Reviews @ PXDCO

Handler and Handled

So in 1983, Jeff of the Buy More is the Ricky Bobby of Missile Command videogaming, with a dead-thing looking mullet. He had women, glory, and so many tasty options. Like he does now, facing off with the vending machine, paralyzed with indecision, to Morgan’s annoyance. Morgan’s just dropped some Cheetos for him when Big Mike pops in to tell them to wrangle Chuck to work. The Head Nerd Herder is still dozing in his suit and faux Kermit-takes-Manhattan mustache, having apparently spent the evening as “Francois.” He stows the identity, loses the dinner jacket, and makes to leave. Ellie and Awesome flag him down, reminding him that he forgot something. He pauses, peels off the fake mustache, and nearly pees in relief when Awesome hands him a ginseng protein breakfast shake. It is good for yang energy, Awesome tells us, as well as wang energy, should you have one in need of tending. Ellie asks where Chuck was until 4AM, and he lies handily about playing video games with Morgan. Ellie: Neato, now please stop wasting your life (see Ellie lecture #42A).

Big Mike has brought in an efficiency expert Emmett Milbarge to whip the lethargic staff into a frenzy of retail power. It is clear this may be a futile effort. Lester he deems a kiss-ass, Morgan untrainable, and Anna potentially a prostitute. Lester says that in times of trial, he asks WWCD: What would Chuck do? Anna says the chain of command is Chuck, everyone else, and then maybe Jeff. When all the Buy More peons are asked who, ultimately, is the big man on campus, the answer is unanimously Chuck.

Morgan tells Chuck to be wise re: Emmett; he covered for his friend by making up a gallstone issue. Just as Emmett and Chuck finally meet, Chuck flashes on a random, vaguely threatening customer who brings up images of mushroom clouds, the words Somalia training camps, and nuclear weapons training. Chuck pretends an attack of gallstones and tries to sneak in Casey’s general direction, randomly bobbing his head over aisles in a lame, yet hilarious and cute, attempt to avoid detection. Alas, the vaguely threatening guy catches him and shows him a photo of Ricky Bobby Jeff. After a moment of horror and hesitation, Chuck says that Jeff doesn’t work in this Buy More. The guy leaves, and Chuck looks back at Jeff, downing Cheetos from the bag. He furrows his brow, dumsquizzled.

In the Orange Orange Ops Center, Casey tells Chuck the bad guy’s name, but I shall call him Global Terrorist, as Chuck does, because I cannot understand what Casey’s saying. Chuck wants to know what he’d want with Jeff. Sarah explains that they need Chuck to hang out with Jeff and get to know him and see if he flashes on anything. Chuck: I cannot hang with the subspecies of mutant that is Buy More Jeff. He does sort of look like an uncute Fraggle. Anyway. Before Chuck can protest too much, Ellie arrives upstairs to talk to Sarah without Chuck around. Casey turns off the video, telling Chuck it’s impolite to spy. Upstairs, Sarah tells Ellie that Chuck’s going to hang out with Jeff that night. Ellie, horrified, tells Sarah that it’s time they talked.

Chuck bypasses Emmett to do recon on Jeff. He invites Jeff to get a beer. Jeff: “No thanks. I could be enticed to grab a dozen beers, however!” In the background, Morgan and Lester watch nervously as Chuck invites Jeff to hang at the Buy More (in lieu of Jeff’s place and his ferret). They party in the entertainment lounge while Emmett concludes that the Buy More is void of intelligent life. Jeff’s entertainment: a video montage of him stalking Anna to the smooth tunes of “All Out of Love” by Air Supply. He steps out to change into his drinking (parachute) pants, and Chuck radios to Casey to get him the eff out, to no avail.

Ellie tells Sarah she’s worried something’s going on with Chuck. She credits Sarah with how well Chuck was doing for a while, but now he’s regressing to the Morgan years: no confidence, no life. She tells Sarah that he was only 12 credits shy of a full degree at Stanford. She knows she sounds like a mom, but she just wants to know that she has nothing to worry about.

