finds the prof’s disc and the bad guys show up and trap Casey, Sarah and Chuck in a classroom. Chuck loads the disc and realizes that it contains data on all the students the professor had recruited into the CIA, including Larkin and Chuck. But Chuck was never recruited into the CIA.
The bad guys kick down the door and Chuck takes off out the back, but Sarah and Casey are pinned down by all the gunfire. Once he gets clear, Chuck pulls up the data from the disc and starts calling all the students who were recruited into the CIA and asking them if they are “going to the toga party” and that he needs help in the library. Several of the students were on campus for the big game and they mobilize.
Morgan has gained control of Harry’s remote and Harry wants it fixed. He and Morgan come to an uneasy alliance – whomever cares.
Casey and Sarah are almost out of ammo and they agree to pull a Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid and go out in a blaze of glory. Just as they come out from their cover, the student CIA agents get the drop on the Icelandic baddie and save the day.
Back home Sarah wants the disc from Chuck be he insists on reading the files on himself. He finds a video file of Bryce Larkin talking to the professor. Larkin doesn’t want Chuck to be recruited by the CIA because he’s a good guy and Larkin’s best friend. The prof doesn’t think it matters because Chuck scored so high on the subliminal message test that he’s going to be recruited no matter what. Nobody has ever achieved a perfect score on the test before Chuck. Larkin realizes that the only way to save Chuck is to tell the professor that Chuck had cheated on the test. Sarah and Chuck think Larkin might not have been a rouge agent after all. Maybe he had a reason for stealing all that classified information and sending it to Chuck, but that, my friends, is a story for another day.
Great advancement of the storyline in this episode. I could have done without the entire Morgan subplot, but I guess that’s just me since people seem to love Morgan. 3.5 out of 5 stars.