| Chuck Versus the Tooth | |
| Season 03, Episode 16 | |
 | |
| Air Date | May 10th, 2010 |
| Writer | Phil Klemmer |
| Director | Daisy von Scherler Mayer |
| Previous | Chuck Versus the Role Models |
| Next | Chuck Versus the Living Dead |
- "Stand up and walk out of here quietly, or I'll kill ya and drag you out of here, your choice."
- ― Casey
Chuck Versus the Tooth is the sixteenth episode of the third season of Chuck, which aired on May 10, 2010.
Synopsis[]
Chuck struggles with disturbing dreams and believes his most recent one predicts danger for a visiting head of state. Chuck is sent to meet with psychiatrist, Dr. Leo Dreyfus (Christopher Lloyd).
Meanwhile, Ellie gets surprising news and Anna Wu (Julia Ling) returns to the Buy More to see Morgan.
Full Story[]
During some down time, Chuck and Sarah are watching TV when he dozes off, when he suddenly wakes up from a dream, apparently learning that Zamibia's president is going to be assassinated at a concert.
Chuck and Sarah getting comfortable
He wakes up Casey and General Beckman to inform them of his theory, but they find it hard to believe a dream, so Beckman sends Chuck to a CIA psychiatrist, Dr. Leo Dreyfus, who is informed about the Intersect 2.0. Dreyfus theorizes that the stress the Intersect is putting on Chuck's brain is detrimental to Chuck's mind and therefore, he can't be cleared for duty. Chuck can't let the perceived threat go, however, and convinces Morgan to help him, and attend the opera.
The two friends then go to the opera, patiently watching the president of Zamibia. Chuck soon nods off, and has another dream, in which he sees the dignitary's physician Dr. Kowambe, strangling him. He leaves Morgan with a Tranq Gun while he tries to stop the physician. Meanwhile, Sarah and Casey, had figured out where they were. Casey used Morgan's own tranq gun against him, while Chuck manages to convince Sarah to help him. He flashes on one of Dr. Kowambe's teeth and realizes it's fake, acting as a Ring intelligence and knocks it out. This results in his confinement to CIA psychiatric ward for evaluation, the ward filled with various spies who cracked on the job.
Beckman is annoyed that the U.S. President had to make a formal apology to the dignitary in his sovereign country. She tells Team Bartowski that Chuck has to be put in a facility, under observation. She promises that they will do everything they can for him.
On their first visit to Chuck, he shows them the tooth he knocked from Kowambe's mouth and asks them to analyze it. Unfortunately, the test proves that the tooth is just an ordinary tooth. Worse, Kowambe has tracked Chuck down, intent on finding out how Chuck found him out. It turns out, Chuck was right but knocked out the wrong tooth. The physician injects him with a psychotropic to make him talk, while at the same time makes him woozy enough that even with his Intersect flashes, he can't even hit his foe. One of the patients, Lewis, tries rallying the other disturbed spies, only for them all to be tranqed by Kowambe's men. Fortunately, Sarah and Casey arrive to save Chuck after they convinced Dreyfus to help him.
Beckman confirms that Kowambe was involved with illegal organ harvesting and experimentation and he was going to report his findings to a Ring operative. Though this proves Chuck's story, he is sent back to Dreyfus. Though he is cleared, the danger of the Intersect eventually damaging his mind is still of great concern. When he gets home, before he can tell Sarah about his condition, she tells Chuck she loves him for the first time. In the end he decides not to burden her.
Chuck then has recurring images of shooting Shaw. Another dream about Shaw, reveals him in a hospitalized environment, where he shows the bullet wounds on his body are no longer there, then tries to choke Chuck out.
Meanwhile, Morgan's ex-girlfriend Anna Wu has returned to town to visit him. The dateless duo Lester and Jeff tried to hit on her, but she is more concerned with talking to Morgan. Throughout the episode, she tries to talk to him, but he constantly put off talking to her as he is far too occupied with helping Chuck on his missions.
Morgan has changed
Near the end of the episode, Anna finally has her talk with Morgan. She was trying to give Morgan back his stuff from Hawaii, and tries to reconcile with him, considering how much he had changed. He rejects Anna's attempts at reconciliation, realizing Anna only wants him because she thinks she cannot have him.
Meanwhile, Ellie who is trying to help Devon recover from apparent malaria, runs into Justin Sullivan, who claims to be in Burbank looking for her. A rogue CIA agent, he says he's looking for her father Stephen Bartowski and manipulates her into thinking that Casey is a double agent. Ellie is somewhat convinced when she sees Casey's stash of guns when she knocked at his door. She tries telling this to Devon, who, wary of exposing her to Chuck's secret life, tries to dismiss it. Fully convinced of Justin's story, she is willing to help him find her father.
Guest Stars[]
- Brandon Routh as Daniel Shaw
- Scott Holroyd as Justin Sullivan
- Christopher Lloyd as Dr. Leo Dreyfus
- Bonita Friedericy as General Diane Beckman
- Allan Louis as Dr. Martin Kowambe
- Julia Ling as Anna Wu
- Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs as President Jakaya Kuti
- Kevin West as Merlin
Quotes[]
- Chuck: Remember, Morgan, my code name is Charles Carmichael.
- Morgan: Yeah, I got it, I got it. Mine's Cobra. Let's do this.
- Chuck: Great, I'm on a mission with Cobra. Maybe I am going crazy.
~
- Sarah: No, you don't understand. He's not like other people. He is...incredibly special.
- Dr. Leo Dreyfus: Especially to you, I gather.
- Sarah: He needs to be okay. I - I need him to be okay. I'd like to go to the hospital tonight to talk to him. Try to figure this out. Help him somehow...Please, I love him.
- Dr. Leo Dreyfus: Ever tell him that?
- Sarah: Please, Doctor, I am begging you.
- Dr. Leo Dreyfus: You're not the only one. [John Casey appears]
~
- Chuck: Giant needle very bad...bad; colored liquid even worse!
Music[]
- Flo Rida - "Right Round"
- Beethoven - "Ode to Joy"
- The Gaslight Anthem - "Here's Looking at You Kid"
- Dr. Dog - "Jackie Wants a Black Eye"
Trivia[]
- While Chuck and Sarah are watching the movie "Spies Like Us" Chuck talks about Chevy Chase who has appeared on the show as [Ted Roark].
- "Dr. Leo Dreyfus" is a portmanteau drawn from "What About Bob?", where Richard Dreyfus plays a psychiatrist named Dr. Leo Marvin.
- There are Rorschach images playing on the TVs in the Buy More during the scene when Casey tells Morgan about where Chuck is. The Rorschach test is a common test used in psychiatry to assess a patient's personality and/or emotional state.
- Morgan's quote to Devon, "fear is the mind killer" is drawn from the classic sci fi novel, Dune.
- Lawrence Hilton Jacobs who played the President of Zamibia, was a former Sweathog, Freddie Washington, from the sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter.
- Christopher Lloyd played Dr Dreyfus, and Zachary Levi expressed delight in being able to call him "Doc" throughout the episode, which was the name of Lloyd's iconic 'Doc' Brown character from the Back to the Future franchise.
- The psychiatric ward that Chuck is admitted to, and its patients are a reference to the 1975 movie, "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", in which Christopher Lloyd plays one of the psychiatric patients.
- This episode marks the final appearance of Anna Wu . She is never seen or mentioned again after this season .