Hey Chucksters!
Who did not love the last episode of Chuck?
I know I did. I mean, can it get any better than Chuck robbing a bank while dressed in a suit??
Boy, Zachary Levi really was rather good looking in this episode wearing that handsome stylish suit.
Am I right ladies?
Alright, let’s get down to business. If you haven’t seen this episode of Chuck and don’t want any spoilers, then read no further because this is going to be a detailed review of Chuck vs. The First Bank of Evil.
We left off last time with Vivian (Lauren Cohan) going to her father’s office and placing her necklace into the base of a horse statue, which turned and revealed a panel in the wall of Alexi Volkoff’s (Timothy Dalton) office. This week we find out what was hidden in that panel.
The episode starts with Vivian finding what looks like a clear bank card behind the secret panel that opened in the wall. When she takes it out, I noticed a little something about the numbers. Being the hardcore Lost fan that I am, whenever I see a string
of numbers that starts with a four, I immediately think of the Numbers from Lost.
Well, it looks like the Chuck prop guys are fans of the show too because the numbers on Vivian’s card are 4815162342 (I can just hear Hurley yelling, “We’re all gonna die!”), which are the Numbers from LOST! It seems like there are a lot of people who were fans of Lost because those numbers seem to be popping up in a lot of random places lately… Like the booking numbers on this Gotham City Police picture of Catwoman drawn by Adam Hughes!
And how even more amazing that Francois Chau guest stars in this episode?! In case you are not a Lost fan, which, let’s face, you SHOULD be, or in case you’ve forgotten, Francois Chau played the doctor in all of the Dharma Initiative’s orientation videos and you may also remember him from Stargate SG-1 (Disclosure)! This leads me to believe that they put the Numbers in this episode as a sort of nod to Lost. It pretty much put me straight into Nerdvanna.
Wow, that was a bit random, but not entirely off topic. Now, where was I…? Oh yes! Vivian finds the card, but has no idea what it is for. A man who turns out to be Volkoff’s lawyer, Riley (Ray Wise), enters and starts reading a letter that Volkoff had written to Vivian. The letter was as follows:
My Dearest Daughter Vivian,
As you know, I have met an untimely demise. I am sorry I was never much of a father. If I could do it over again, I would trade my entire empire for another moment with you, but we can’t relive the past which is why I have groomed you for the future. That card in my safe will help you rebuild Volkoff Industries…
At this point, Vivian interrupts Riley and tells him that she does not want to take over her father’s evil empire. Riley pulls a gun on her and tells her that he can’t allow her to say no and that perhaps she would like to rethink her answer. Vivian knocks his gun away, stabs him in the hand with a letter opener, smashes a vase of dead flowers over his head, grabs the bank card and runs away.
Meanwhile, Ellie (Sarah Lancaster) is trying to help Sarah (Yvonne Strahovski) with her wedding arrangements by starting with the flowers, but Sarah really isn’t feeling it. She basically would just prefer for Ellie to make all the decisions. Ellie tells her that she was overwhelmed with all of the wedding things too, until she went to pick up the wedding bands. 
Once she held them in her hand, she said that everything became real to her. She realized that she was marrying the man that she loved and from then on all of the wedding stuff became magical. She promised Sarah that even though she didn’t know when or how, a moment like this would happen to her. Sarah seemed a bit skeptical.
Chuck and Morgan (Joshua Gomez) talk a little bit about how Morgan is doing since he’s moved out and if he’s found a place to live yet. Morgan tells him that things are going well, but he’s looking for a roommate in order to afford the apartment he wants. Chuck gets a call to head down to Castle where Vivian is waiting. She tells Chuck and Sarah about Riley and shows Chuck the card which he flashes on.
The card is to the First Bank of Macau which is where the CIA assumes Volkoff has all of his money. They need to freeze the account, but to do this, they need an account holder to get through the bank security to access said account. General Beckman (Bonita Friedericy) tells Chuck that Vivian is the perfect asset for this op.
