Yeah, this is way late, but I didn’t want to not recap & snark the pilot. I don’t know if I’ll do week two or not, since I’d prefer to just get caught up with all my snark. I still have CSI: Horatio, House, and Smallville to do from last week, and the new TV week starts tonight! Ack! Can’t keep up!

So Chuck’s old college roommate, Bryce, who had stolen his girl and gotten him kicked out of Stanford, goes rogue from the CIA and downloads all the government secrets off the big computer full of every single government secret onto his little spy PDA thingy. He tries to escape with the secrets (after he has apparently destroyed the computer), and super-awesome Adam Baldwin (Jayne from Firefly) shoots him — just as he is sending all of the US government secrets to Chuck. By accident, I’m pretty sure, because he is just scrolling through his contacts list and hits send after Casey (Adam Baldwin) shoots him. The PDA self-destructs, as you would expect in spyland. Bryce dies.

After Chuck’s birthday party (he’s out of place, because his sister invited everyone, and they’re all her friends, and he doesn’t do well around hot girls), Chuck goes back to his room and gets the email from the old roommate. He sends his friend Morgan home (they like to play video games — all of which Frank recognized and/or had played — until their fingers blister) and opens the email. He starts downloading the entire contents of the email (images encrypted with intel) into his brain, unwittingly, and wow! What a hard drive the ex-roommate’s PDA must have had! Several hours later, Chuck is all full of info, so he passes out, and Morgan finds him.

They go to work. They are both in the Geek SquadNerd Herd at Best BuyBuy More. Chuck has a Nerd Herd VW Bug. Morgan has broken one of the store computers (for sale) by downloading porn from a famous porn star’s website. He’s like, I just can’t get enough of her. And that website contains a very bad virus that wipes hard drives. Morgan has now destroyed the store computer and his own.

A hot girl comes in and asks for Chuck to fix her cell phone. He does, and she is keenly interested. He *is* pretty cute. Outside, though, Casey is waiting (he has left DC to come to LA and find Chuck), because he and the NSA want to capture Chuck alive and find out what he knows. Sarah (hot girl) turns out to be CIA, and she wants him alive too, but her boss has said to kill Chuck if he tries to run.

A ninja comes into Chuck’s house and fights him and Morgan over his computer. Chuck is like, “No! Anything but the computer! Here! Take my friend, but don’t hurt the computer!” I feel ya, Chuck. The computer falls off a shelf that Morgan installed, and the man-shaped ninja leaves (he’s pretty tall and burly). Chuck is heartbroken about the computer. The ninja gets in the car to drive away, and Sarah pulls off her ninja mask. Frank says, “That ninja was not a girl,” and we rewind to reinforce the truth. She’s a shapeshifter! She was a man inside the house but turned into a girl when she got in the car! Chuck might feel ooked out by that later.

Chuck sees a creepy guy at a warehouse store and sees flashes of the guy in his brain.

Chuck and the Sarah (I guess all pretty blondes are so-named), go on a date. Chuck calls his sister’s boyfriend Captain Awesome, because he’s awesome. Hey, y’all can call me that. Captain Awesome. Sarah says that she comes with baggage (she’s just gotten out of a relationship — her partnership with Bryce, whom she calls Bruce for purposes of ineptly discreet conversation), and Chuck says he can be her own personal baggage handler. He’s so corny! I heart him. Sarah wants to know about Chuck’s baggage, and he ends that part of the convo really quick so his sister won’t hate him.

They walk down the street after dinner. Sarah doesn’t really like music or know any bands, and just as she tells Chuck this must be his worse date ever, he sees a police convoy and has flashes again, and they include the scary guy from the store. Chuck finally tells Sarah he’s had much worse dates, like back in the eleventh grade. And he doesn’t date much. Casey is watching Sarah and Chuck stroll down the street. He tells his partner that he can kill “the CIA skirt.”

Chuck and Sarah go into a club, and she looks at him endearingly. There are men in the club looking around, and Sarah recognizes them. She drags Chuck onto the dance floor. Unbeknownst to Chuck, Sarah is throwing knives and her poisoned hairpins at spies behind Chuck’s back. Casey is watching, impressed with Sarah. Sarah drags Chuck out of the club and breaks into his Geek SquadNerd Herd car because he won’t give her the keys. She yells at Chuck to jump in, because Casey and his people are coming in a Suburban. They have a car fight down the street, and Sarah (driving backward) ends up backing the Nerd Herd car down a flight of stairs. Two kids watching from above as she drives down the stairs: “Whoa. Computer emergency.” That made me laugh heartily.

