Chuck: Chuck Versus the Gravitron (Episode 208)

Handler and Handled Sarah and Casey are going nuts over Chuck's absence, not helped along by General Beckman, who can't believe how dumb they were to let Chuck get away with a Fulcrum agent, who could be doing hell knows what to him who knows where. Except, really, we all know what Chuck and Jill are doing, and we only have to see the post-coital, hotel room snuggling to get the point. While Jill's in the shower washing the sex off, Chuck gets a glimpse of her phone, on which there's a coded text message that sends his brain a-flashing. Babbling 90 words a second, he takes off for coffee and regrouping only to get snatched by Casey and Sarah, lying in wait at the hotel. They confirm Jill's evil affiliation, getting Chuck to flash on her codename, Sandstorm. They tell him to act normal and not freak out, because they need Jill not to know he knows. Sarah assures him that even if she knows he's a spy, Jill doesn't know Chuck is the Intersect. He leaves, presumably to change his soiled pants.

Once back from the hotel, Chuck sits down for his debriefing with Casey, Sarah, and General B. Agents like Jill were likely recruited at Stanford through a leadership seminar, she says. She wants Chuck to use his relationship with Jill to find out more about Leader, a Fulcrum agent who was the subject of the text Chuck saw. Sarah doesn't think Chuck is ready for such a mission, but he's made up his mind: Jill's betrayed him twice, and he shall have his vengeance. When Jill invites him to a secret date that night, however, he gets nervous and asks Sarah how to handle himself. She tells him that, in moments of closeness, he should look Jill in the eye, or when all else fails, at her mouth. She's instructing him on just how to approach a kiss, but shuts him down before he can get her in the clinch. She sends him on his way, pining at an audible pitch.

Thanks to a purchase on Jill's credit card, Chuck, Casey, and Sarah think they're going to a concert at the music hall. This is a ruse: it's a diversion to get Chuck at a carnival without his handlers. Jill reenacts hers and Chuck's first kiss, atop a stalled Ferris Wheel (so very Ryan and Marissa of them) and then pulls a gun on him, apologizing. She's supposed to take him to the parking lot and eliminate him. She explains that she was recruited just as General Beckwith suggested, and that once Fulcrum had secured her the job of her dreams, they had her by the short hairs and now she has to do as she's told. She leads Chuck through the carnival towards her handler, Leader, and starts to freak. He approaches them, and Chuck does more babbling in this episode than usual, which is saying a lot. Jill's being tested, and because she can't shoot Chuck when commanded, she gets booted one across the face. Chuck runs, ducking into an empty gravitron ride, where he and the burly leader grapple. Chuck avoids getting shot and hides in the house of mirrors, where Jill finds him and tells him she's sorry a lot more. Leader finds them both there, but Jill shoots him from behind just before he can shoot Chuck. Jill and Chuck are about to run when Casey and Sarah find them at the carnival and take them to the Castle under the Orange Orange.

Once there, Sarah subjects Jill to a lie detector test, during which she tells them that Leader is probably being treated at a secret medical facility in downtown LA. Casey and Sarah leave Jill strapped to the machine and Chuck in the bunker while they go and grab Leader. Chuck takes the opportunity to quiz Jill with the lie detector machine. She asks if he knows how to use the equipment, and he tells her he skimmed the manual. For the entire Castle. He questions her, and it is very, very sad for him. It's six years of doubt and the need to believe something good vomiting its way out of him as he asks if Jill ever really liked him, and why she slept with Bryce. She did like him, she says, and never loved Bryce. Not only that, but she never really slept with Bryce. When Chuck was expelled, her Fulcrum contacts told her to break it off with him, so she did, and the Bryce excuse seemed easiest. Chuck can't believe this, and tremulously asks Jill if she thinks they can make it work once all this spy stuff is over. She tells him to let her loose; they embrace as she says yes, she does, but the lie detector tells us she doesn't mean it.

