Episode 107: Chuck vs. the Alma Mater
From Chuck Wiki
| Chuck Versus the Alma Mater | |
 | |
| Air Date | Monday November 5, 2007 |
| Written by | Anne Cofell Saunders |
| Director | Patrick R. Norris |
| Next episode | "Chuck vs. the Truth" |
Contents |
[edit] Synopsis
Chuck has to return to Stanford University, the institute that expelled him, on homecoming weekend to help a former professor. Chuck finds out that his former professor is also a government operative who is being hunted out for a sensitive top-secret file. Chuck must use his past experiences to find his Professor’s hidden secret, while at the same time discovering shocking secrets about his own life. More importantly, Chuck discovers the truth about his former friend, Bryce Larkin, the one who got him kicked out of Stanford. Meanwhile, Morgan has problems with the new assistant manager at Buy More.
[edit] Plot
[edit] Act 1
The episode begins with a recap of key events in past episodes: Bryce Larkin sends his old Stanford roommate, Chuck Bartowski, an e-mail containing the intersect--a CIA/NSA computer containing all the United States government secrets in encrypted images; the latter unwittingly absorbs these secrets into his brain. During their college days, Bryce had supposedly stolen Chuck's gilfriend, Jill Roberts, and framed him of cheating, which resulted in his expulsion from Stanford.
When the main story begins, Professor Flemming, the professor who originally kicked Chuck out of college, is seen giving a lecture on the subconious and subliminal imagry (the concept behind the intersect). He cuts the class short when he sees a suspcious looking man standing at his lecture room entrance. Flemming believes the man is looking for some unexplained data he'd previously loaded onto disc, and he makes a hasty call before escaping though a secret passage in his office closet.
Meanwhile, at the Buy More, Morgan Grimes pleads for Chuck's help regarding the new assistant manager, Harry Tang, and his strict new break room rules. Harry soon after appears and shoos Morgan back to his work. Chuck takes notice that Harry is wearing an assistant manager polo shirt with his name monogrammed onto it and agrees with his friend that something must be done, but a subtle gesture from John Casey pulls him away from this delema.
Casey takes Chuck to the home theater system, where a video meeting has already been set up with Beckman. When she explains that they have lost contact with a CIA asset, George Flemming, Chuck immediately recognizes him. While Beckman admits they don't know what data Flemming referred to in his phone call, she warns them that anything he has information on regarding the CIA could prove devistating in the wrong hands and asks Chuck to provide any personal experiences with Flemming and Stanford to the mission. However, still stung from his past expulsion, Chuck refuses to take part in the mission.
Chuck eventually returns home, where Captain Awesome and his fraternity brothers from the UCLA give him tickets to a homecoming football game happening at Stanford University; Chuck turns the offer down, still wanting to steer clear of Stanford. Still broading, Chuck returns to his room where he locates a box of old college memorobilia. Pulling out a picture of himself and his college friends, he flashes back to the day in 2003 when he left his dorm for the last time. Although his other college friends were sad to see him go, Bryce insists that Chuck had brought this upon himself.
Eventually, Chuck decides to throw out his old college things. But when he picks up his school ID, which had fallen out of the box when he was tossing it into the trash bin, he has a flash of himself during his college years. When confronted with this, neither Casey nor Sarah know why there's information on Chuck in the intersect, as he's supposedly never been of government interest until he became the intersect. While it's agreed that Flemming could provide an answer, he is currently being hunted by Magnus Elner, an Icelandic spy who sells government secrets and uses a crossbow as his primary weapon.
Back at Buy More, Chuck discovers from Morgan and Anna that Harry has posted a strict lunch schedule that doesn't allow the Buy More employees to eat together, and Anna subtly suggests having Harry rubbed out (an idea that horrifies Chuck, despite his shared disagreements with Harry's policies). While Morgan refuses to give into Harry's rule, Harry himself arrives and theatens to be the one to break him, calling Morgan, "soft, like pudding."