Chuck and Jeff shotgun beers. Emmett is disturbed. Chuck tells Jeff about the weird guy with the weird picture. Jeff says it must have been one of his fans. He puts in a video for Chuck, something he’s never shown anyone. “Please don’t be a porno, please don’t be a porno,” Chuck chants. We see Jeff win the Missile Command championship, and Chuck recognizes the game, saying he kicked ass at it. Jeff says he was the best. In the video, he receives the trophy from Mr. Morimoto, the game’s creator and chief engineer for Atari games. Chuck’s eyes cross and he sees satellite images and the Japanese flag at the sight of Mr. Morimoto. Jeff promptly passes out, just as the bad guys are arriving. Casey tries to extract Chuck, who insists on bringing Jeff. Casey says that if Jeff boots in his car, he’ll wish they left him for the terrorists.

Sarah tells Ellie that Chuck is like a duck: he looks like he’s gliding along, but under the surface, his feet are pedaling away like mad. She knows he’s a mature, responsible guy. Cue Chuck, arriving with Jeff over his shoulder. He deposits Jeff on the couch, where he wakes up just long enough to be lewd at the girls before passing out again. Sarah, to herself: Could he not help me out JUST A LITTLE?

Jeff awakes, frightening Ellie in the kitchen. He gives her a card: “My name is Jeff and I’m lost.” His address is printed on the back, but Chuck has already called a cab for him. After he’s out the door, Ellie starts on Lecture 42B: All Your Proud Moments Were At Stanford. She encourages him to go back and finish, because if the world were going to end today… Chuck assures Ellie that he still has the same goals and that the world won’t end.

Lester and Morgan are panicking like 13-year-old girls at Jeff and Chuck’s new closeness. Sarah pulls Chuck away from his new BFF so he can get the new information from Casey on Morimoto: not only did he design Missile Command the game, he designed missiles for Japan and commands them now via satellite, but he hasn’t been seen in years. The Global Terrorist was just seen at Morimoto’s office. They don’t know how Jeff’s involved yet, but Sarah says that it’s the least of their concerns if they don’t secure Morimoto and the still-active satellite. Chuck has a plan: he and a Nerd-Herded Casey arrive at Atari to fix the virus that Chuck’s sic’d on their network. Except, the nerds at Atari want nothing to do with the Nerds from the Buy More, at least until Sarah arrives in a Britney version of the Nerd Herd uniform. Her short short skirt and low low top stun the Atari nerds, allowing Chuck and Casey to head upstairs; once recovered, the nerds compete to fix the virus and impress Sarah. Chuck is equal parts insulted, turned on, and puzzled.

Morimoto’s office is locked with a magnetic key code; Casey leaves to find another entrance so that Chuck can sing about how creepy life is and also be locked into the room by Global Terrorist. The office is all foggy and strange, and Morimoto is playing Missile Command. Chuck’s first question is not “what is going on,” but “are you listening to Rush?” Turns out that Morimoto hid the activation codes to the missile in the kill screen part of the game—every game—and he’s the only one who can access them because the math is so complex. “It’s like the music of the universe,” he says. Casey busts in through the ceiling, telling Morimoto to put his hands up. He says he can’t, and Chuck asks why he’s still playing the game if the terrorists are gone. Casey tweaks to it, and they both check the back of the machine, where a bomb is counting down to zero. Morimoto tells the boys to save themselves, and they manage to do that just as the whole machine blows.

General Beckman tells the team they’re off the case now that it’s down to shooting the satellite out of the sky. Chuck’s not comfortable with this, especially when the down sides are civilian casualties and missing it altogether, which would lead to missile detonation and World War III. He suggests playing to the kill screen and getting to the code, which he thinks Jeff can do. The general tells Casey to liaise with the Air Force, for shooting it down, while Chuck does what he can. Either way, the satellite is coming down. Chuck immediately talks to Jeff about the game, but he’s reluctant. Chuck “reminds” him about what he said the other night about how tired he was of his mundane Buy More life, how he had this great gift he wanted to share. “You were very compelling,” Chuck assures him. Jeff agrees to play, but he has demands: two bottles of grape cough syrup, a pound of brown-free M&Ms, his lucky game from the Gas ‘n Sip in Tarzana, and Anna in a hula skirt to fan him with palm fronds, since he gets sweaty when he plays. He also wants a crowd of his old fans. Casey thinks they’d all be in their forties with jobs and kids and lives, but behind Jeff’s back, Chuck shakes his head. Hee.

