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Chuck Versus the Marlin
Season 1, Episode 13
Chuckmarlin
Air Date January 24, 2008
Writer Matthew Lau
Director Allan Kroeker
Previous Chuck Versus the Undercover Lover
Next Chuck Versus the First Date
"Look, if I'm supposed to be dead, just say something that will make it okay, that will make them feel alright. Just make sure they know how much I love them."
―Chuck

Chuck Versus the Marlin is the thirteenth and final episode of Season One of Chuck. It aired on January 24, 2008, as part of the second of a double bill.

Synopsis[]

Captain Awesome is about to propose to Ellie, and has Chuck hold onto the engagement ring until he is ready for it. Chuck stashes it in his locker at the Buy More. The next day, everything is gone at the store, including the ring.

Meanwhile, Casey and Sarah discover that someone is spying on the Buy More. With Chuck's identity and life on the line, NSA says it has no other option than to relocate Chuck into a permanent holding cell. The team has 48 hours to prove their cover is intact, and produce the enemy agent.

Full Story[]

The episode begins with Jeff and Lester reviewing footage they shot of women's cleavages with one of the store's demo cameras, including the new delivery girl, when Chuck arrives to remind them of Big Mike's policy about "Mammary Cam." The two Nerd Herders protest the accusation, while passing the offending video between them, but Chuck easily guesses their moves.

Devon then arrives to talk to Chuck about Ellie, but Chuck notices a bug hidden on one of the Nerd Herd displays and flashes. He excuses himself for a moment to confront Casey, who he believes had placed the bug. Casey denies it. Chuck then returns to Awesome, and finds Devon has come to ask him for permission to marry Ellie, as Devon considers him the man of the family. Chuck gives his blessing, and Devon asks Chuck to hide his great-grandmother's diamond ring so Ellie can't find it.

Meanwhile, Casey alerts Sarah about the bug, and she acknowledges they have a problem. Contacting General Beckman and Director Graham through the hidden Wienerlicious computers, they learn that the device is a Fulcrum bug. There assess a probability that Fulcrum might soon know that Chuck is the Intersect. They are ordered to find the receiver for the bug within 48 hours or Chuck will have to be relocated.

113Chuckmarlin

Where's Norman?

The next morning, Big Mike arrives at the store and is oblivious to the place having been completely cleaned out until he reaches his office and discovers his prized Marlin is missing. The rest of the employees soon arrive, and Lester is particularly panicked, but Jeff tells him to keep his mouth shut. When Chuck arrives, he rushes to his locker, where he hid Devon's ring, and discovers it missing.

While Big Mike grills the rest of the employees with Detective Conway (Mark Derwin) he demands to know where Casey is, and sends Chuck to find him. Casey calls Chuck to demand that he join him at a warehouse, where Chuck discovers the CIA and NSA have completely cleaned out the Buy More to check for more bugs, a short-range GLG-20. They found a total of 29 including the one Chuck discovered, but there is no sign of its receiver. Chuck praises their thoroughness, and says that he must return to the Buy More and come up with an alibi, but does ask for Devon's ring back.

Casey casually blurts what is the worst-case scenario for Chuck if they don't find the receiver, but Sarah pulls him aside to advise him to be less blunt, or Chuck won't process it. One agent then pulls them aside to show that the store's security system was mistakenly turned back on by a drunken Jeff and Lester the night before, and caught the Fulcrum agent who planted the bugs on tape. They cannot identify the agent, but the security tapes shows the receiver being placed inside Big Mike's Marlin. Jeff and Lester then make off with the fish after the Fulcrum agent leaves. Chuck then suggests that that Sarah and Casey find out where the two drunken pinheads stowed the marlin while he sticks around to search for the ring. Unfortunately, Sarah tells him there was no ring in their inventory. They also tell him the bad news: if they fail to find the receiver and that Fulcrum will learn that he's the Intersect, and he will be taken into permanent protective custody.