Vivian tells Chuck that she’s had too many guns pointed at her lately and she doesn’t want to do anything for them especially since she doesn’t even know nor have anything to do with her father. Chuck tells her the story about how his dad had been gone for most of his life, but that did not mean that he was not thinking about him while he was gone.
Chuck tells her that if she agrees to help the CIA, then maybe the CIA can help her get the answers to some of the questions she has about her father.
Vivian, Chuck and Sarah go into a new room that I have never seen before that holds every sort of outfit that a spy would ever need with an awesome computer that holographically shows you what you will look like in the outfit you choose.
Then it scrolls through all of the clothes until it finds the outfit and presents it to you to try on. Chuck says that it’s kind of like J. Crew for spies! Needless to say, I want that…
Chuck tells Vivian that she needs to be a little more intimidating, so they choose her a different outfit to put on before they head to the bank. While she is trying that on, Chuck shows Sarah a holographic image of himself in a tux and asks her what she thinks of it. She says that it is a little formal for a bank job, but he tells her he was thinking about it for the wedding.
When Sarah’s response is more like a deer in the headlights, Chuck asks what is wrong. Sarah tells him that the wedding stuff is not her thing and she feels like she’s letting everybody down, but Chuck assures her that she is not.
They see Casey (Adam Baldwin) pass by and they run out to ask him what he’s been up to lately. I can’t remember if I mentioned this in my last report, but Casey was approached by the NSA to head a special operation that takes place in a new bunker inside Castle.
We have no idea what this means yet, but hopefully we will soon! I’m not sure if Casey is not allowed to tell Chuck and Sarah what he is doing or if he just does not want to, but he avoids their questions and starts to run off.
Sarah asks him if he’s going to get ready since they are shipping out soon and Casey tells them that General Beckman put him on a mission of his own, but that he can’t really talk about it. Then he wishes them luck hitting the First Bank of Macau.
Chuck is going to pose as Vivian’s bodyguard or in his words, “I’ll be like your very own Kevin Costner.” Sarah tells Vivian about the people in the bank and that there will be tests that she is going to need to pass in order to access her father’s vault. Once inside the bank though, Chuck is forced to wait outside of the area only for account holders. Vivian decides to go on with the mission even though she will be unprotected inside the vault.
Sarah tells Chuck that there are emergency stairs that will take him to the vault, but he’ll need a keycard. Chuck antagonizes a guard into punching him and when he doubles over from a punch to the gut, Chuck swipes his card and heads downstairs to look for Vivian. While down there he happens to see a room that contains a server that was stolen from the Chinese military.
Vivian gets into the vault where they take a small DNA sample in order to determine that she is in fact Volkoff’s daughter and then she has to answer a few security questions. She has to state her name, her purpose for visiting and whether or not she is working with a law enforcement agency. The first two questions she answers tell her that they are true, but when she answers no to the last question, the computer just shuts down and we think that she has been made.
The bank manager (Francois Chau) comes in and in a very sinister way tells her that she’s passed the tests and Vivian (and all of the audience) breathes a little easier. He gives her Volkoff’s safe deposit box and tells her that her father had once told him that the security box contained his most prized possessions. When Vivian opens the box, all she finds are newspaper clippings and pictures of her from her childhood.
Chuck is still looking for her, but he ends up getting caught by some guards. When Vivian comes out of the vault, she is greeted by the guards and told that her bodyguard was found in an unauthorized section. Vivian improvises and smacks Chuck across the face, asks him if he was trying to steal, takes a gun from one of the guards and shoves it in his face.
She successfully convinces the bank manager that she had no part in Chuck’s snooping around and he asks if she could at least take care of it off of bank property. She drops the gun, takes Chuck into “custody” and tells the bank guys to hand him over to her head of security, Sarah. The manager tells her that at first he didn’t, but now he sees her father in her… What a way to be compared to your father! Sheesh!
