TELEVISION REVIEW - TELEVISION & RADIO - Between the devil and the CIA: two comedies - 'Chuck' on NBC and the CW's 'Reaper' share a successful formula.
In a universe in which nothing is really ever created or destroyed, there are only so many stories to tell; you can switch the atoms around, but most everything will look like something you've seen before.
This week sees the premiere of two series so structurally alike they might have been created from the same "Mad Libs" page. Both "Chuck," which premieres tonight on NBC, and "Reaper," which comes Tuesday on the CW, concern a young underachiever working in a big-box store who through extraordinary circumstances finds himself personally transformed and thrown into a life of danger and intrigue. In each, there is a wacky, bearded, slacker-y sidekick and a woman of great beauty and intelligence whom our late-blooming, awkward (but, we can see, attractive) hero suspects is out of his league. Each is a romantic comedy of self-actualization, with fight scenes.
Usually such similitude is a cue to discuss the lack of imagination in the TV business, but the fact is both these shows are really fine and funny -- different enough in tone for each to seem original, yet appealing to the same pleasure centers in the brain. Their DNA shows common traces of "Spider-Man" (geek empowered by extra-natural forces) and Hitchcock (regular guy swept up in extraordinary drama), but also of Frank Capra and Preston Sturges.
In "Chuck," Zachary Levi ("Less Than Perfect") plays the title character, who has risen in life so far as to lead the troubleshooting Nerd Herd at an electronics store called Buy More. One fine day he receives an e-mail from an old pal that via some impossible science and keen special effects implants the entire combined contents of the national intelligence services supercomputers into his brain, making him into a walking super-supercomputer. Sarah (Yvonne Strahovski) and Casey (Adam Baldwin, still the gold standard in lantern-jawed creepiness) play mutually distrustful agents of the CIA and NSA who are assigned to watch over Chuck and direct his newfound power. Strahovski manages to be soft enough for us to regard her as a potential girl for Chuck, yet tough enough to sell the spy stuff -- she's Eva Marie Saint to his Cary Grant, Jean Arthur to his Jimmy Stewart. Joshua Gomez is the wacky, bearded sidekick.
The pilot is an especially persuasive hour of action-adventure, but subsequent lower-budget episodes preserve the esprit and suspense. It is a comedy, of course, which means that it can do the bulk of its work with words.
