buhdge

Enough with the bad. Let's talk about the good, of which there is plenty to go around these days.

NBC, usually known as the Never Be Coy network, has dealt up a show that is anything buy coy, the ace spy/love hybrid Chuck. The story, in a nutshell: Chuck, the top dog of the Buy More (read: Best Buy) Nerd Herd (read: Geek Squad, Firedog, etc.), finds his noggin suddenly stuffed with tons of top-secret information when he opens an e-mail from his friend Bryce, a CIA operative. Armed with this valuable intel, Chuck is handled by a Sarah, a gorgeous government agent, and Adam Baldwin, neither gorgeous nor named Sarah. Baldwin grits his teeth a lot, and is very funny. Sarah, played by relative newcomer Yvonne Strahovski, is very beautiful and very convincing as she pretends to be Chuck's girlfriend at the same time as she leans on the Chuckster to help with missions vital to the safety of our country.

Chuck is played by the marvellous Zachary Levi, whose previous claim to fame was a supporting role on the ABC sitcom Less than Perfect. Playing a geek seems to come naturally to Levi, who is a longtime videogamer and, as evidenced by his appearance at this year's Comic Con, a genuinely fun geek. Sarah Lancaster, most recently seen in ABC's What About Brian, is cute as a button as Chuck's sister Ellie, and Joshua Gomez is quite the clown as Chuck's best friend Morgan. The stories so far have been fun, the cast is game, and NBC looks to have a well-deserved hit.

Speaking of fun, and in this case fun on as a grand a scale as possible, ABC's phastasmagorical Pushing Daisies is appointment television's poster child. If ever there were a reason to get an HD set, this is it. Daisies is hyper-colorful, bringing its fanciful sets and characters to life by virtually blasting its visuals off the screen. With a bunch of old genre hands aboard--such as former Roger Corman protegee Allan Arkush, director of, among other classic pictures, Rock 'n' Roll High School; Men in Black's true visionary, Barry Sonnenfeld, and creator Bryan Fuller, whose Wonderfalls was bungled by Fox a couple of years ago--it's pretty much assured that Daisies will continue pushing for seasons to come.

The facts are these: Ned, essayed with great warmth by Wonderfalls' Lee Pace, has the ability to touch a dead body and bring it back to life for sixty seconds, during which he, his childhood sweetheart (and living/dead beauty) Charlotte "Chuck" Charles, and a low-level, knitter/private eye named Emerson Cod, played with scene-chewing glee by Chi McBride, who was last seen as an overbearing boss on House, get the scoop on who killed said body and attempt to solve the murder. After 60 seconds, the corpse returns to six-feet-under status.

So there's a procedural aspect to Daisies, but the centerpiece of this show is Ned's relationship with Chuck, played with natural warmth and a boatload of charisma by the gorgeous British actress Anna Friel. Ned has brought Chuck back to life and decides to keep her around, but they can't touch or Chuck will go back to being dead. They desparately want to hug--Chuck rightly tells Ned, in the Pie-Lette (you read that correctly), that a hug can turn a person's day around. A hug, Chuck says, is an "emotional heimlich." So, the producers have come up with clever ways for the couple to touch each other without returning Chuck to the grave, such as putting a layer of plastic wrap between them. Factor in some fairly oddball characters, such as Chuck's wacky, swimming-star aunts, and a deadpan morgue attendant who seems barely alive himself, and you have one wonderful show, a must-see in every possible way.

Also worth watching NBC's reimagining of Bionic Woman. Although the series sprinted to a rocky start--dumb dialogue, creaky storytelling and every evil thing that goes along with it--the pace has picked up considerably since the pilot. Michelle Ryan, who made her mark in 367 episodes of the British soap EastEnders, adopts a quite convincing American accent to play a more high-tech version of the campy super-woman made famous back in the seventies by Lindsay "Sleep Number" Wagner. This new version of Bionic Woman is generally more high-tech than its predecessor, and much more violent. It has also had a number of producers exit through the proverbial revolving door, and the show has only been airing for a couple of months. Now though, the producing bums, one hanging from X-Files' Glen Morgan, seem to be firmly set in their comfy chairs, and the show has developed a bit more of a sense of humor while also managing to maintain its more serious edge. Ryan is teriffic as Jamie Summers, and so is ex-Grey's Anatomy star Isaiah Washington, who is fine and dandy as Summers' teacher and minder. Good stuff, and getting better all the time.

part three