Chuck and Casey return to the Buy More to find their co-workers betting over a thumb war between Jeff and Lester. They drag the two into the Home Theater Room, where Casey intimidates them into confessing. The two Nerd Herders remain silent, until Casey closes the Theater Room's curtains, implying that he will torture them, they crack. After Jeff was cut off (again) at the local Bennigan's, he and Lester went back to the store to access Big Mike's stash of liquor in his desk. Intending to turn the security cameras off so as to leave no trace of their intrusion, they instead mistakenly turned the security cameras back on, unaware there was a real intruder in the store. They arrive in Big Mike's office to discover his stash is empty, and decide they have to do something else. Jeff suggests they burn it down, while Lester instead decides on stealing something, and makes off with marlin, which they stash back at Chuck's apartment. At the same time, Sarah is on phone with Beckman, who tells her that Chuck is coming in either way.

Underneath

Searching for Norman

Chuck and Casey rush back to his house and begin searching for the missing Marlin. During their search, they are interrupted by Ellie. Anticipating he may not be able to see her again, Chuck tells her goodbye "just in case." She then tells him she saw Morgan leaving with the fish. Chuck and Casey look at each other before the latter says, "He's mine."

The pair returns to the store. While Chuck is called in to Big Mike's office to be questioned by Conway, Casey takes Morgan to the Home Theater Room and interrogates him on the location of the Marlin, threatening to pull out each of his facial hairs. Morgan says that he must be hit with his personal kryptonite: grape soda "on the rocks" when threats fail. Morgan reveals that the night before the store was cleaned out, he grabbed Chuck's bag from his locker and went back to Chuck's apartment to play an advanced copy of the next Call of Duty game that Chuck had previously refused to let him play until Morgan was under "adult supervision." While he was digging through the bag, he discovered the ring Chuck was holding for Awesome. He freaked out and Ellie, who was in the living room, rushed in. Morgan mistakenly believed the ring was for Sarah. Casey presses him on the Marlin, but Morgan is too wrapped up with the thought that Chuck was going to propose to Sarah. Before he can extract any more information from him, the schwarma girl arrives with a lunch delivery from Pita Palace and Morgan slips out.

Meanwhile, Chuck is interrogated by Big Mike and Conway. Both of them think that the robbery was an inside job and the latter knows that the other employees "couldn't tie they shoes" without Chuck's say-so. They then leave Chuck alone in Big Mike's office as Conway takes a call. Chuck then becomes suspicious when he notices the delivery girl had made her 30th delivery, and they had 29 bugs. He then sneaks out through the ventilation ducts and locates Jeff and Lester's video. Editing out some of the footage, he sends a digital snapshot of the delivery girl to Sarah. He then covers up any of his indiscretion before Big Mike and Conway return. The scene cuts to Big Mike announcing that Chuck cracked. Conway then calls Casey, who is still trying to pull an answer out of Morgan. Jeff and Lester then ask him what he told Casey, and where he hid the Marlin. Morgan tells them he hid it in the freezer at the Wienerlicious. The delivery girl overhears them and leaves.

The Schwarma Girl, Lizzie, enters the Wienerlicious to ask to get the marlin out of the freezer. Sarah, having received Chuck's message, fights her. In the midst of the fight, Sarah turns on the restaurant's security camera. Unfortunately, Lizzie regains her gun and forces Sarah to give her the marlin before imprisoning her in the freezer.

Back at the Buy More, Morgan admits to Chuck about the ring, at which Chuck corrects that it's really meant for Ellie. Once he gets the location of the marlin, he runs to the Wienerlicious. Chuck arrives to find the marlin broken on the restaurant floor and Lizzie, the receiver, and the ring gone. He hears Sarah call for help and finds her locked in the freezer. At her instructions, he finds a gun hidden in a tub of horseradish sauce and bumbles his way through trying to shoot the lock. However, Detective Conway arrives at the behest of Big Mike and sees the gun in Chuck's hand, taking Chuck into custody despite his protests that he was trying to help Sarah out of the freezer.

After Casey is finally released from his interrogation, he tracks down Morgan, forcing the location of the Marlin from him, and hurries to the Wienerlicious. He rescues Sarah from the freezer, who tells him Lizzie planted the bugs and that Conway arrested Chuck. They report in to Beckman with the information, who has decided to extract Chuck anyway. Sarah and Casey are ordered to track down Lizzie. Sarah objects but Casey accepts the General's instructions. After they break contact with Beckman, he tells Sarah he'll take care of Lizzie while she tracks down Chuck.