Soon later, Casey approaches Chuck at his desk with the news that they have located Flemming; he wants to use Chuck as a friendly face. Chuck, however, doesn't see this as a good idea, recalling the day Flemming had accused Chuck of breaking into his office, stealing the midterm answer sheet, and selling copies to other students. Chuck remembers beeing horrified to learn that the tip came from his roomate, Bryce. Despite his attempts to back off, Casey doesn't take no for an answer.
While this is occuring, the other Buy More employees take part in a game called "Fingers of Fury," a channel surfing contest in which two employees see how many shows they can identify on the flat screen displays in a minute. Morgan is challenged by Lester Patau, but their game is interrupted by Harry, who has a master remote to all the televisions. He chastizes the employees for their slacking, despite the fact that there are no customers there to serve.
When Team Bartowski arrive at the house Flemming is staying at, Casey and Sarah tell Chuck to wait in the car while they go to retrieve him. However, Chuck spots Flemming first, startling him. Flemming, upon figuring out that Chuck works for the CIA, is surprised Chuck doesn't know any code phrases and teaches him one for dangerous siutations: "are you coming to the toga party?" Chuck then tells his old college professor that Casey and Sarah will be bringing him in and asks about the CIA file on him. Flemming apologies, but before he can explain why, he is shot in the back by Magnus's crossbow. When Flemming tries to get Chuck to deliver a paper with a code on it to Bryce, Magnus shoots the sheet out of Chuck's hands and takes it.
[edit] Part 2
After Casey and Sarah find the fallen CIA scientist, Flemming is taken to a hospital, and the two question Chuck on the code he tried delivering to Bryce. They believe Bryce may have been a contact of Flemmings, and that the latter has never been informed of the former's death. Back at home, Ellie renews Chuck's invintation to the homecoming game at his alma mater, but Chuck still declines despite his sister's insistance that going back to Stanford will help him get over his painful history there. She also points out that she found a Stanford library book Chuck had checked out (The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire), and Chuck doesn't seem too concerned with returning it despite it being four years overdue. ("What are they going to do? Expel me?")
It's not until Chuck reads the spine of the book that he realizes that the code Flemming gave him was a libary book code. Flashing back to a shooting game he and Bryce had in the library, Chuck remembers that Bryce had a hiding place there that he must've told Flemming about. He believes Flemming has hidden the CIA intel there for Bryce. The team need to get to the hiding place before Magnus does, but Chuck can't quite remember from the top of his head where the hiding space was. He has no choice but to go back to Stanford and find the hiding spot in person.
The trio go to Stanford on the guise of accepting Ellie and Devon's invitation to the game, and Chuck takes Sara on the "Chuck Bartowski Memorial Tour." Chuck is having a hard time taking in the school he had such a good time in but had the worst day of his life at when he was kicked out. When Sarah asks him why Bryce might have betrayed him, Chuck brushes it off and says Bryce has betrayed a lot of people (which Casey agrees to). When the enter the libaray, Casey reveals he reactivated Chuck's ID (making a quip about failing to wipe off the stupid grin in Photoshop) and counterfeited two for him and Sarah, allowing the three to enter. Unfortunately, as soon as one of the librarians registers Chuck's ID, his overdue fees come back to haunt him.
Back at Buy More, the staff--fed up with Harry's tyranny--plan a takeover in which they steal the master remote from his locker. Anna volunteers to seduce Harry while Lester clips the keys from his pants while he's distracted. However, when Morgan moves in to retrive the remote, he discovers he's fallen into a trap set up by Lester, whom Harry had bribed. Since he was the leader of the failed coup, Harry sentenced Morgan to work at the "hole," a less-than sought after desk job handling customer service.
