Meet Chuck, your average computer-wiz next door kind of guy.

After having been falsely accused of cheating, causing him to be kicked out of Stanford, Chuck lives a quiet albeit boring life working as manager of a Nerd Herd at his local Buy More. One day he recieves an email from his former best-friend, Bryce Larkin. As he opens the email attachment hundreds of thousands of encrypted images containing the combined secrets of the CIA and the NSA are somehow transferred into his head - thus making Chuck’s life much more complicated.

Nerdy TV

… is a possibly reoccurring thing where I take some time to recommend shows that I think are very good and/or shows that I think will appeal to us nerds. It’s also very possible that I will review a couple of shows that I think are so bad that they make me want to curl up into fetal position and cry myself to sleep - thus sparing you from ever having to watch them.

If you have any shows that you would like to recommend (or tell me to stay away from), feel free to either comment on this post or send me an email. My contact information is available at the very bottom of this page, or over on the contact-page.

Chuck is an action-comedy tv series starring Zachary Levi as Chuck, a stereotypical computer geek living with his sister and her fiancé “Captain Awesome” in Burbank, CA.  While his sister and Captain Awesome are both successful doctors, Chuck lacks aspiration after having been kicked out of Stanford, and now he spends his days managing the Nerd Herd (a parody of Best Buy’s Geek Squad) together with his best friend, Morgan - the worst salesman in the world.

On the night of his birthday he receives an email from his former college buddy, Bryce Larkin, who is now a rogue CIA agent. As Chuck opens the attachment the entire database of all the US government’s secret information - a neural supercomputer called the Intersect - is subliminally embedded into his brain. The CIA and the NSA promptly dispatch two agents - agent Sarah Walker (Yvonne Strahovski) and agent John Casey (Adam Baldwin) - to protect what is now the most valuable piece of intelligence on the earth: Chuck.

Chuck must now use the information embedded in his brain to help protect his country, while at the same time concealing his life as a spy from his family and friends. Unfortunately Chuck cannot easily access that information just by wanting to. He has to “flash” on something in his surroundings, such as marks, guns, faces, voices or names - thus forcing him to go on dangerous missions together with Sarah and Casey. In order to be able to better protect Chuck, Sarah goes under cover posing as Chuck’s girlfriend, while Casey takes a job as a salesman at the Buy More.

Soon the line between what’s part of the cover and what’s real starts to blur for Sarah and Chuck, as the spark that was apparent after the very first episode quickly develops into something much bigger and more powerful. However, Sarah’s line of work doesn’t exactly allow her to become personally attached to the “asset”, which in this case is Chuck, without causing them both to be in danger. The situation becomes even more complex when Bryce Larkin, the rogue CIA agent and Sarah’s old boyfriend, returns from the dead.

Chuck’s only hope of ever being able to have a normal life without car chases, explosions and assassins with exotic accents, is to remove all the information given to him by the Intersect, allowing him and Sarah to finally be together. With the original designer of the intersect dead, that will prove harder and more dangerous than expected, as Fulcrum - a rogue agency within the CIA - would rather see Chuck dead than working with the government.

In the mean time, he’ll just have to do his best not to get killed, and try to act like an agent - even though he would much rather be playing Call of Duty with his buddy Morgan.

Chuck is a great watch if you’re not looking for something terribly deep and serious, but would rather see a very funny and somewhat engaging show that will tickle your nerd senses in just the right way. Hopefully it will come back for a third season, but nothing has been decided yet, as far as I know. Either way, I can’t recommend it enough, and if you haven’t seen it yet I suggest you go watch the first episode and see if you like it.

Edit: It’s official! Chuck will be coming back for another season. More information here.

More information about the show is available at the official site, where you can also watch full episodes, download pictures and play crappy flash games. Chuck airs Monday nights at 8:00 PM ET on NBC. It might also be available via services such as Hulu.com. That’s all I have for you today. If you seem to like this article, I may very well write more of them - God knows I have a lot of tv shows that I can talk about!

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