Previewing Fall

You don't have to be a genius to know that some of the shows that are going to debut this fall had been leaked on the internet. Heck, Entertainment Weekly had written a list of the shows leaked last week! All you had to do was read.

So, to save me some time and headache, I found myself scouring youtube and other outlets for shows I might be viewing this fall. Two shows I previewed are Kevin Smith's Reaper and ABC's Chuck.

Reaper is a story of Sam, a slacker who found out on his 21st birthday that his parents promised him to the devil once he turned legal. Feeling doomed, he asks the Big Dog what he had to do now that he has to some indebted servitude to fulfill. Satan says that all he had to do was to collect the souls of Hell escapees. Apparently, a few of them broke free from the portals of hell so now Sam is tasked to "collect" these prison breakers. Overwhelmed, he seeks counsel from his friends, Soc and Ben when he gets 'gifted' with a Dirt Devil (hehehe) to capture his first escapee.

Well, Sam had to deal with that, and the fact that cute co-worker with ambition is apparently crushing on him. What's a loser like him supposed to do?

Truly, it's a "Dead Like Me" only without Mandy Patinkin as the task giver.

I like it. It's humorous and I can see how this can be a series. I don't think it would last no more than 2-3 seasons if it gets much viewers since you could just have so many episodes of slacker collecting souls for the demon and not find anything wrong with it. Sam finds on the first episode that he has a purpose other than working in a box store like Home Depot, and that he likes it. Is it worth a season worth of episodes? You be the judge.

Grade: B+

Chuck, like Reaper, is a story of a computer nerd (not geek) who does tech support for customers in a box company like Circuit City. On his birthday, his old Stanford roommate (who also happened to be the guy that took off with his ex-girlfriend) sends him an encoded email.

Opening the email had unleashed a governmental Pandora's Box. Before he knew it, he could "read" signs, news reports, subliminal messages, etc, that apparently affect the world as we know it. CIS and FBI and the CIA are after him, or as the premiere episode shows, his computer, since they thought they could keep top secret information from being intercepted by retrieving the email Chuck's old roomie sent.

Other than the fact that like Reaper, both characters learn something on their birthdays, have connections to people in Stanford or trying to get into Stanford, and are slackers that suddenly find a sudden purpose in life, these shows could've been swapped and no one would know any better. Sure, Chuck is trying to serve a higher purpose by involving espionage but man, since Jake 2.0, it's rather hard to really root for a nerd knowing that their shelf life is rather short... Or that it's available on better written shows like Ugly Betty.

Also, if you know anything about computer hardware, the first episode is a little tough to watch. A ninja tries to steal Chuck's tower, saying that the computer was destroyed when actually, the CASE was ruined but the hard drive wasn't. The fact that Chuck laments the same sentiment when he's supposedly a computer nerd is annoying and disturbing.

High points? Captain Awesome. Everyone has a Captain Awesome in their life... And you just can never achieve that level of "awesomeness" no matter what you do. (Puke, puke)

But then again, you have to view it to judge.

Grade: B

Like Reaper, there's just so much you can write about a reluctant hero/anti-hero. How much you can stomach the shows is what's going to keep them from being axed and having a season replacement debut before the month's over.

The one thing I can guarantee is that these shows are definitely more interesting than Cavemen, which is also downloadable... But aren't getting much bite even for a leaked show.