Fall TV

forget the changing leaves. forget the pumpkin pie. actually i love pumpkin pie more than life, so i can't forget it. forget mulling spices. forget bouquets of freshly sharpened pencils. nothing says fall like a crop of new TV shows, and i can't remember being more excited about a new crop of shows than i am this year. chuck! bionic woman! reaper! pushing daisies! so i'm devoting the rest of this week [at least planning on devoting the rest of this week] to some thoughts on the new fall TV season as the shows happen. so, here we go...

CHUCK

mayhem, hijinks, and hilarity ensue when chuck bartowski [who works at the 'nerd herd,'a geek squad-type outfit, at a store called 'buy more,' a tv-land style 'best buy'] opens an email from his former standford-roommate-turned-rogue-spy, bryce larkin, and in doing so subliminally aborbs just about every single military and goverment secret in the form thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of pictures. the CIA and NSA aren't too happy about it, of course, and some nefarious, vaguely ominious goverment-types send CIA-agent, sarah walker, and NSA agent john casey after chuck to retrieve all their dirty secrets. in the process chuck becomes their unwitting, reluctant pawn and secret crime-fighting weapon.

zack levi is absolutely great as chuck. chuck bartkowski is this year's jim halpert with his aww-shucks-look-at-my-cute-disheveled-hair-and-crooked-smile. i mean, shoot, I have a man-crush on him. he's just so cute. it's really not hard to see levi making the jump to feature films in near future. i'd bet my bottom dollar on it, in fact. the supporting cast, adam baldwin as john casey [sing with me: the man they called jayne! three cheers for browncoats!], and yvonne strzechowski [say that three times] as sarah walker are pitch-perfect in their roles as chuck's persuers-turned-handlers. baldwin is delightfully snarky and strezdsfsdho is drop dead sexy! and limber. wow! kudos, too, to josh gomez who plays zack's nerd-herder-in-arms, morgan, who provides a lot of the comic relief, particulary the scene where chuck comes back to work at the nerd herd after accepting his new identity as super secret spy. it involves morgan and a stereo and it was hilarious.

yes, the plot is absolutely absurd, but the writers and actors know it. they know it's an escapist dramedy and they play it as such. sure, there are some harrowing moments, but there are also moments of complete ridiculity and over-the-topness. 'chuck' is a nice balance of humor, charm, romance, tension, spy stuff, and gadgetry. of course it helps that the cast comes from a genetically superior gene pool. i'm just sayin'. there are plenty of laugh-out-loud moments for an hour-long show [i initially thought it might work better as a half-hour show, but i was wrong] and plenty of jim-pam, er, chuck-sarah budding will they/won't they romance moments [should we just start calling them 'chucrah? that's kind of like chakra. and that's really lame. nevermind].

the pilot is great and i'll definitely tune it next week. my only concern is that the story will lose momentum after a dozen episodes. at the outset, 'chuck' does seem like a bit of a one-trick pony, but josh schwartz managed to make 'the O.C' really entertaining television for a couple of years, so here's hoping he and his team manage to build on what appears to be one of the new season's top shows and ride all the way to season five. will you have to suspend disbelief a bit? yes. will you be glad you did? absolutely you will.

if you missed it last night, you can catch it here. or you can just come over to my house. i tivo'd it.

spinto band: spy vs. spy