A Sneak Peek at "Chuck"

"Chuck" is a new dramatic comedy airing this Fall at 8:00 PM on Monday nights, beginning on September 24. Because of Amazon Unbox, which offered pilot episodes of six new shows starting this Fall, I was able to look at the first episode a couple weeks before it aired on television. I liked what I saw.

WARNING: What follows is truly nothing more than a blow-by-blow account of what happened in the first episode. If you plan on watching "Chuck" when it airs, this probably will ruin any surprises you might encounter, so tread carefully. when the synopsis is over, I'll let you know what I thought of it, and whether or not I plan on watching.

When the episode opens, we see two men, gearing up for... something. Flashlights, duct tape, dark outfits... and then one of them hears something, and the door opens and light turns on. Turns out the two weren't super secrets spies, but merely Morgan and Chuck, who were attempting to escape from the birthday party being thrown by Chuck's sister and her husband.

The sister drags Chuck back to the party where he is introduced to a never-ending stream of women, all of whom are put off by the fact that Chuck works as part of the "Nerd Herd" in a Buy More super store (similar to, I suppose, working in a Best Buy as part of the Geek Squad). One of the women mentions that she knew Bryce Larkin, who - as it turns out - was once Chuck's friend and roommate at Stanford (until, we find out later, Bryce stole Chuck's girlfriend Jill, an event Chuck still is not over). Chuck mentions that he thinks Bryce is now an accountant.

We then see that Bryce, far from being an accountant, is actually a spy. We watch him break into a high security room and hack into a computer (which looks frighteningly similar to an old Macintosh), and steal all the secrets off it. Back at the party, Chuck is annoying everyone as he goes on and on about Jill. Bryce, meanwhile, barely manages to escape from wherever he is, and almost manages to escape, but is shot just when he thinks he's free. Before he dies, however, he manages to email all the information he had stolen to Chuck, his old college roommate.

At the beginning of the episode, we see a couple of men apparently gearing up for some undercover work. Turns out it's just Chuck and Morgan, escaping from Chuck's birthday party.

Credit: Eric Fleming

Copyright: NBC Television