Matt and I watched the pilot to Chuck over the weekend. I was pleasantly surprised. The show was well cast and well written. The premise was quirky but believable and they achieved a great balance of action and humor. It will make a more sensical pairing to Heroes than everything NBC tied with it this past year. It’s geared towards a similar demographic, has a similar (but lesser so) comic book homage going on, and frankly anything is better than the reality television version of The Wedding Crashers.

(For those of you who don’t know about it yet: after receiving an email from Chuck’s ex-roommate track star/gymnast/genius/ CIA agent that contains all the secrets from the CIA and NSA in image form, Chuck’s brain now holds all these secrets. By default, this makes him a super important accessory to all the workings of the American government.)

My biggest beef with the entire show is that it isn’t very original and it doesn’t feel original. It’s like someone watched Live Free or Die Hard and decided that if they replaced John McClane with a generic hot blonde, and added some more sci-fi shenanigans to compensate for the lack of Bruce Willis awesomeness, they’d have an fantastic television show.

Additionally, Chuck’s sidekick, Morgan, is channeling Seth Green far too strongly.

The set-up for the show worked well: Chuck’s birthday, mysterious email, weird black out, strange hot girl, everything comes together and Chuck saves the day in a realistic fashion.

But, really, the head of the NSA and the most valued CIA spy didn’t have the know-how to de-activate a simple lap-top bomb? Sheesh, I say to that.

Overall, the pilot was promising. They laid out the ground work for interesting characters and relationships to develop, Chuck is a likeable guy, and I laughed a lot more than I expected. After a few more episodes, I think the show will be able to find its own footing and become a unique voice, as opposed to being a mish-mish of everything I liked about NBC last season. It just needs a bit more time.

I’m going to keep watching. Hopefully I’ll laugh more, be reminded of Seth Green less, and Chuck will take Ninja lessons.

Chuck premieres September 24th at 8pm on NBC.