Chuck carts the game into the store, asking Morgan for help. Morgan’s all, why don’t you ask your new friend, bitch? Chuck begs Morgan, reminding him about why he’d be so great at organizing the whole exhibition: president of the high school AV club, roadie for Mamma Mia!, owner of a personal smoke machine. Morgan agrees, laughing that Jeff is a loser. The entire Buy More clubs together to get everything organized while Chuck puts the word out to Jeff’s old fans, who are excited enough to leave their jobs, games, and couches to assemble en masse at the Buy More. It’s even made the local news, which keeps getting snowy and staticky. This sends Chuck cross eyed, and he immediately phones Sarah. He says that the terrorists are using a TV station in LA to control the satellite. Casey prepares in the command center to take out the satellite with an Air Force intercontinental ballistic missile while Sarah heads off to face the terrorists. Casey’s like, really? She tells him pissily that she trusts Chuck.

Jeff reaches the stage, who chokes. “I can’t handle the math,” he tells Chuck. He passes out. Morgan, Anna, and Lester deal with the agitated crowd while Chuck, in a back room, tries to wake Jeff. He tells the unconscious dude to wake up or WWIII is going to happen, and he realizes that Ellie might not have been too far off the mark: the world might end that day. He calls her immediately and tells her to get out of town, go to Palm Springs, anything. She asks what’s gotten into him. He says that he knows he’s been a disappointment, and he wants her to be proud of him, but he ran out of time. He says he loves her and hangs up. Ellie asks Awesome if he thinks her brother’s on drugs. “That’d explain a lot,” he says. At the Buy More, Morgan tells Chuck that if the assembled dorks don’t get video game greatness, they’ll riot. So Chuck takes the stage to give them greatness. (His middle name? Irving.)

Sarah breaks into the TV station while Chuck plays. Emmett arrives at the Buy More, horrified at the abomination he sees. Chuck loses, prompting boos and catcalls of “you suck, Bartowski!” Chuck looks back, sees a member of the crowd wearing a Rush shirt, and flashes: Rush is the music of the universe. He realizes that the mathematical pattern underlying the game is the same as the music of Rush. He hollers for Morgan and asks him to cue up Rush on his iPod. Chuck plays in concert with “Tom Sawyer” while Sarah fights terrorists and Casey prepares launch codes. Fight fight fight. Play play play. Sarah gets Global Terrorist by the short hairs, with a knife to his throat, and asks for the codes as Chuck nears the kill screen. Just as Casey and the Air Force are synchronizing their detonation doomafloppies, Chuck reaches the password and calls Sarah with less than 40 seconds to go. Sarah punches it into the terrorists’ console. Even Casey must say “damn” at the knowledge that Chuck has diverted the satellite and saved the day. He faces the crowd of nerds, rejoicing to be king of them all.

Emmett is the new assistant manager of the Buy More. He is a surgeon there to mend the sick branch of the Buy More. The disease he’s out to excise? Chuck Bartowski. Who leaves the meeting to go find Jeff, brooding on the loading dock. Chuck says he got lucky; Jeff congratulates him, saying he’s glad it was Chuck. Being on top can be a bitch, the feeling that the whole world is gunning for you. “I can imagine,” Chuck says. Jeff asks what the kill screen was like, then changes his mind. Chuck takes off, leaving Jeff to be sad all alone.

At home, Ellie rushes to hug her brother and tell her how proud she is. Not over Missile Commander, but the package that’s just arrived in the mail carrying his Stanford diploma. Sarah told them about how he’s been taking online courses without their knowledge to finish his degree. Chuck’s puzzled, but plays along. He heads out back to where Sarah’s waiting. She tells him that the diploma is 100% real; he graduated thanks to his exceptional field service. Decrypting satellite codes? Electrical engineering. Running away from exploding games of Missile Command? Physical education. Sarah tells him he earned it. He thanks her very seriously and sincerely. She points out a falling star on the horizon; the Air Force is bouncing Morimoto’s satellite out of the atmosphere, burning it up. She tells him to make a wish: “It’s yours.”

At the empty Buy More, Jeff steps up to Missile Command for one last go around.