New Fall TV...

I have watched TWO shows of the ‘new season’. I ‘missed’ the new season beginnings of Earl (last night) and Legion (last Saturday). Odds are I’ll try to download Legion- not sure about Earl as I was MIGHTY disappointed about Earl’s second. Heck I saw a wonderful ‘limited’ edition of the Season 2 DVDs at Target and was easily able to pass, and usually I’m all about the LIMITED editions. I’ve seen pics of Legion on TV.com. They added Chameleon Boy and have a Superboy/man clone.

The two NEW shows were Reaper and Chuck. I saw Chuck a week or so as part of my cable ON DEMAND- yeah I demanded Chuck. Now I should mention in the interest of full disclosure that I wasn’t SURE about Chuck as it’s presented that the HAWT girl is a secret agent and Chuck is a nerd wage slave. Now I have NO problem with nerd wage slaves- being one myself- but I wasn’t sure how it was going to play out and to be frank, I felt Chuck looked like a pretty boy. Sure enough watching the episode, I felt that this was an actor PLAYING a nerd. He didn’t seem to have any real NERD CREDS- even if he was a member of the ‘nerd herd’- a real rip off of the geek squad. The only person who seemed really geeky was the Goth he has in the background as part of his crew. I could go on about his fakeness as a geek- but what it comes down to is the hook is stolen from “the computer wears tennis shoes’. Chuck didn’t MEAN to download all the info he has in his mind, but he has all the info in like the NSA and CIA’s computer banks in his head. I didn’t like this as this showed that he had NOT earned his place on the team- he was given it. Likewise I didn’t like that the HAWT secret agent had a thing with Chuck’s ex college roommate, as I felt that was a) too much of a coincidence( welcome to American TV) and b) it set her up as a nerd lover.

Reaper by comparison has geek creds. And again in the interest of full disclosure that I was expecting MORE from Reaper, I was a big fan of G V. E- one of the top 5 shows I want on DVD… and was expecting the same quirky humor from Reaper… though I nothing to back this hope up… I did have it.
First I should mention the geeks look like geeks. Chuck again looks like a pretty boy and in my experience MOST geeks come in two flavors- rail thin (ala our hero Sam) and grande sized- as his best friend Bert is. And I loved best friend Bert Wysocki better then I did Chuck’s friend. Bert is a 3 dimensional geek… and one of his bits was priceless and was something I could sorta see myself do. At a meeting our heroes are told if they sell the MOST they will get a victory HAM, Bert points out that he’s Jewish and the manager apologizes and says if Bert wins he’ll get something equal in value… Sam wins and we see Bert eating the victory ham. So clearly Bert just pointed out he was Jewish to bust chops, I approve. Ray Wise is another gem in the cast as the Devil, he has just the right amount of sleeze, being an evil person but still amusing.
I also like the premise a lot more- a 21 year old slacker ( he stopped going to college after falling asleep in class too much) finds out that his parents sold his soul to the Devil… And the Devil now has him act as a bounty hunter, telling the hero if he doesn’t do the Devil’s business then the Devil will take the mother’s soul.
Oh and somebody named Smith directed the first episode- if that means anything to anybody.
;-)


And had to take the dork test that evan took:





Not surprised that Evan scored higher. As I consider myself a book geek and most of what they tested was computer stuff. Hardest question was them asking to choose between my books and my dvds- but books won of course.