While in his car, Chuck tries to reason with Conway, but the detective doesn't listen. Conway makes a phone call and reports in to his superiors as "Longshore." Chuck flashes and realizes that Conway is actually CIA. Longshore tries to encourage Chuck that things aren't going to be so bad in government custody - he'll have every amenity he needs, and will be allowed outside in controlled locations. He admits though that it's safer for Chuck's family and friends that he just disappear and for them not to know what's happened.

He takes Chuck to a rooftop helipad for extraction, where the two are confronted by Sarah. Sarah tells Longshore they've identified Lizzie as the Fulcrum agent and will soon have the receiver so there's no longer a need to extract the Intersect, but he tells her he has received no instructions to that effect. She asks Longshore for just a few minutes to talk to Chuck, and is ready to draw her gun until Longshore agrees. Chuck asks her to tell his family and friends something to make his disappearance easier to bear, and that since they no longer work together, he and Sarah can be honest with each other about how they really feel.

Lizzie

They are then ambushed by Lizzie, who kills Longshore and shoots Sarah's gun from her hand. Sarah and Chuck take cover while Lizzie gloats about knowing that Chuck is the Intersect but she hasn't told her superiors. She also has Awesome's ring for Ellie. Because the worst that Fulcrum could do to Chuck is torture, Sarah advises that he distract Lizzie. Chuck then runs away from her back to the helipad. With Lizzie pointing her guns at him, he tries bargaining better accommodations than what the CIA can provide, but Lizzie isn't interested in negotiating, as she is the one with the guns. It is then that Sarah sneaks up on Lizzie and the two engage in another fight. The two are again evenly matched and the fight takes them dangerously close to the edge of the building. Casey finally arrives to back Sarah up only to watch the two women plummet over the side. They land safely in a garbage bin, where Lizzie is knocked unconscious. Casey comments, "Had a feeling that girl was dirty."

The next morning, Big Mike arrives at the store the next morning to find that everything is back, including his Marlin, which is now held together by duct tape. Meanwhile, Chuck and Sarah are still searching the Dumpster where she and Lizzie fell. Sarah insists that when Lizzie was taken in, she only had the receiver on her, and suggests that perhaps it's better that they replace the ring. Chuck refuses to give up, "...it was Awesome's great-granny's ring, and it's going to be my sister's, okay, even if its covered in coffee grounds and miscellaneous DNA," and finally manages to find it. The two rush back to Chuck's apartment, where he enters in through his window to give Devon the ring. Chuck then leaves to watch from outside with Sarah while Awesome proposes.

Sarah tells Chuck he's safe for now and that the extraction order has been canceled. Chuck asks her to come inside to congratulate Ellie, but Sarah tells him that it's a family moment. He says, "I know," before finally going in alone.

Casey arrives, and while Sarah watches Chuck, comments that they won't be able to keep him there forever.

Trivia[]

  • The type of bug found in the Buy More is a "GLG-20", a reference to the movie Spies Like Us (1985). Chevy Chase and Dan Akroyd portrayed two bumbling government employees who are recruited by the CIA to serve as decoys and GLG-20 is the rank they receive upon graduating from "spy school". Chevy Chase will go on to appears in the series as Ted Roark.
  • Devon admits to hating spiders.
  • Morgan says he was born Caesarean and feels cheated of a trip down the birth canal.
  • This episode shows both Sarah and Casey putting Chuck’s happiness over their mission, indicating their gradual shift from handlers to friends.
  • When faced with the prospect of not being his handler anymore, Chuck asks Sarah on a date. Sarah is not put off by this even though she has previously stated that her feelings were strictly professional for Chuck.
  • In the Home Theatre Room, while interrogating Jeff and Lester, is the only instance where Casey calls Chuck Charles.

Quotes[]

Lester: Keep moving Bartowski, nothing to see here.
Chuck: Not even if I had the time!

~

Chuck: Fellas! What are you guys doing? Or have you forgotten about Big Mike's policy on 'mammary cam?'
Jeff: I don't know what you're talking about, Chuck.
Chuck: He doesn't know what I'm talking about? That's so weird – so you didn't actually just remove the offending video from the camcorder and hand it to Lester who is now hiding it behind his back?
Lester: What? My feelings are hurt, Charles, after all these years, where's the trust?
Chuck: In Jeff's sweaty palms along with the amateur consumer porn.

Music[]

  • "Style" by U.R penetrators
  • "Get Away" by Butcher The Bar
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