Riding Herd on TV's Newest Nerd

Some people are born great. Some have greatness thrust upon them. And some become great by opening unknown e-mail attachments.

Take Charles Bartowski, aka Chuck. He's an 11-buck-an-hour hand for The Nerd Herd, a computer fix-it center with a kiosk at the big-box Buy More store. He's pretty normal—or, at least, functional. He loves his sister, hangs out with his geeky friend Morgan and sometimes plays the video game Call of Duty until his fingers bleed.

But his dowdy, merry-go-round life takes a roller-coaster dip when an old roomie—now a rogue (and dead) spy—sends him an e-mail with a gazillion government secrets embedded in it. How the image-intensive e-mail ever got through even on a high-speed Internet connection is beyond me, but never mind that: The information it contains somehow downloads into Chuck's brain, and suddenly this Nerd Herd employee is one step away from knowing Osama bin Laden's zip code.

A Human Supercomputer
Chuck's brain can't call the information up on a whim. Something's got to trigger it. To make matters more interesting, Chuck's roommate blew up the only computer on which all these connections were stored. That makes Chuck the government's primary repository for governmental secrets.

"Our most valuable secrets have been sent to an idiot," says a governmental bigwig.

"At least they weren't sent to his friend," his boss answers.

Chuck's new part-time gig as inept supercomputer has its perks. For one thing, he gets to pretend he's dating beautiful CIA agent Sarah, now on undercover assignment at the local Wienerlicious store. But the downside is that his life is now in constant jeopardy—from terrorists in the short term, and from his own government once they finally learn how to pry all those secrets from his brain and download them onto a more malleable hard drive.

Prying Into Chuck's Classified File
Chuck, the TV show (on NBC), is a thriller/comedy (a thromedy?) that feels a bit like USA's popular detective shows Monk and Psych. But, while those cable shows dip into mid-core cursing, Chuck is, linguistically at least, lighter fare. Through a handful of early episodes, characters misuse God's name every now and then and let a few mild expletives fly ("d--n," "a--"). Think M.A.S.H., circa 1982.

Chuck does ratchet up the violence a bit. Though the action is mostly bloodless, we've already seen slo-mo killings and frenetic—girl-centric—martial arts-style fight sequences à la the Charlie's Angels movies. Chuck and his cohorts engage in gunplay, tangle with knives and other nasty instruments, and are occasionally threatened with torture. But don't expect Chuck to bite the jugular out of a bad guy anytime soon like Jack Bauer did on 24 last season.

Sexual content is arguably more problematic here. If cleavage could kill, Sarah would be a busty bottle of weapons-grade plutonium. She routinely gallivants in her underwear or skimpy Wienerlicious outfit, often busting up baddies and busting halfway through her brassiere in the same scene. The bad 'uns are just as, um, bad, with one sensual rouge spy stripping down to bra and panties in front of Chuck to seduce him. She explains her interest in him by saying she likes "taking what Sarah wants."

Chuck's sister, meanwhile, lives with her boyfriend, known affectionately as Captain Awesome. He teaches Chuck how to tango while prancing about in his boxers.

Crude humor is used at times and, in the pilot episode, Chuck saves the world by downloading a virus from a porn site. Speaking of porn, Chuck's co-workers—all of whom do as little work as possible and one of whom lives to drink—drool over it. Characters occasionally make giggling references to prostitution, intercourse and threesomes.

Don't Open That E-Mail!
Chuck can also be a catalyst for some important lessons, though. Chuck learns, episode by episode, how tough it can be to do the right thing—particularly when no gold stars are forthcoming. He asks Sarah, "What's the good of being a hero if nobody knows about it?" It's a question at the heart of Jesus' parable of the widow's two coins (Luke 21). Later, Sarah tells him that "some people want to be heroes. Other people have to be asked." And then, demurely, she asks him.

But let's not get too deep. This is, for the most part, just an addled romp through the world of super-spydom—a campy and clean(er) send up of James Bond. It won't change your life. But it may (should) make you squirm—at times enough to change the channel—and it will certainly make you think twice about opening unknown e-mail attachments.