Chuck: I was, yeah. But then I realized that - you know we can hate him for the rest of our lives or we can forgive him.
Ellie: It's easier to hate him.
Chuck: Well that may be, but he's all we got left, El. This could be our last chance to be a family.
Chuck and Sarah bring Stephen Bartowski back to LA for Ellie's wedding, but it doesn't go smoothly. Ellie isn't as ready to meet her absent father as she thought, and Stephen is just as eccentric as his children remember, whipping out a pamphlet for Roark Indiutries' upcoming expo while talking about how Ted Roark stole all his inventions. But when Chuck flashes on the pamphlet and realises something is up with RI, he's sent in as a new employee to see if the new line of computers is being hacked for nefarious purposes. However, Jeff and Lester spot Chuck leaving his interview and alert Morgan, who's hurt that Chuck is getting a new job without telling him and brings it up when he comes over for dinner. Ellie is delighted, but Stephen is hurt that his son is going to work for his rival.
At the expo, Chuck flashes on a Fulcrum agent in the crowd, confirming that the computers are compromised. Even worse, Sarah and Casey are unable to access the restricted area, forcing Chuck to sabotage the expo and get fired, and to add insult to injury, he gets tackled and the launch goes ahead anyway. Ellie and Stephen watch the whole thing on Ellie's laptop, Ellie in horror and Stephen with glee. This starts a fight where she accuses him of ruining Chuck's life with his insane vendetta, a fight that gets worse when Awesome tries to intervene.
Back at home, Chuck studies the Intersect plans Orion left for him, convinced it ties back in some way to RI. Stephen comes in to talk about the expo, but when he leaves Chuck spots the site map on his RI employee manual and realises the building layout matches Orion's plans exactly: Roark has an Intersect! However, he's unable to convince Sarah and Casey and is forced to go rogue, sneaking into RI alone to find the Intersect.
While there, he has a surprise; his father is at RI as well, demanding to see Roark and get Chuck his job back. The Fulcrum agent he spotted earlier turns up to "get rid of" the intruder, forcing Chuck to act by shooting the security team with tranq darts. Before Chuck can explain, Fulcrum agent Vincent reappears, recognising both Chuck and his father, who uses a previously-unseen device on his wrist to neutralise the agent. Chuck finally realises the truth: his father is Orion!
The two make their way through the building as Stephen explains how he built the Intersect and then left to protect Chuck and Ellie from being targeted, but came back - first as Orion and then as himself - when he realised Chuck had been forcibly recruited. He confirms that there is an Intersect at RI, and that it can be used, that very night, to help Chuck. However, when they reach Roark's office and try to use the Intersect, it doesn't work. Worse: Ted Roark and a team of Fulcrum agents enter the office and take the pair prisoner, intending to force Stephen to make an Intersect that works.
Roark orders Chuck killed, but Stephen refuses to work if anything happens to him. Roark relents and agrees to let Chuck go. Stephen leads Chuck to the door over his protests, assuring him that he can remove the Intersect without him. He also tells Chuck that he might have been wrong in telling him not to trust his handlers, as Sarah and Casey appear to protect him. Outnumbered by the Fulcrum agents, they're forced to haul a screaming Chuck away as his father is taken.
General Beckman assures Chuck that her best people are on the search for his father. Chuck protests that his team are the best, and that once the Fulcrum Intersect is finished he's obsolete anyway: rescuing his father is the only thing that matters.
Returning home, Chuck meets a concerned Ellie, who tells him gently that their father has disappeared again. She assumes it's because of their fight earlier and pretends not to care, claiming that it's "vintage dad" and only what she expected from him. Unable to tell her the truth, a distraught Chuck can only tell her not to count him out just yet.
Meanwhile, in a bunker at an undisclosed location, Stephen Bartowski works in a lab alone...
Trope Flash:
- Actor Allusion: When Ellie first sees her father, played by Scott Bakula, she says "Pancakes!", a reference to his walking out ten years earlier. He responds with, "Oh boy!", his character's Catchphrase from Quantum Leap.
- Badass Boast: Stephen Bartowski, after revealing that he's Orion.Chuck: My father invented the Intersect!
Stephen: No, no. [Beat] Not the whole Intersect. Just the really cool stuff. - Call-Back:
- The episode follows on directly from Chuck Versus the Broken Heart. Chuck and Sarah have just found Chuck's father, and Ellie and Awesome are still feeling the emotional fallout from the bachelor party.
