'Chuck': Tricia Helfer is an unfeeling machine. Hey, wait a minute...

"Chuck" gets thrown for a loop when his beloved Sarah is replaced by a by-the-book, tranq-first-ask-questions-later, emotion-suppressing new handler. Look on the bright side, Chuck -- she's still improbably hot! Plus, Awesome gets a bachelor party, and Ellie loses her cool.

General Beckman fears that Chuck's emotional attachment to Sarah -- and presumably Sarah's unspoken love for Chuck -- is getting in the way of their work, so she pulls a "49-B." That entails bringing in a ridiculously good-looking guest star with impeccable sci-fi street cred a supervisory agent to evaluate Sarah's performance. Special Agent Alex Forest (the always-fabulous Tricia Helfer) decides that yes, Sarah is too emotionally involved, which leads to breeches of protocol, which could lead to chaos and the breakdown of society. Sarah gets canned.

Beckman sends Chuck, Casey and Alex to the hospital to check out a patient who may be a terrorist leader's right-hand man. If he is, they'll slip a bug in his pacemaker and use him as a human listening device. This poses some problems: First, he's at Ellie and Awesome's hospital, and both Ellie and Awesome choose to show up that day. Quick, hide! Two, the patient is being watched over by his moderately terrifying personal physician. And three, the security on the surgical area has been stepped up, so in order to go ahead with the pacemaker-bugging plan, they need to filch a surgeon's key card. Alex is all for tranqing Awesome and stealing his card, but Chuck has a better idea.

Chuck decides that getting Awesome drunk at an impromptu bachelor party and pinching the card beats the hell out of, say, beating the hell out of him. Alas, Awesome keeps the card close to his heart -- or at least under his shirt, on a lanyard -- at all times, so Casey's pick-pocketing skills don't help. So Alex goes in undercover -- as a stripper, natch -- and gets Awesome semi-naked. But Awesome, being awesome, stops the "stripper" from taking off his card -- or his pants -- because "I love my fiancée and I would never do anything to jeopardize that." "I guess romance is alive and well and living in Burbank," Alex coos. Then she tranqs him. Heh.

The bug is placed, and all seems well -- but then that scary doc does a bug scan on the patient. He sends his thugs over to Awesome's apartment to get him to take out the bug, and Chuck takes his place. He's divested of his government-issue locator watch and whisked away to a bank vault to remove the bug. Fortunately, Sarah returns (against orders) and figures out where they could be hiding. They storm the bank, but the doc shuts himself, Chuck and the patient in vault. He tries to kill Chuck, and Chuck sprays nitrous oxide in his face, which gives them both the giggles. They bond, Chuck gets the location of the Big Bad Terrorist out of him, and Sarah rescues Chuck.

Back at the Castle, Chuck makes his case for Sarah -- shouldn't my handler be the person who actually keeps me alive? Our emotional connection -- and Sarah's knowledge of me -- is what saved my life. Beckman is convinced, and Alex is sent on her way.

Sarah has one more surprise for Chuck -- she tapped into the government's databases to track down Chuck's dad. He's living in the middle of nowhere in a trailer, seemingly far away from anyone and anything. At first it seems like no one is home, but eventually, the door opens. "Dad?" Cut to black.

The Buy Morons and The Awesomes
Jeff, Lester and Morgan are obsessed with Awesome's bachelor party -- Jeff and Lester have never experienced said nirvana. Chuck resists, then uses them as a diversion to get Awesome's key card. Things are a bit rocky -- NEVER let Jeff hire the strippers -- but pick up when Alex gets there to do her thing. Of course, then there's the tranqing, and Awesome certainly seems to hear Chuck berating Alex for being unable to "keep your stinking CIA darts out of people." Hmmm.

The next day, Jeff and Lester breech bachelor party protocol by looking at pics of the clearly unconscious Awesome being pawed by Alex -- dudes, not in the middle of the store, where Ellie can see you! Ellie is convinced that Awesome indulged in some non-Awesome behavior, and is quite put out when Chuck seems to be covering for her fiancé.

Highlights, thoughts and odds and ends

• Jeff describes bachelor parties as "a mythical place, where booze and women are free. It's Xanadu." Jeff, from what I understand, both the booze and the women have monetary values firmly attached..
• Morgan, Jeff and Lester make a decent abduction team -- first with a practice run on Chuck, then on Awesome himself. Too bad they can be scare off by squirts form a garden hose.
• Beckman appears on Chuck's computer: "Pardon the intrusion," she says. "In this moment, or in life in general?" Chuck responds.
• Casey seems smitten with Alex, at least in part because they share a rather violent approach to dealing with bad guys -- and civilians. Hat makes him standing up for Sarah (and Chuck) later in the episode all the more satisfying.
• Chuck flashes on Alex with she appears -- but does not seem to bring up any robotics diagrams. Curses.
• Rashid Ahmad's assumed name in the hospital is Harry Lime. Hee!
• I'm a little bummed with how they used Tricia Helfer this episode. I loved her turn as Carla in "Burn Notice", where she got to let loose and snark with the best of them. I wish she'd had a little more leeway in this episode, too.