‘Chuck’ Recap: “Chuck vs. The Frosted Tips” (5.03) 

Photo provided by NBC

The episode opens with Casey creepily walking around the streets with Sarah in his ear trying to intercept a target that turns out to be Gertrude Verbanski (Carrie-Anne Moss). With Sarah’s help, Casey was trying to “break the ice” with his old flame, but when Gertrude gave Casey an opening, he fumbles it by only shaking her hand and tells Gertrude that he will see her around. However, Casey did manage to place a surveillance tracker on her.

Chuck and Morgan were waiting for someone in Chuck’s car at a parking garage. A car pulls up and it was revealed that General Beckman (Bonita Friedericy) was the person that they were meeting. Beckman tells Chuck that he needed to catch a whistleblower named Mats Zorn, who has been leaking confidential information that includes CIA Intel. Beckman hands Chuck a zip drive that contains Zorn’s itinerary.

At the courtyard, Chuck runs into Alex. She was waiting for Morgan because they had a date. Chuck tells Alex that he dropped Morgan at the Buy More. Alex was upset and asks Chuck that he will tell her if Morgan was seeing another woman, which Chuck said he will and reaffirms to Alex that he isn’t.

In Casey’s apartment, Chuck and Sarah were reviewing their new case while Casey was surveying Gertrude. It turns out that Casey’s surveillance camera came in handy because it revealed that Morgan had betrayed Team Bartowski by joining Gertrude.

At the Woodcomb home, Ellie was heading back to work while Captain Awesome took some maternity leave to be a full-time dad for baby Clara. At first, Awesome was excited to spend some time with his daughter, but later on he got bored.

At the Buy More, everyone notices that Morgan has changed by him dressing to impress, smelling of Ed Hardy cologne and his hair frosted. In Morgan’s office, Sarah, Chuck and Casey tell Morgan that they know he is working with Gertrude. Casey tells Morgan that he wouldn’t allowed a traitor to date his daughter, which Grimes said that was fine with him and broke up with Alex by sending her a text.

At Castle, Chuck and the rest of team found out that the drive containing Zorn’s itinerary was missing from the safe. Chuck figured it out that it was Morgan because the safe was smelling of Ed Hardy cologne. Chuck had enough and despite Sarah’s plead to Chuck that something else must be wrong with Morgan, Chuck grabbed and handed guns to Sarah and Casey because he wanted to take out the competition.

Awesome takes the baby to the Buy More. Awesome sees Jeff under a smoking van and saves him. Awesome tells Jeff that he wants to examine him because he was concerned for Jeff’s health due to him consuming too much carbon monoxide from his van that could cause Jeff to have brain damage.

Chuck, Sarah and Casey infiltrate Verbanski’s headquarters. After knocking out her guards and using their uniforms, Casey heads to Verbanski’s office with Chuck and Sarah assisting Casey by accessing her security cameras. Casey finds the safe containing the drive and cracks it open and takes out the drive when Chuck and Sarah alerts Casey that Gertrude and Morgan are on their way up. Casey hides but Gertrude senses something was wrong with her office. Morgan leaves to train his team and after looking around her office, Gertrude finds Casey and the both of them went into a sexy hand-to-hand combat.

Because of his uniform, Chuck was forced to join other Verbanski’s guards for training with Morgan. Chuck and the other guards were wearing headgear that disguises their faces meaning that Morgan didn’t know Chuck was there at first. Morgan, with the help of the Intersect, knocks down all of his opponents except for one, which is Chuck. Chuck takes off his headgear and tells Morgan he doesn’t care about him having the Intersect but he wants back the missing drive and for Morgan to come back to work for him. Morgan responded that he doesn’t have to listen to him anymore because they were no longer friends. Back upstairs, Casey and Gertrude continue their battle until Casey ended it by handcuffing Gertrude to her desk.

Casey and Sarah came downstairs where Morgan (after hearing from the P.A system of Gertrude telling Morgan that they stole back the drive) warns them to hand back the drive. Casey and Sarah unloaded their tranqs on him and Morgan zoomed in and avoided those darts (Matrix style). Chuck sneaks up on Morgan from behind and pulls down his pants as he did in middle school. Morgan turns around to face Chuck and Sarah shoots a dart on Morgan’s butt to put him down so that they can escape.

Back at the Buy More, Awesome evaluated Jeff by running some tests to see how long carbon monoxide has affected his brain. Awesome orders Jeff to never sleep in his van again.

After talking to Ellie about Morgan, Sarah calls General Beckman and finds out from Beckman that the General wasn’t the one that send them the Intersect glasses and it must have been someone else in the CIA. Sarah tells Chuck and Casey and they realized that it wasn’t Morgan’s behavior but the program that cause him to change while destroying his brain. In addition, Chuck realizes that the glasses were intended to destroy him.

Casey, Sarah and Chuck arrived at a rooftop helipad where Zorn’s helicopter was going to land. The helicopter arrives but coming out is Gertrude, Morgan and Gertrude’s men. Zorn and his security team arrive and both teams take down Zorn’s security. While both teams were battling each other, Zorn was about to escape by using the helicopter but Morgan shot a hole in the helicopter causing the gas to leak. Morgan tells Zorn if he doesn’t come out, he will fire again at the gas killing them all. Chuck begs Morgan to remember when they were kids in middle school of them getting revenge on a girl that was teasing Morgan by planting a sandwich that had Morgan’s mustache remains. Morgan remembered it and all of a sudden was back to his old-self.

After Zorn gave himself up, it looks like things were looking up until the leaking gas was heading to an electrical outlet that ignited a fire. The fire knocked out Morgan and Gertrude. Chuck and Casey ran into the fire to rescue them. After rescuing her from the explosion, Casey and Gertrude had a big, long-overdue kiss.

Back at the Buy More, Jeff arrives clean-shaven, shirt tuck in and his hair combed. Lester (Vik Sahay) needed Jeff’s help to taser one of their co-workers but was shock when Jeff told Lester that he doesn’t want to have any part of his scheme.

Morgan went to Casey’s apartment to apologize to Casey and was hoping he will be welcome back to Casey’s home but to no avail. However, Sarah and Chuck let Morgan stay at their apartment.

Chuck got a call from General Beckman for him to return to the parking garage. Beckman tells Chuck that since Morgan blabbed it out that he was the Intersect, Clyde Decker has put notice that Morgan must be terminated by killing him.

The final scene shows that one of Decker’s men places a bomb underneath Morgan’s car and Morgan comes out and is walking towards that car.

It looks like next week’s episode has Morgan finally removing the Intersect from his head and Chuck will have to protect his little buddy by taking over his identity against Decker and his men.

If I had to rate this episode, I’d give it a 3 OUT OF 5