(NBC, Monday, 7,00)

Due to the wonder of "On Demand" programming, I'm able to bring you previews of some new shows before they actually premiere, meaning you don't just have to trust me as to how good the pilot was: if you're interested, you can watch when it does air and then tell me how much I over or undersold it or how much I, as a person, am terrible. Either way, really.

First up is NBC's pre-Heroes dramedy about the extended-adolescence "Nerd Herd" (c.f. Geek Squad) member Chuck who gets every last bit of national security information beamed into his skull in an email from his college roommate, who had gone on to work for the CIA. You can already see the bones both of comedy and of drama forming, can't you?

Anyway, to flesh those bones out a little more, the email gets tracked to Chuck and a gorgeous CIA agent (Yvonne Strzechowski, a dead, dead ringer for Naimi Watts) and a "cold-school" NSA spook (played by Angel's Adam Baldwin) compete to take him in, her by using her, you know, wiles, and him by using brute force.

This, needless to say, complicates the simple life that Chuck's established for himself, with his best friend Morgan (who's far nerdier and more stunted than Chuck could dream of being), his sister (Sarah Lancaster, of "What About Brian," a doctor again this time. Typecasting much?) and her boyfriend, Captain Awesome (Ryan McPartlin, thankfully graduated from "Living with Fran").

Throughout the pilot, we see Chuck constantly pulled from his intertia by one thing or another and toward a more grown up, responsibility-filled but rewarding life, writ large, then, in his need to now assist the foxy CIA agent and bad-ass NSA agent to avert all sorts of terrible goings on.

Despite this nearly explicit metaphornication, the show works. The pilot nicely sets up both the episodic and continuing plot-lines. The humor works--the running joke through the episode about the Czech porn-star computer virus ("So beautiful. So deadly.") worked consistently in a variety of contexts, the sign of a good running joke. The production values are insanely high, lots of near flawless looking stunt-work.

And a dramedy not aimed at middle-aged women (c.f. Desperate Housewives, Ally McBeal, etc) is going to be a nice change. So what I'm saying is that I liked it. A lot. But maybe that's cause I'm super-nerdy and mired in my own inertia. Or something.

Chuck: NBC, Monday, 7,00. B

Chuck premieres Monday, September 24th.