Chuck - "Chuck Vs. The Frosted Tips"

Season 5, Episode 3

Over the past couple of years, I have grown to hate episodic previews. It’s not that I dislike show’s trying to tease us about what’s coming up, and I appreciate knowing when there will and won’t be an episode next week, or if the show is taking a break. But somewhere along the way, networks leaned a little too much into this concept, as they began revealing too much about the next week’s hook, or, even worse (and in the case of this week’s episode) they destroy what was supposed to be a cliffhanger. Usually, I try to avoid these previews (except for FX and AMC, where it usually doesn’t matter), but NBC likes to tack them on right to the end of the episode, and I was ruined about the truth behind Morgan’s attitude shift.

Okay, maybe the blame isn’t totally on the previews. It was also pretty clear at the end of last week’s episode that Morgan was going off the rails because of some external force, given that he couldn’t remember Indiana Jones references or didn’t care about Trilogy Night. Now, I can’t be entirely sure to which degree these two factors, the promo or the closing minutes, had on my perspective upon entering this episode, but regardless a good long portion of it felt fairly perfunctory to me. The fact that it took Chuck and Chuck so long to come around to the idea of there being something wrong with Morgan besides an out of control ego.

Nor did it help that the show almost seemed to backtrack a bit in the opening minutes, as we saw Morgan again on a mission with the rest of the team, even though he had already offered his services to Verbanski.  I understand that tonight’s episode was meant to explore the dissolving relationship between Morgan and Chuck, but there was too much going on for just about anything to land, and spending that extra time separating the two of them instead of separating them right off the bat felt like a bad move.

It was especially harmful to the supposed-to-be-powerful moment where Chuck/Sarah help Morgan regain his memory by bringing up his up middle school humiliation. In theory, this moment should have been a glorious payoff to feud that had pushed to two friends to the edge, but considering that the conflict was only introduced last episode, and there wasn’t even that much time spent on it in this episode. In the same vein, Morgan’s return to normal felt very anti-climatic, as there was practically no struggle for him to shake off the effects of the tainted Intersect, especially considering how “bad” the show kept telling us Morgan was. (And on that note: What’s to keep Morgan from slipping back into being “evil” or whatever again?)

And much like last week, it was everything that was going on around the edges of the A-plot that held a lot more interest for me. I was far more interested in the reveal that the Intersect glasses that Morgan found weren’t sent by Beckman as originally thought, but instead was a trap set by Decker. I’m not exactly sure what the point of that trap would have been – there was something about how the Intersect was destroying Morgan’s brain, but again, the stakes were properly raised and/or defined – but it at least returned us to the Big Bad that was introduced in the premiere and looks to take us through the finale.

Heck, I’m even somewhat interested in the idea of there being a kill order out on Morgan, even though it gives me some reservations. While I see how this development also connects to the season-long arc, it also has a short lifetime, much like the development of the “bad” Morgan, and that’s the problem. While there does appear to be a long-term arc at play, it also seems as if the show is going to sketch it out through smaller arcs, and while this is sometimes a positive approach for serialized shows to take, the show seems to be calling attention to this fact, and it robs the show of some of its tension. Much like we knew that “bad” Morgan would eventually be overcome, we know that he will also survive the bomb under his car and the kill order against him, and knowing that this just makes all of them feel like stopgap measure before the showdown with Decker.

Chuck started this season with so much potential, but over these past few weeks its squandered most of that. Carmichael Industries no longer has unlimited funds. Morgan’s seem destined to lose the Intersect. Who knows what else is going to happen that will further limit the show possibilities.

Quotes and Other Thoughts:

Oh, right, Casey and Verbanski grew closer over the episode, and while there were some cute moments as Sarah tried to help him snag a date with here, there wasn’t really enough here to really comment on.

The same goes for the….

Buy More Plot of the Week: Awesome, who’s bored taking care of Clara, goes to Buy More, and ends up convincing Lester to stop living out of his car. He of course becomes smarter and less creepy

Ellie/Awesome Plot of the Week: See above.

I can only assume that Morgan’s Matrix-style dodging of the tranq darts was inspired by the fact that Carrie-Ann Moss was guest staring, but that doesn’t make it any less tired.

So, how many episodes before Morgan and Alex are back together? I’m gonna say three.

Jeez, Joshua Gomez has some hairy legs. But given his mad facial hair, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.

“Becky, your core’s really tight.”

“Like a miniature Tom Selleck.”