We find out how big a liar she is when Casey and Sarah return, Leader in tow, and find Chuck being held at gunpoint by Jill. Now, Casey could kill them all with a flick of his little finger, but he does as he's told when Jill tells him to put his weapons down and uncuff leader. Chuck realizes the fake test at the carnival was all for show, that the goal was to get into the bunker. Leader's like, yeah, I's devious. He puts the agents in a locked room and forces Chuck to access the NCS/CIA joint database. Once he does, Jill puts him in another locked room, but not before he can snag the manual and get it locked in with him. Using the keypad available in each cell, he's got the place rewired in a jiff: he's shut down the computer, blocked outgoing comms, and contacted the CIA for help. He's locked in, they're locked out, and there's a sheet of bullet proof glass between them. He is very, very pleased with himself, but it's short lived, because Leader puts an explosive on Sarah and Casey's cell, telling Chuck either to walk him out or watch his friends die. Despite Casey giving him the hairy eyeball, Chuck caves and Leader follows him out. They're not gone a moment before Sarah sees a message from Chuck on the electronic keypad in their cell: he's taking Leader and Jill to the Buy More and he's unlocked Sarah and Casey's door. "Unleash the Casey," he writes.

So, Big Mike is totally paranoid about theives trying to score the day before Black Friday. He enlists Morgan, who's been univited to a Bartowski Thanksgiving (which has unexpectedly become an Awesome Thanksgiving, what with Awesome's parents coming to town and making Ellie freak about having things Super Awesome for the Captain's incongruously judgmental 'rents) to babysit the store with Lester and Jeff. They're locked in the day of and eating sad, sad little frozen dinners. Morgan tells Lester of the real world waiting outside the Buy More, a world with real turkeys, and friends, and family, and fun! Thinking longingly of this mythic fake turkey, Lester gets Jeff to stop setting tripwire traps and rig the doors to open so that Morgan can sneak out and steal one of Ellie's trashed test-run turkeys. The doors opening alerts Big Mike, however, and sends him running on his short little legs as fast as they can carry  him back to the Buy More.

Which is where Chuck has brought Leader, because there's a TRAP DOOR in the ENTERTAINMENT LOUNGE, which is pretty awesome. Serendipity (or just, you know, television) is at work for him, as Leader trips over one of Jeff's wires just as Casey and Sarah come busting in. Casey and Leader fight while Sarah takes off after Jill. Leader's giving Casey the runaround, and he's about to knock him out when, lo, from out the Buy More doors comes Big Mike, running for all he's worth. He body checks the dude into the wall, spitting, "I hate thieves." He assumes Morgan put Casey in charge, and he doesn't argue. I wonder if he's at all miffed that Big Mike saved his ass.

Chuck finds Jill, who's stalking Sarah, who's stalking the air. He tries to talk her away, let's get you out of here, come on. But Jill hesitates, her gun trained on Sarah, until Sarah's nearly out of sight and most likely out of range. She follows Chuck, who tells her he's giving her the Matrix, the Nerd Herd's ideal getaway car. He's very sweet as he puts her into the car, telling her to drive as far as she can. She asks him to go with her, telling him they can be together without any of the spy stuff, no secrets. But finally Chuck's had enough. He locks her into the car and enacts its "detainment mode," which causes the steering wheel to sprout cuffs that keep Jill locked in her seat. Sarah emerges into the loading dock in time to hear Chuck tell his former gf that she might have had him fooled before--he really was going to help her get away. But she was going to kill Sarah, and that's the line for him. She's arrested, and also dumped.

Ellie is so highly strung Yo Yo Ma could perform with her when Awesome's parents call and cancel. She's so overjoyed she even feels terrible about uninviting Morgan. Who she and Awesome then find bent over into the trash, trying to retrieve one of Ellie's cast off turkeys. He doesn't mind the uninvite, though, since he knows it's stressful what with Awesome parents and Chuck and Jill... Ellie's like, what about Chuck and Jill? Morgan's willing to explain that if he can invite a few people over for dinner.

Which is how Jeff and Lester come to be there when Chuck and Sarah arrive for dinner, hand in hand and grateful to have the balance of their non-relationship-relationship restored. Ellie's overjoyed to see Sarah, but she tells Chuck that Morgan told HER about his not seeing Jill. He tells Ellie, in utter seriousness, that he's realized that Jill, Bryce, and Stanford are the past and best left there. So when he toasts to new faces and old at the dinner table, it's a little bittersweet.