No, we didn’t forget to watch Chuck this week. I just really wanted to make sure that I had the right answer to this week’s quandary, so I’m calling on you guys for help.
What I was curious about was this mythological triangle-shaped floppy disk. When items are referred to on Chuck, normally they exist in some capacity in the real world, but I had never heard of a triangle-shaped floppy disk. Floppy disks, to jog your memory, are magnetic storage devices that use to store information for your computer.
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About the episode, I’m still not sure what side of the battle Linda Hamilton – who plays Chuck’s mother Mary Ellen Bartowski – is on. Mama Bartowski claimed that all the information needed to prove she was innocent was on a triangle-shaped floppy disk that could only be read on a computer called Faylinks XR12, and that disk was in the possession of Gregory Tuttle aka Alexei Volkoff aka James Bond aka Timothy Dalton.
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At the last minute, Chuck takes the disk to his father’s secret bunker (because Dad happened to have this very computer needed to read the disk), only to find out it was blank and that his mother was double-crossing him. Right when you think his mom is the worst person in the world, Mother Bartowski lets Chuck and Sarah escape exploding doom, keeping the audience guessing if Mrs. B is a good or bad gal.
(More on Techland: Analyzing Chuck: Can Images Strike Fear?)
But, back to this floppy disk. I called countless computer science professors who couldn’t remember seeing a triangle-shaped floppy disk, although they did recall strangely shaped CDs and floppy disks about four feet wide by five feet long.
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I then called the professionals: IBM, the inventor of the floppy disk. Everyone from members of their press department, new hardware developers and so-called “old dogs” who still plug away at the company have never seen one. I’m concluding that this so-called triangle-shaped floppy disk doesn’t exist – however I’m willing to be proved wrong. Have any of you come across one?