She Said: Chuck 5.03, Chuck vs the Frosted Tips

AKA Chuck vs the Best Friend II

We got the party started this week with a new opening line: “I’m Chuck and here’s what’s been going on in my life lately” – as compared to “I’m Chuck and here’s a few things you should know (or maybe you forgot)”. This change seems designed to highlight the fact that this season is about the conclusion of Chuck’s journey. It was and remains his story. This entire episode was very focused on character development and relationships, with insight into Casey, Chuck, Morgan, Sarah, Awesome and even Jeff. The spy subplot was definitely secondary and not terribly well fleshed out, but the character stuff kept me occupied enough not to care too much.

One of the major things that struck me about this episode was the continued growth in Sarah’s character. Whereas previously Chuck was the romantic wanting everyone else to date and find true love (he instigated Casey’s attempting to reconnect with Ilsa in Undercover Lover), now it’s Sarah that seems (overly?) eager to help Casey rekindle his (strange) relationship with Gertrude. Sarah seemed initially quite disappointed when he backed off on the chance to ask Gertrude out and instead placed a bug on her. What a long way she’s come from “spies do not fall in love”! There were many other warm and fuzzy Sarah moments in this episode – when she tried to comfort Chuck about Morgan in their apartment, the great scene in Castle where she and Chuck discuss “seventh grade Morgan”, and her worrying about Morgan and going to Ellie to see if she has any ideas of how to help him. She definitely seems to be much more comfortable in her skin and willing to share her feelings. In this episode she even had a bit of a motherly aspect – all further evidence of how good Chuck has been for her. I also liked what we saw of their relationship in this episode – partners in both life and business, sweet, caring and seemingly very happy together.

On the Casey front, his bizarre courting of Gertrude (now that he has bugged her, he can find out all kinds of things about her before asking her out!) is amusing and reinforces my thoughts from last week that Gertrude has an effect on Casey like none other we’ve seen before. Their fight/dance scene in her office was well done; I was glad that Casey was the one to end up on top in the end. It’s only a shame that Gertrude didn’t end up handcuffed to a bed. Despite enjoying the chemistry between Baldwin and Moss and appreciating the entertaining storyline, a small part of me is sad that it seems like Kathleen has been totally removed from the story since she found out who Casey really was, which seems strange, especially as he becomes closer to Alex. Casey’s heart-to-heart with Alex after Morgan dumped her  (“Do you want me to kill him?”) was one of the sweetest Casey moments of the series so far.

I was happy to see that Chuck was the one to meet with Beckman rather than Casey or Sarah. Yet another example of how he truly is the leader of the team and a competent spy in his own right. He also did a pretty good job of sparring with Morgan after he had defeated all of the Verbanski trainees. This is the Chuck I always hoped we’d see – competent and smart, sans-Intersect – it just took 5 seasons to get here. Moreover, Chuck is still Chuck – as evidenced by his plan to “pants” Morgan, his hope that they’ll be friends again right away, and their very middle school-esque confrontation at Verbanski Corp headquarters. He can be both the superspy and the adorkable nerd we love, the two aren’t mutually exclusive.

Morgan’s arrival at the Buy More was over-the-top but entertaining, from the phallic pod car/motorcycle to the lifts and of course, the “frosted tips”. Gomez did a fantastic job with some pretty great lines and I loved the failed “intervention” in the Buy More office as well as their confrontation at Verbanski. Now that we know that the Intersect glasses were indeed from Decker and not Beckman and designed to bring down Chuck (as some suggested last week), I wonder what the effect would have been had Chuck actually downloaded the Intersect rather than Morgan? I have a hard time believing that Chuck would act in the way that Morgan has because it’s just not his character, whereas Morgan’s behavior was just believable because it exacerbated some character traits (“bringing out [his] inner jerk”) that were always there below the surface.

Meanwhile, in this week’s Buy More plot, Awesome is lured to the store by his own commercial when he realizes that being a stay-home dad might not be quite as awesome as he imagined. After saving Jeff from gassing himself under a running vehicle in the Buy More install bay (where were all the other employees? we never found out), he makes the discovery that much of what we know of Jeff’s personality is apparently due to chronic carbon monoxide poisoning from sleeping in his van with the engine running all the time. It turns out that the non-chronically oxygen-deprived Jeff is a lot different from the Jeff we’ve come to know – bright, considerate, and well-groomed. The “new” Jeff obviously doesn’t sit well with Lester and it looks like their bromance may be headed for a rocky patch.

Overall, I really liked this episode – definitely my favorite of S5 so far. My main complaint is that it seems like the “Darth Morgan” plotline was resolved too easily – he’s threatening to kill them all (and nearly does) but Chuck and Sarah are able to bring him back by talking about seventh grade and then everything is fine? I did appreciate that there will be additional repercussions as demonstrated by the kill order Decker has placed on Morgan, but I still think it seemed too easy from the extreme position that he’d moved to.  This seemingly too quick progression may be due to  “short season plot compression” as we’ve seen in the past.

My other question/complaint is why, after they knocked Morgan out at Verbanski, did they not take him into custody so he couldn’t interfere with their mission? It seems like they just left him there asleep with his pants down, hoping it would end up the same way it did in 7th grade. I would have expected Casey and Sarah to be more proactive than that!

Anyway, it was a fun episode all around and it looks like this week’s mini cliffhanger is going to lead into another fast-moving episode next week, so grab the arm of your couch and hold on tight! What did you think of the episode?

Quick thoughts and memorable quotes:

“Perving out on Gertrude, weird move, Casey” – Chuck, guessing that Casey bugged Gertrude for personal reasons, not corporate espionage

“They’re orthotics, okay, they’re for my posture, and it’s cool, ’cause Cruise wears them” – Morgan (yeah, ’cause that makes it okay!)

“He doesn’t have a dark side” – Sarah, about Morgan (you knew the “dark side” references had to be made eventually!)

“Soy? Who said anything about soy? What do you want me to do? Start lactating?” – Morgan to his personal assistant

“I’m here because you stole our mission…and our moron” – Casey to Gertrude during the confrontation in her office

“The master has taught you well”. – Morgan “I AM the master” – Chuck, as they square off at Verbanski Corp

“If you’ll excuse me, I need to go put my quinoa salad in the fridge” – Jeff, coming in after the best oxygenated sleep of his recent life

“It’s like middle school all over again…until Meredith Lester showed up…” – Chuck, explaining the last time Morgan acted so arrogant and self-involved

Casey kicking Morgan out (where has he been living the last two episodes?) and Sarah insisting that he move in with her and Chuck

Morgan’s Matrix-style bullet dodging (kind of surprised that it took this long for it to come up!)

Does Awesome go around with a lab coat, stethoscope, and hospital gowns in his trunk or something?

Will Chuck and Sarah buy the house with the money from Beckman?