Chuck Recap (Season 4, Episode 19): Has There Been A “Muuurder?”

A Murder Mystery, A Pig Called Kevin Bacon, And A Big BM On NBC’s Chuck

This week’s Chuck was a bottle episode, meaning all of the scenes were shot on existing sets so as to save money, presumably for the season’s (and maybe series’) final five episodes, set to feature Vivian Volkoff as the main baddie, if the final minutes of this week’s episode is any indication. As for the other minutes which preceded that final one, Chuck gave us a send-up of And Then There Were None and other famous murder mysteries, as someone – or some thing – was killing off characters one by one, all within the confines of Castle. And not only that, but we finally got a storyline involving Big Mike this week, and Ellie and Awesome’s story was top-notch in comparison to their last few episodes. And if you’ve been attuned to the internet this week, you may have seen the YouTube video of Jesse Heiman, the World’s Greatest Extra, who has a weekly gig on Chuck as background Buy Moron Fernando. (To see, search ‘World’s greatest extra’ on YouTube.) It was extra-amusing seeing him in the background on tonight’s show after he made headlines late last week. To the recap!

A sleep-deprived Ellie works away at her father’s computer as Bentley (guest star Robin Givens) watches via an unseen camera in the laptop. Awesome questions whether what Ellie is doing could be dangerous, to which his wife responds, “What’s the worst that could happen?”

General Beckman tells Team Chuck to start looking for candidates similar to Mr. Bartowski who have the potential to be a new Intersect. She promotes our main character to the head of the Intersect project, which infuriates Bentley who then makes fun of Chuck’s pocket protector. Huh, guess Charles really is in charge of our days and our nights. Chuck brings in four candidates who seem fit for the job: Lewis, an American bomb expert with a British accent; Josie, an expert when it comes to resisting interrogation; Damian, a scraggly looking man who’s been embedded overseas for the past decade; and Brody, a fellow who looks and acts just like Chuck. Casey starts them on physical testing, Sarah on psych evaluations, and Morgan on pop cultural knowledge. When asked whether Grant Morrison or the team of Moore and Gibbons is the greater graphic novelist, Brody says he’s more of a Brian K. Vaughan man, himself. Smart guy. (Remember, Chuck’s had a Y: THE LAST MAN poster in his room since Episode 1 and once hid his father’s plans behind an issue of BKV’s EX MACHINA.) Bentley is pissed at Chuck for stealing her job and says to his face that he’s gonna screw up. Chuck realizes she just might be his nemesis. Just as Brody gets a text from Chuck telling him he is his pick to download the new Intersect, somebody stabs him in the heart, killing him instantly.

Big Mike, clad in a giant suit with the letter BM on the front of it — for Buy More — is kidnapped by the staff at the Large Mart, who are in yet another feud with the Buy More. In retaliation, Jeff and Lester steal the Large Mart mascot, a pig called Kevin Bacon, and hide it in a closet.

Just before confronting Bentley about giving Ellie his Dad’s computer, Chuck tells Awesome to replace the hard drive with a blank one so Ellie won’t learn too much. After Bentley tells Chuck flat out that she doesn’t respect him, they find Brody’s dead body. Everybody in Castle is made to surrender their weapons to Casey, whom Chuck eliminates as the killer, as well as Sarah. Everyone looks at Damien because he matches the stereotypical description of a terrorist, and Damien walks out, stating that he is Greek. Opening the door to Castle, he spots a bomb on the door, which promptly explodes.

He survives, but as a result of the explosion, Castle has gone offline; they are all trapped with a killer among them. Sarah tells a panicked Chuck that he needs to calm down and let everyone know he has things under control if he is to be a good leader. Casey doesn’t trust Lewis because he speaks with a British accent after only four months of living in London for a semester. Chuck and Sarah interrogate the lot of them: Josie seems suspect because she’s overly emotional about getting dumped by her boyfriend; Damian screams that he’s being tortured before they even start to question him and they let him go after merely finding an ancient boombox in his bag; but Lewis is revealed to have been hiding a knife in his bag. Before they can question him further, they notice a bomb in the interrogation room and evacuate just before it explodes. In the aftermath of the explosion, more shrapnel has hit Damian, and Lewis has vanished. Everyone agrees that Lewis is their killer.

Morgan meets with the head of the Large Mart on Buy More territory. The guy wants Kevin Bacon back, but Big Mike, over the phone, tells them not to give into his demands. Mike is doing just fine, as the employees of the Large Mart have sated him with SubWay sandwiches, the official food of Chuck. Morgan goes to get Kevin Bacon from the closet, but it is gone. He accuses Jeffster of taking the pig and Jeffster feign innocence, albeit not very convincingly.

Below ground, Damian is still alive, but everyone is on the lookout for Lewis. Bentley is continuing to be a pain in the butt towards Chuck. They all think they hear Lewis crawling through the vents and Casey gets his gun ready to shoot him, but it turns out to be Kevin Bacon walking around in the vents. (Jeffster later admit to Morgan that it was they who ‘set Kevin Bacon free’ in the ducts.) Bentley and Chuck enter the secret Intersect room, the only safe place from bombing in Castle, to find Lewis with his throat slashed. Who’s the killer?

Chuck breaks up Josie and Bentley, who have their guns pointed at each other: he’s figured out who the killer is and it’s neither of them. Walking them over to the other side of the room, he whispers that it’s Damian. Damian pops up from faking unconsciousness on the other side of the room and holds up the boombox which is revealed to be a bomb. Chuck posits that Damian doesn’t want to die: Brody saw him planting the explosives in the door, so that’s why he killed Brody. Then, to sell that he wasn’t the killer, he committed to blowing up himself at the door, shielding himself from the blast last second. That locked Castle, and then during the interrogation when he was screaming about torture, he planted the other bomb. That gave him time to kill Lewis. Damian declares that he only came here for Chuck but before he can reveal who he’s working for, Bentley shoots him in the arm. This sets off the boombox bomb, with one minute til explosion. Telling Chuck, “This is what a leader does,” Bentley force-locks herself in the Intersect room with the bomb to sacrifice herself, but Chuck doing what Chuck is so awesome for doing, undoes the force lock using the pen from his pocket protector and gets her out of there seconds before the bomb explodes in the re-enclosed room. No deaths on his watch, thank you very much. The explosion sends fire through the vents and Kevin Bacon goes flying, eventually popping out an air duct and landing in Casey’s arms.

Beckman congratulates Chuck and tells the team the hunt for a new Intersect has been suspended. Chuck tells Beckman how invaluable Bentley was in the situation, but she is still being reassigned. Bentley tells Chuck that he is a good spy and apologizes for underestimating him. Finally, she tells him that Ellie’s a smart girl and Chuck should reconsider keeping her in the dark about his spy activities.

Big Mike returns from the Large Mart — with SubWay! — as he was able to escape from his captors. Still, the Large Mart gang torch the BM suit and leave it in the Buy More parking lot.

Awesome tells Chuck he replaced the hard drive, but it’s revealed to us viewers that he and Ellie are still working on the laptop and he didn’t replace anything.

At Chuck’s apartment, Chuck tells Sarah and Casey that they as a team are the Intersect, not merely him. Beckman appears on the TV screen and informs them that Damian was hired by Vivian Volkoff, who wants revenge on Chuck for putting away her father. Looks like he has a nemesis for real, now.

As Ellie sleeps, the laptop scans the room and identifies her as a Bartowski. Something called the Agent X Files open up on the screen. To be continued…

No new Chuck next week, so see you in 14, everybody!

Image Credit: NBC

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