Premiering Tonight: "Chuck"
If you think it’s unlikely that anyone would name a TV show Chuck, you’ll find the show’s title character equally unlikely. Played by Zachary Levi, Chuck is a smart, funny guy who’s more than a bit of an underachiever. He lives with his beautiful, successful sister and her husband (who Chuck derisively calls “Captain Awesome”), and in the series’ very first scene she’s throwing her brother a birthday party in hopes of setting him up with one of her beautiful, successful colleagues. Chuck’s reaction is pretty much what you’d expect from a guy with Chuck’s aim-lower life philosophy: he tries to climb out his bedroom window.
Turns out Chuck’s single in large part because he’s still stuck on his former girlfriend from years ago in college. His roommate Bryce stole her away, but it turns out Bryce (now a rogue government operative) has one final surprise for Chuck: a top-secret delivery of CIA and NSA decrets directly into his brain via a particularly spunky e-mail attachment. Now the last person in possession of all the accumulated classified knowledge of the United States, Chuck’s wanted by everybody, including a beautiful CIA agent (Yvonne Strahovski) and a tough as nails NSA agent (Adam Baldwin of Firefly).
If the premise sounds ridiculous, it is. But that’s okay. Because Chuck succeeds by being consistently laugh-out-loud funny, by emphasizing the comedic over the dramatic at every possible turn without veering into eye-winking self-parody. It’s a hybrid of a slacker-geek comedy and a spy movie, not surprising coming from creator Josh Schwartz, who succeeded with The O.C., a bizarre mixture of geek comedy and Melrose Place-style soap opera.
In Chuck, the genre switching comes fast and furious, but it never really feels forced. The show starts with a “40 Year-Old Virgin” vibe, rapidly becomes “Mission Impossible,” and segues briefly into “Office Space” before becoming a crazy combination of “Austin Powers” and “The Italian Job.” And while many of the situations feel slightly derivative, Chuck — an average, likeable guy who wasn’t living up to his potential even before he became the most valuable repository of classified intelligence on Earth — smooths out the bumps with a positive attitude and a smile.
By the way, you may have noticed that two fall series, Chuck and the CW’s Reaper, share a very similar premise. Both of them are quite good, but as always, when it’s time to break a tie you’ve got to go to the second bananas. Chuck’s sidekick is his geeky pal Morgan (Joshua Gomez), his co-worker at the Buy More electronics store, and he’s pretty standard as far as geeky comedic foils go. The sidekick on Reaper, on the other hand, is an excruciating Jack Black knock off that should have the “School of Rock” filing for a restraining order as soon as humanly possible. Plus, Yvonne Strahovski is gorgeous. Chuck gets the square.
NBC has slotted Chuck on Mondays at 8 ET/PT, in a sci-fi block that also features “Heroes” at 9 ET/PT and Journeyman at 10 ET/PT. I’m a little skeptical of the addition of the super-serious Journeyman to the line-up (Bionic Woman would have been a better match), but Chuck is a perfect lead-in for Heroes. Both of them mix comedy in with their drama, and cover geek themes while not digging so deep down into geekdom that they never find a broad audience. Chuck is an action comedy with a lot of heart, and it’s the best hourlong pilot I saw this year.
Also Premiering Tonight: Journeyman and Big Bang Theory.
The "Reaper" sidekick is more annoying than Morgan? I'm dreading tonight, then.
Hard to believe, but I think so. Some people seem to like Sock, but I found him annoying because he's just doing Jack Black. I like Jack Black, but prefer Jack Black to play Jack Black.
(Now that I've seen "Reaper") Clearly, we have different tolerance levels for annoying sidekicks. Sock made me laugh a lot and cringe only a little. Given my reservation about a massive hole in the "Chuck" premise (how does he integrate intel fresher than what was uploaded into him?), I'm definitely casting my vote for "Reaper."