- Arnold Vosloo is back as Fulcrum agent Vincent, last seen in Chuck Versus the Predator.
- After promising Ellie that he'd find their missing father way back in Chuck Versus the Sensei, Chuck is able to make good on that promise.
- Orion resurfaces after apparently dying in Chuck Versus the Predator.
- The Cloud Cuckoolander Was Right: Chuck and Ellie's dad is full of tall tales, for example that he was in college with famed industrialist Ted Roark, who stole his inventions and used them to get rich. Chuck and Ellie are understandably embarrassed by these assertions, but as Chuck learns by the end, Ted Roark is everything he said and more.
- Daddy Had a Good Reason for Abandoning You: Stephen Bartowski, a.k.a. Orion, was a high-level intelligence asset who realised his invention was being used wrongly. He destroyed all government records of himself, but also had to leave his children and disappear from their lives for their own protection. At the end of the episode, he's forced to abandon them again, letting himself be abducted by Fulcrum to protect Chuck.
- Faux Affably Evil: Ted Roark seems friendly and personable, even taking time to greet a starstruck new employee. He sounds just as friendly when he orders his goons to kill Chuck.Roark: Kill the CIA agent.
Stephen: He's my son.
Roark: Really? Congratulations! I had no idea! [Beat] Kill his son. - Five-Second Foreshadowing: When Vincent reappears, he tells Chuck, "It's good to see you again," before looking at his father and adding, "Both of you." This comes seconds before the revelation that Chuck's father is Orion.
- From Bad to Worse: Chuck and his father reach the office where the Intersect is accessed, meaning to use it, then and there, to de-Intersect Chuck. Only, when they boot it up, it doesn't work. Then Roark comes in with his Fulcrum cronies and takes Stephen prisoner, intending to force him to make an Intersect that does work.
- Idiot Ball: On learning he has both Orion and his son hostage, Roark agrees to let Chuck go when Stephen Bartowski refuses to work otherwise. It doesn't seem to occur to him to take them both and then leverage Stephen by threatening Chuck, which seems like the obvious supervillain thing to do. But then, the rest of the season would go pretty differently if he did that, and it’s vaguely addressed as a Pet the Dog moment for Roark as he insists he’s only "a bit" of a monster.
- Innocently Insensitive: Having just got past the awkwardness of Ellie's abandonment issues, Stephen utterly fails to lighten the mood by asking about Awesome's bachelor party. As this happened a day or so ago in story time, tensions are still high over that one.
- Like Parent, Like Spouse: Her father's reappearance, coupled with the bachelor party disaster, have dragged up some serious trust issues for Ellie. Lampshaded by Stephen when Awesome laments that he seems to have screwed up his whole relationship with one bad night; Stephen assures him that Ellie is afraid of this trope, but she'll forgive Awesome because he's a "real straight arrow" at heart.Stephen: She's just afraid you'll turn out like me. Which, take this as a compliment, seems pretty damn unlikely.
- Obfuscating Insanity: Stephen Bartowski cleverly steers Chuck towards Roark Industries, using his bumbling eccentric persona to shove relevant materials under his nose. First it's a pamphlet advertising the expo that Chuck flashes on, leading to the mission. Later, he leaves the site map on Chuck's employee manual ideally placed for Chuck to notice the building layout exactly matches the Intersect plans.
- Sarcastic Confession: Ted Roark's whole style of humour seems to involve making supervillain-worthy references to his wealth and influence in such a light-hearted way he just has to be kidding... right?
- Unexplained Recovery: How did Orion escape being blown up in a helicopter? Stephen Bartowski glosses over the whole thing.Stephen Bartowski: I've had to "die" quite a few times. It's one of the hazards of being Orion.
- Wham Episode:
- Chuck's father is Orion and made the Intersect.
- Fulcrum have Chuck's father, and are forcing him to build an Intersect for them.
- You Are Better Than You Think You Are: When Chuck jokes that he's going to work for his dream company as a janitor, Sarah tells him that no, he's going in as himself, as he's more than qualified.
- You Have to Believe Me!: Chuck, twice.
- At the expo, he tries to tell Roark that his new computer line has been hacked, but is dismissed.
- After realising Roark is building an Intersect, Chuck takes his theory to Sarah and Casey but they don't believe him. He appeals to Sarah to help him, but she doesn't budge, forcing him to break in alone.
