Now on week three with Morgan as The Intersect, Chuck continues its final season in the same vein as the previous two episodes. Morgan continues to annoy the group (and audience) as The Intersect messes with his mind and ego, only making things worse by becoming a traitor to the team. As everything else in the episode takes a backseat to this storyline, the promise of changes in episodes to come brings hope that the show will come full circle to what it once was by the series finale.
The Peripherals
With family always meaning so much to the Bartowski’s, it has felt pretty weird to be lacking in this department when it comes to the show. Especially when it comes to Ellie and Awesome. I have to say, I have always missed the days in which the Bartowski siblings lived together, but keeping them within close proximity of each other made the change as easy to take as possible. Other than a brief scene between Elle and Awesome, as well as one between Ellie and Sarah later in the show, it does seem as if Sarah Lancaster is getting the short end of the stick when it comes to level of importance. Instead it just seems as if she is solely here to help with the stories at hand, whether it is telling Chuck that the glasses only had one intersect load in them in Episode 1, or talking to Sarah tonight about what’s wrong with Morgan.
I am definitely hoping that she gets brought back in for a little more screen time when Thanksgiving rolls around, at least, but for now the important side of the couple seems to be Awesome as a new stay at home dad. As usual, he lives up to the name as he works around the house, but it doesn’t take long for the chores to get done. And this man does not understand what it means to be a slacker. Long story short, he decides to go into the Buy More to waste time and quickly goes back into work mode by trying to fix Jeff. Based on the end of the episode it turns out that all this time Jeff has only been who he is because of his sleeping conditions; some use noise machines, some breathe car fumes. Can’t really say I want this “normal” side of Jeff to last, and between the two members of Jeffster, Lester has the best Buy More moments as he talks to the baby about eating her cheeks.
A Mission Of Love
With missions of relationships taking precedence over the actual spy side of the show, a lot of the humorous moments remain with Casey. At the top of the show Casey and Sarah are working on an interception mission, and it turns out that it has a little something to do with a talk between the two last week about Casey’s sexy time with Gertrude Verbanski. At some point they came up with the bright idea that Casey would run into Verbanski and then ask her to her favorite place to eat, but unfortunately for Casey it goes about as smoothly as his hung up phone call last week as he loses his confidence in the face of a beautiful woman once again. (Did Sarah really just ask Casey to kiss Verbanski on the cheek? Does she know Casey at all!?)
Planting a bug on her shoulder instead of taking her to dinner is definitely one way to start a relationship, but the sexual tension between the two (even thicker than the tension between Casey and Tricia Helfer’s agent as they cleaned guns together in season 2) is freakishly palpable when she catches him in her office. Casey says that she is dead to her because she stole Morgan from them, but by episode’s end they are making out after he saves her life. As I said last week, I am definitely a fan of the relationship, but there has to be more to it then just making Casey go all awkward. Maybe it will just be tension between the two groups since they are competing companies, but maybe she will turn out to be evil! But for Casey’s sake I sure hope not, because if she isn’t perfect for him then I don’t know who is (she had a Reagan picture in her office, for crying out loud!).
Frenemies
After three weeks of episodes with titles pitting Chuck and the little bearded man against each other, Morgan continues to be the sun to Season 5 of Chuck. Groan… He continues to change in his spiral downward into the depths of jerkdom, and it doesn’t matter how many highlights he puts in his hair, I am not finding this Morgan funny at all; just plain, old annoying.
Not to mention it’s ridiculous how blinded Chuck is by their history together to realize that the Intersect is messing with Morgan’s brain. As if forgetting key nerd facts about Indiana Jones and Star Wars wasn’t a big enough hint. However, Chuck’s mental sluggishness did allow for a couple of the better moments of the episode. At the height of Morgan’s d-baggery, the 3-man team (back again at last!) infiltrates Verbanski Corp to take back a jump drive Morgan stole from them. At this point in the episode Morgan really deserved a swift kick to the face, and it was rather upsetting to see Sarah hold Casey back from punching Morgan out when he breaks up with Alex in a text. Most importantly, I was really hoping Chuck was going to tranq Morgan in the back following Morgan’s shouts that they aren’t friends anymore. Unfortunately he didn't, but I guess he took it one step better by bringing back the story of evil 7th grade mustached Morgan (a through line of the night) when he pulls Morgan’s pants down and Sarah gives him a mark that he can compare with Forrest Gump (granted I am sure a tranq dart doesn’t quite do the same amount of damage as a bullet). Personally I would have done it just for the mere fact that Morgan just went all slow-mo Matrix on them as the all-powerful super spy, but that’s me.
Intersect No More
The preview to next week shows images of Morgan having the Intersect removed, and though I am overjoyed by this fact considering how obnoxious he was as a character now, I thought the way in which they got to this point was rather weak. Per Ellie’s suggestion to Sarah, Chuck attempts to appeal to Morgan’s memory (which apparently was pushed out to make room for his growing ego). In other words, all he has to do is remind Morgan that they pranked the queen of 8th grade by putting his mustache hair in her sandwich and Morgan completely reverted back. That’s it. It was such a drastic change that, for the next ten minutes, I kept waiting for him to do something to show that he really hadn’t changed (Such as saying: “Chuck, I can’t believe how much the Intersect changed me. PSYCH!” before turning around and shooting this weeks “bad guy”). But no, he really is all better now, and they won’t have to knock him unconscious with a bowling ball and force the computer out of his brain as I hoped.
No matter how it was done, it is great to know that Morgan will be back to his old self because this change to his character was really putting a damper on the show, especially tonally. However, it doesn’t look like we are in the clear for Morgan-centric episodes. It turns out that Beckman didn’t leave the glasses for Chuck, but rather someone else did that had planted a Trojan horse in them to corrupt the user (all signs point to Decker). Obviously they were meant for Chuck, and had he gotten them we could have gotten the equivalent of some red kryptonite Smallville episodes. But alas, this was not so, and now we are stuck once again trying to protect Morgan now that a kill order has been placed on his head. Something tells me he is going to have to do more than just stick in the van this time, especially if someone is planting bombs on vehicles (a lame cliffhanger when he’s in the whole preview for next week).
Final Thoughts
With all the happiness that comes along with Morgan not having The Intersect anymore, I am still disappointed that the show is still focusing heavily on him as he is now a hunted man. I miss the days of random episodes and missions, and I continue to pray that the writers remember the show’s roots before the end of the season.
So what do you guys think? You glad that the old Morgan is coming back? Think the way they went about it this episode was lazy? Like what the show is doing with its final season? Think we’ve just seen the surface of what Verbanski is really here for? Let me know!
