Chuck: "Pilot" Advance Review

A funny and highly entertaining new series that is well worth checking out.

One of the fall's most promising new shows, Chuck makes its debut this Monday on NBC. A classic underachiever, Chuck (Zachary Levi) is a very smart guy; a former Stanford student who now finds himself drifting through his 20s, like so many others. He works at a large electronics store called Buy More in their Nerd Herd department (I'm betting you get the references), and can hardly be said to be using his smarts to their full potential.

But Chuck's life gets thrown for a loop when he gets an email from Bryce (Matt Bomer), his old college roommate. Little does Chuck know, but Bryce has become a bona fide bad ass secret agent, which we discover in an incredibly fun and dynamic action sequence that feels much more cinematic than most TV shows can pull off. You're welcome to mock his silly name, but McG brings just the right big action movie gloss here as director of the pilot, but at the same time doesn't overwhelm Josh Schwartz and Chris Fedak's clever script.

The email Chuck gets from Bryce is a bit of Hollywood hokum; a computer program containing pivotal government files, which upon viewing, becomes burned into Chuck's brain, without him realizing it. With the original computers holding the information destroyed, Chuck becomes a crucial figure to both the NSA and the CIA, who each send one of their best agents after Chuck. One such agent comes in the form of Casey, played by Firefly's Adam Baldwin, who brings his trademark "don't f**k with me" attitude to the role. Chuck's much more entranced by the other agent though, who just so happens to be a gorgeous blond named Sarah (Yvonne Strahovski). Of course Chuck has no idea who Sarah really is intially, just that this beautiful customer at the Buy More is somehow, amazingly, asking him out.

(L-R) Sarah Lancaster, Adam Baldwin, Zachary Levi, Yvonne Strahovski and Joshua Gomez in Chuck

Schwartz and Fedak's script for the Chuck pilot is very strong, deftly mixing action and humor. Where Schwartz's other new series, Gossip Girl, could use more of the humor he brought to The O.C., Chuck does a great job capturing the wit and self-awareness Schwartz's previous series contained. Chuck is a bit like an older version of the Seth Cohen character from The O.C., including a similar haircut and amusingly geeky interests; Chuck's fingers are bandaged up at one point due to Call of Duty related injuries, and a particularly funny joke has Chuck and his best friend/co-worker Morgan (Joshua Gomez) referencing Prince's "Batdance".

The cast are excellent, with Levi extremely likable and relatable, evoking a young Tom Hanks, and Gomez garnering a ton of laughs and clearly having a great time. Baldwin is playing a familiar type of role here, but it's one he excels at. The charming and sexy Strahovski will get plenty of attention as a fanboy dream girl come to life; most notably in a scene in which she walks around her hotel room looking incredible in her underwear, while calmly strapping weapons to her body. The only character not as strong so far is Chuck's sister Ellie, who is well played by Sarah Lancaster, but in the pilot at least, seems a bit extraneous. Still, there's plenty of time to see how she'll fit into the overall scope of the series, and her boyfriend, who Chuck has sarcastically nicknamed Captain Awesome (Ryan McPartlin), is well, awesome.

Chuck ultimately feels like Seth Cohen has been thrown into the middle of an Alias episode, and that makes for a great combination.

Journeyman: "Pilot" Advance Review

A surprisingly engaging time travel show with some intriguing twists and strong performances.

Time travel is a concept that, when done right, can make for fantastic entertainment. It's worked before on television with Quantum Leap and in the movies with Back to the Future and the Bill and Ted movies. It's been a while since a good time travel show has been on the air (and where are the time travel movies?), but now NBC has managed to put one together - and air it after Heroes, so all you really have to do is not change the channel to catch it.

Journeyman manages to offer up something fresh to the time travel sub-genre while treating the traditional elements with respect. It also managed to find the right lead to carry the audience through the more fantastic elements of the story, without Kevin McKidd, the show probably wouldn't work. McKidd plays Dan Vassar, who suddenly finds himself taking unexplained and seemingly spontaneous "journeys" through time. He visits several periods in another man's life, and soon discovers that he has to fix something. In the pilot episode, Vassar is perhaps not as fleshed out as he could be, which leaves McKidd playing more of an "everyman." But McKidd is able to communicate the necessary emotion in fairly complicated scenes and it's through him that we are able to follow the story and keep up with the twisty logic of the time travel.

Moon Bloodgood, last seen in Day Break with Taye Diggs, plays Dan's fiance, Livia, who died several years before. His life becomes even more complicated when he runs into Livia in the past. Dan's wife in the present, Katie (played by Gretchen Egolf) laughs off a suggestion that Dan is having an affair by saying "The only other woman in Dan's life is Livia." It's this previously impossible love-triangle that throws a more traditional time travel formula for a loop and keeps the drama firmly based in the characters.

- NBC

Kevin McKidd as "Dan Vassar" in Journeyman

As with any time travel story, Journeyman is filled with fun moments that either remind us of how silly the 90s and 80s seem now or conjure up a sense of nostalgia. There is also the wish fulfillment of being able to knowahead of time what is to come. It was also a wise decision to make Vasser an investigative reporter. Not only is it helpful that he knows how to find information and be able to think on his feet, but it provides a window into some of the differences between now and then. For instance, one moment you know that Vasser has traveled because his Blackberry suddenly says "No network." He's suddenly robbed of the more technological tools he would use, and has to find other ways of operating. Not to mention that when he jumps, he goes missing for a seemingly random amount of time in his present, wreaking all sorts of havoc in his own life.

There's a lot of information packed into this pilot. There are some very nice character moments between the cast, which also includes Reed Diamond as Dan's brother. While the show is about a man who travels through time to fix other people's lives, it's clear there are a number of things he wishes he had done differently - and whether he'll take the opportunity to change events in the past seems to be an essential question of the series. There are some logic holes to fill, as is the case with any time travel story, but none of them are fatal. And while Vassar seems a little shallow at the moment, McKidd provides him with a compassion and sense of purpose that more than carries the episode. It's been too long since this kind of story has been told on television, so it's good to see that NBC was willing to take the leap.