Once they are back in Castle, Vivian tells Chuck that she has so many questions now that she knows her father had been watching over her her entire life when before she thought he hadn’t cared at all. Chuck tells her that she deserves some answers to her questions and that he would try and make it possible for her to meet with and talk to her father.
Ellie calls Sarah and tells her that they had been going about the wedding planning all wrong because you don’t build the wedding around the cake or flowers or food, you build it around the dress! Sarah seems to like this idea and tells Ellie that she is going to go and do some research right now. She heads down to that magical room with all of the clothes (that should really reside in every woman’s room and not just in the fictitious world of Chuck) and starts trying on dresses. She tries on quite a few before she finds one that she falls in love with and we see the little holograms of her and Chuck in their wedding attire and, just like Ellie said it would, it finally hits her that she is going to marry Chuck. She gets a little teary, but mostly smiley. 🙂
General Beckman (Bonita Friedericy) tells Sarah and Chuck that the First Bank of Macau is using the servers that Chuck saw to basically turn themselves into a black market stock exchange to launder money for various criminal organizations. She says that they need Vivian to go back into the bank and manually upload a digital tag to their network so that the CIA can get intel on all of these organizations.
She asks Chuck if he can get “the asset” to do this and he says that he thinks he can if the CIA will allow her to see her father. Beckman agrees to these terms and then tells Chuck and Sarah that they are going to need a diversion in order to keep the bank from knowing what Vivian is doing. When Sarah asks her what she had in mind, she tells them to gear up because they are going to rob a bank!
Since Morgan doesn’t have a place to live right now, he sets up the couch in the Buy More as a bed, but while he is there he sees these two workers going down into Castle and talking about installing a TR-476 (which I think is a some sort of radio device, though I am not exactly positive about that).
Morgan, being Morgan, decides to do a little of his own spy work. He goes down into Castle and follows the workers to a new room called “Zone 6” where he sees Casey inside. Casey catches him and asks him what he saw, but Morgan plays it off like he did not see or hear anything.
Back at the bank Vivian goes into the vault and Chuck and Sarah start their bank robbery, Matrix style. They go through the metal detectors, setting them off with all of the guns they have hidden under their long, ankle-length coats, then Sarah throws off her coat and starts shooting up the place. After a few good Intersect spy moves, they subdue all of the guards and tell everyone to stay down.
In the vault, Riley shows up and tells Vivian that the CIA is not on her side and that they are just using her, that Chuck is using her, but she doesn’t believe him. He tells her that they will never let her see her father and then he gives her a card with his number on it and tells her to call him when she wants to really find out about her father. He also gives her the necklace her father left her that she had forgotten in his office when she ran away from Riley.
Out in the lobby, Chuck and Sarah are still robbing the bank, but they are also talking about wedding things. Usually I’m a little angry when they start throwing personal issues and things around during a mission, but I was too tickled with this scene to be even the slightest bit upset. It worked perfectly here emphasizing once again that when the Chuck writers nail it, they REALLY nail it! In fact, I loved it so much; I am going to write out the next scene just for you guys.
Chuck – Keep filling those bags people, LET’S GO, LET’S GO, LET’S GO! (to Sarah) Having fun?
Sarah – A little. (smiles)
Chuck – Kind of takes your mind off the whole wedding thing, doesn’t it?
Sarah – Actually, it hasn’t been so bad, you know? I took you up on your advice and… I found a dress!
Chuck – Heeeeeey!
Sarah – Ellie was right, when I put it on it felt like magic. (to a hostage) Get down on the ground before I BLOW YOUR FREAKIN’ HEAD OFF!
Chuck – I’m so glad you found a dress that’s so awesome and I bet you look gorgeous in it. (to another hostage) Don’t be a hero my friend! I WILL BREAK YOUR FACE!
