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.”
No comments:
Post a Comment