Back at Stanford libary, Team Bartowski discovers the book gone, but Chuck realizes that the book was just a place holder and the hiding spot was really a hidden slot on the roof of the shelf; he finds the disc with the intel on it there. Before they can leave with the disc, however, Chuck is stopped by the libararian who registered his ID and held for his four-years cumulating late fee of $294.68. Magnus is still there and regognizes his name, having read Chuck's Nerd Herd ID back when he shot Flemming, and Chuck is forced to run out the back to get away from him. They are eventually spotted by the Magnus's operatives, so they head into the science building to get away.
[edit] Part 3
Once the trio finally get the chance to view the contents of the disc, they discover a list of CIA agents that Flemming had recruited over the past ten years. Chuck is surprised to not only find Bryce's name under 2002--their Junior year--but his own name under 2003, despite the fact that he's never signed up to join the CIA. Before anything else can be said, a few rogue spies break into the classroom and corner the three with a rain of gunfire. Sarah sends Chuck to keep the disc safe while she and Casey cover for him.
Coming up with an idea, Chuck finds an empty classroom, enters the disc into a computer to load the recruit list, and calls everyone in the list he knows are on campus at the time for backup; they know the call is legit thanks to the code phase, "Are you coming to the toga party?" Morgan, meanwhile, is stuck in the hole, dealing with a group of angry kids. He calls Chuck while he's in the middle of bringing in backup and insists on him telling him the code to Harry's master remote. Chuck tells him the code and gets back to his spy work. The moment he removes the disc, Mangus arrives and nearly scewers him.
Casey and Sarah, meanwhile, are down to their last bullets, and the rogue spies they are fighting are gaining the upper hand. Fortunately, the CIA agents Chuck had called arrive at the nick of time; their reactions to each other suggest that, though they knew each other, they had no idea which of their classmates were fellow spies. One last backup arrives and rescues Chuck from the Icelandic spy; Chuck had apparently sent her a voice mail that she'd received just in time.
Back at Buy More, Morgan uses the code given to him by Chuck to comadeer Harry's remote. At first, Harry refuses to release Morgan from the hole in exchange for control of the remote again, but when Morgan threatens to change all the TVs to a channel he could get in big trouble with Big Mike over. With great difficulty, he hands his beloved but now useless master remote over to Morgan.
Returning from the homecoming game (which went rather badly, given the after-the-fact dialogue), Ellie asks her brother if going back to Stanford was as painful as he thought it would be. To express how painful, Chuck recalls a horrible kareoke performance by Morgan, but he admits that he was glad to get the visit over with and finally say goodbye. Ellie tells Chuck she's proud of him.
Chuck stil has the disc on him, so he inserts it to look up what's under his own name. Having come to retrieve the disc from him, Sarah decided to allow Chuck to see what's there first. Chuck finds a video file of Flemming preparing to interview Chuck about a CIA military project called the "Omaha project." Instead of Chuck, Flemming got Bryce in his office, insisting that the project will destroy Chuck's innocence and that he refuses to let the CIA recruit him. when Flemming tells him there's no way to prevent his recruitment unless he's expelled from Stanford, Chuck realizes Bryce had framed him to protect him. He and Sarah then wonder if there was a good reason for Bryce breaking into the intersect and sending it to Chuck as well.
After Sarah leaves with the disc, Chuck returns to the trash bin outside to retrive the photo of him and his college friends from his discarded box of college things. He takes the time to remember his Freshmen year when Chuck first met Bryce, discussed their common interest in the Infocom text-based game Zork and his plans to create his own version, and Bryce offers to introduce Chuck to a girl named Jill who likes playing Everquest. This was the start of Chuck Bartowski and Bryce Larkin's friendship.
[edit] Trivia
- When Morgan and Lester are playing "Fingers of Fury," the shows they hit are Dukes of Hazard, Country Hill, Veronica Mars, Gilmore Girls, Smallville, Code Case, Animaniacs, The OC, Pinky and the Brain, Kung Fu: The Movie
- The personal version of Zork that Chuck and Bryce are talking of making at the end of this episode is the same one Bryce got his code phrase from to make sure only Chuck opened the intersect-contained e-mail in "Pilot'".
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