Sarah – (Keep in mind she is holding two machine guns and is dressed in leather when she replies) Well, it’s actually really pretty and you know what? I never thought I would say this, but I felt like a princess. (To which Chuck just smiles)
I mean, is that the best or what?! I highly encourage you to watch this scene if you haven’t seen the episode yet because honestly, it is amazing. And it has also given me something new to say to people who bother me… I WILL BREAK YOUR FACE! Hahaha!
Vivian finished the digital tag and comes out from the vault yelling that she is unarmed. Sarah takes her “hostage” and they all leave the bank together. They take all of the money they just stole and burn it before going home. Chuck notices that there is something off with Vivian, but when he asks her if everything is okay, she tells him that she’s fine and he doesn’t push it.
General Beckman congratulates the team for a job well done, but when Chuck asks when Vivian will be able to see Volkoff, Beckman tells him that they won’t be able to let her talk to him. Chuck does not take this well stating that he PROMISED her that she would be able to see her father. General Beckman replies that he told his asset what she needed to hear to do the job and that’s what a spy does. Now Chuck has to go and tell Vivian that he basically lied to her before.
I can never understand why in the world the CIA wouldn’t hold up their end of a deal. Are they TRYING to turn people against them? If that were me, I would be so mad that I would not only never trust the CIA ever again, but I’d turn to the other side to find the answers I wanted which is exactly what Vivian does. My guess is that the CIA just successfully created the new head of Volkoff Industries and I bet they are even going to be surprised to find this out, though goodness knows it really shouldn’t come as a surprise in the least…
Once Sarah got into the wedding planning, she REALLY got into it. I mean like turned into a giant Bridezilla and started rampaging through the city got into it… Ellie tells Chuck that she thinks she created a monster and I am inclined to agree. Sarah wants at least one hundred dozen Casablanca Lilies, the cake flown in from Paris and she is going to look into booking a private island for the ceremony. That’s a whole lot of mula. Ellie tells Chuck that maybe he could pick up a few more shifts at the Buy More to pay for it… Or he could just rob a bank. It’s like she knew that he could pull it off! ;D
At the Buy More, Morgan, in a roundabout way, realizes that the stuff he overheard and saw in Castle could give him just the right amount of leverage to force Casey to let him move in with him. It works and just like that, Morgan is bunking with his girlfriend’s father which I personally think is a tad bit odd… Ok, a heck of a lot more than a tad.
Chuck feels really bad about not being able to help Vivian see her father, so he gives her a call. She ignores his call and we see that she is sitting in a car with Riley. She tells him that she is ready to learn the truth about her father. DUN DUN DUUUUUUUUUN!
Yeah, like we didn’t all see THAT one coming. And that was the end of Chuck vs. The First Bank of Evil. A pretty great episode all around. I hope you enjoyed my review and please tune into NBC next week on Monday March 14th for an all new Chuck entitled Chuck vs. The A-Team. We may just see some old faces back at the Buy More! I know I’m excited!
And now for a few of my personal favorite quotes from this episode:
~ Morgan, “I’m growing mentally and emotionally, physically… Not so much physically…”
~ Big Mike (Mark Christopher Lawrence), “Son, when you move into the forest, you can’t complain that the wildlife is making too much noise.” (In response to Morgan being grossed out about being able to hear him and his mother)
~ Morgan typing on his ad for a roommate, “Fabulously bearded man seeks roommate…”
~ Casey, “I’m fine. Let’s hook up later and get facials and chat.” (Said very straight-faced and sarcastically)
~ Chuck, “I WILL BREAK YOUR FACE!” Yes, I know I already mentioned this… Twice… But it deserved another repeat!
Chuck returns on Monday March 14, 2011 in “Chuck Versus the A Team” Be sure to tune in to support Team Chuck! In the meantime we include the full version of Chuck Versus the First Bank of Evil courtesy of NBC!
Thanks to Kenn for audio video and image selection and embedding, and as always, thank you so much for reading and visiting WormholeRiders News Agency. I hope you enjoyed it!
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