Monday rookie round-up

I reviewed all three of "Chuck," "Big Bang Theory" and "Journeyman" in today's columns, but I'll have some brief additional thoughts on each coming up just as soon as I price out nail guns at the Large Mart...

Like I said in the column, of the three "Chuck" episodes I've seen, the third is the strongest (the second is the weakest). This one obviously spends a whole lot of time setting up the premise, introducing the three worlds in which Chuck will move (home with his sister, at work with the Nerd Herd, and saving the world with Adam Baldwin and Olivia Wilde lookalike Yvonne Strahovski). I like Chuck the character a lot already, thanks to Zachary Levi (who doesn't play it exactly the same way Adam Brody would have, even though they also look alike) and his chemistry with Joshua Gomez as Morgan the sidekick, and I love the little deadpan comedy moments, like Chuck being menaced at the Large Mart by the bomb maker, Chuck's "Any Way You Want It" ringtone going off in the middle of a crisis and, of course, the porn star computer virus saving the day.

One thing I didn't get around to mentioning in my "Big Bang Theory" review is how much obvious contempt the writers have for all three of the main characters. I'm not saying you can't have a comedy where the characters aren't very likeable for the audience, but the writers have to like them on some level for it to work. It was obvious that Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant had great affection for David Brent on "The Office" even as they made him behave like an absolute git, or that the "Taxi" writers probably would have preferred hoisting a beer with Louie DePalma more than any other character on that show. I don't get that at all between these writers and these characters, who just come across like the stereotypical two dweebs and an airhead that the premise suggests. Jim Parsons made me laugh a few times with the way he delivered his lines, but beyond that, bleah.

Where some of my optimism about "Chuck" comes from having seen further down the road, the lame second "Journeyman" only makes me less enthusiastic about a show I was already agressively meh about. As a literary-type drama, it's not going to hold a candle to a book like "The Time Traveler's Wife," and the creators aren't interested enough in the sci-fi trappings to have any fun with the rules of time travel. There was one scene in the original pilot that I really liked, the bit where Dan unearths the toolbox with the engagement ring to prove to his wife that he'd traveled to the past, but I realized in watching the final version that most of my affection for it came from the U2 song being used; The Fray doesn't carry it nearly as well.

What did everybody else think?