Recap / Chuck S 3 E 11 Chuck Vs The Final Exam

Casey: You took the test last night and you passed?
Chuck: Oh yeah. With flying colors, man.
Casey: [...] Are you sure you finished the test?

Sarah and Shaw must grade Chuck on his last test before officially becoming a CIA operative. Casey struggles to adapt to civilian life.

Trope Flash:

• Actor Allusion: Lester calls Casey a "make-believe military tough guy" and Jeff calls him "an animal," referencing Full Metal Jacket.
• Call-Forward:
  • Chuck says he has "the most vivid dreams" sometimes, referencing the unexpected side effects of using the Intersect he will encounter later in the season.
  • We're treated to a Flash Back to Sarah's Red Test, where she killed a woman in Paris. That woman, and Sarah's killing of her, become very important in a couple of episodes' time.
• Deadly Euphemism: A spy's Red Test is the one where they kill a target.
• How We Got Here: The episode opens with a man fleeing through a train yard, before finally being chased down and shot, apparently by Chuck.
• Innocently Insensitive: Chuck telling Sarah he "wouldn't have got here without [her]" when she's about to tell him to kill someone.
• Let Us Never Speak of This Again: Chuck is forbidden by Casey to tell anyone, even Sarah, that he rather than Chuck killed the mole.
  Casey: You need to understand that to Walker, Shaw, and Beckman, you passed the test. You killed Perry. Doing exactly what you were trained to do.
  Chuck: Yeah, except I didn't do it. You did.
  Casey: Chuck, I'm a civilian. Which means, technically, what happened tonight was murder. And no one can know the truth about that... *ever*... Not even Sarah. She'd be implicated too.
• Moral Event Horizon: Sarah views Chuck's Red Test in this way.
• Naked People Are Funny: After identifying the mole, Chuck loses his towel and is left clinging to the side of a hotel, naked.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Inverted. Casey realises from Chuck's regular cheerful demeanour that he hasn't completed his Red Test yet, because he'd act differently if he'd just killed someone.
• Shout-Out:
  • Casey refers to Jeff as "Fat, drunk and stupid."
  • Anatoli, the Knowledge Broker, uses the alias Ivan Drago.
  • Chuck meets Sarah at a restaurant, apparently for dinner, but she slips him a gun and instructs him to kill someone, as in Nikita.
  • Chuck appears to shoot The Mole, only for the camera to shift and reveal Casey as the shooter, as in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.