Sarah and Chuck come to a stop, and she tells him who Casey is and that the NSA wants to kill Chuck. Chuck’s like, “I just work for the Nerd Herd. Maybe someday I’ll be assistant store manager, but I don’t even know if I want that job.” Haha. Casey broadsides their stopped car. And those are some good airbags. They are unscathed, and Sarah drags Chuck out of the other side of the car. Chuck trips over his own bumper, and while he’s down, Casey aims the suburban at Sarah, and she throws her knife at a button that activates an emergency barrier (it’s so cool that they put those buttons out in the open where just anyone can play with them!). Casey’s team crash into the barrier.

Sarah calls CIA for evac and rushes Chuck up to the roof of a nearby building. En route, she asks Chuck how well he knows Bryce. He’s like, you know Bryce? What? Is he gonna steal you from me, too? Sarah tells Chuck they worked together at the CIA, and Bryce went rogue. She wants to know if Chuck’s been contacted by Bryce. He tells her about the email and the flashy pictures. She looks unnerved at the part about flashy pictures and Chuck’s like, “Was I not supposed to look at them? They weren’t porn! I promise, not porn!” He doesn’t really say the part about porn.

Sarah tells Chuck she may have to aim her gun at Chuck, but don’t freak out. Casey joins them on the roof, and he says the NSA wants Chuck. Sarah points her gun at Chuck and says the CIA wants him, Casey pulls his on Sarah, and Chuck starts freaking out.

On the roof, Casey threatens them both, and Chuck decides maybe he should just jump off the roof. When he gets to the edge, he sees a building that triggers more flashes, and he realizes there’s an assassin who’s going to kill a NATO general. He tells Casey and Sarah that he saw a Serbian demolitions expert at the Large-Mart. And he lists a bunch of other secrets that he’s been remembering, such as the fact that the bomb that will kill the general is in the hotel across the street. Casey says, huh? Sarah says, you know stuff! Casey says, can we stop the bomb? Chuck says, please just call Bryce instead. Kthxbai. Sarah says, Bryce is dead! He died sending the secrets to you. Casey, who apparently doesn’t get that if you fire a bullet into the air, it will eventually have to come down, fires his gun into the air to get their attention. Dude! At least fire it at the concrete roof you’re standing on! Or you could… yell “hey” real loud. Dummy. Casey wants to know if they can pretty please diffuse the bomb now. Chuck says the general is already on stage making a speech (according to the schedule).

At the hotel, the Serbian dude has wheeled a cart of food up front, right in front of the general. They tell Chuck to wait in the lobby because he’s too valuable to risk, but to show Casey and Sarah the fastest way to find the general, he just starts running, and they follow. They find the bomb, and it’s connected to a laptop running down a timer. Casey and Sarah try to figure out the bomb as the room clears. Chuck’s phone rings — it’s Morgan — and Morgan starts rambling about various things, including that his computer has a case of the Demovas (Irene Demova is Morgan’s porn star). Chuck starts typing on the laptop to get a dos override and says, “Mr. Bomb, meet Mr. Internet.” He types Irene Demova (sounds a lot like Irina Derevko) into the search engine, and Casey says, “He’s looking for porn!” Haha, that’s funny because it means Casey is very familiar with Irene Demova. Chuck hits enter, and the computer goes all fuzzy, killing the computer at… wait for it… 0:01. Yay!

Chuck starts freaking out after he realizes he could have died. Casey tells him not to puke on the C-4.

Casey and Sarah fight over Chuck. Casey says they can throw him in a padded cell and wait for him to break. Sarah says Chuck has friends and a sister. Chuck walks up and says if they don’t leave his family out of it, he’s out. He tells them that *they* need *him* and takes his leave. He goes to the beach and sits there all night. Sarah watches him. They talk, and Sarah says Chuck will go back to his life and his family, and CIA will protect him, and Chuck will work with them. Well, he’d better get hazard pay! She tells him he has to trust her.

Chuck goes home to sister, Morgan, and Captain Awesome, and Sarah goes to her hotel room, where she scrolls through pictures of herself and Bryce in Cabo. She’s sad. Chuck goes in and applies to be assistant manager at Best BuyBuy More to the tune of something very Sergio Leone — he’s facing off with his store nemesis while he walks in to apply. The manager tells Chuck to go train the new guy. It’s Casey. Sarah is shopping there, and Chuck sees her ring, and he has flashes of Sarah taking on three guys, killing them all, and shooting out the camera. Chuck tells himself not to freak out.

We loved the pilot.