"Chuck" Recap & Review - "Pilot"

Chuck
"Pilot"

Original Air Date: September 24, 2007

Jeff L - TwoCents Staff Writer

We meet the Nerd Heard’s top geek Chuck (Less Than Perfect's Zachary Levi) and his BFF Morgan (Joshua Gomez – think Seth Green meets Jason Schwartzman) at Chuck’s birthday party. We learn he was in love once with Jill, 5 years ago, when he was roommates with Bryce Larkin --BMOC at Stanford and now a super spy.

Larkin is killed by Men in Black types (led by Candyman Tony Todd and Firefly’s superb Adam Baldwin), but not before he emails his old college buddy Chuck all the secrets of the National Security Agency and the CIA. Chuck opens the email and gets all Johnny Mnemonic with the secret data.

Now everyone is after Chuck. There’s good guys, bad guys and beautiful women like Sarah (Yvonne Strahovsk), a CIA agent who is trying to protect Chuck from the baddies and the NSA, and also get the data that Chuck has “downloaded.” Sarah is deadly with knives and on the dance floor, while taking Chuck out on the town, it’s not really a date and the action climaxes on the roof of a building where Chuck “remembers” that terrorists are planning to blow up a Pentagon bigwig and saves the day by using all of his Nerd Heard skills to defuse the laptop explosive.

What I liked: the dialog between Chuck and Morgan is funny and realistic. Chuck is likeable as the loveable loser and the relationships on the show don’t seem forced. There’s plenty of action and humor.

Chuck is up against some pretty heavy-hitters over at Fox and on CBS, but it’s the lead-in to Heroes so hopefully it will stick around for awhile. Aside from Heroes NBC hasn’t had much success on Monday nights – so get behind this show now and spread the word. 4 out of 5 stars.