Chuck, a show many didn’t think would survive it’s first season, is having it’s fourth season premiere tonight. It’s amazing that there wasn’t a usual summer worry about Chuck being canceled (mainly due to the rest of NBC’s schedule being so bad, Chuck was safe). For those of you who haven’t seen it before, read on and find out why you should watch.

In the fall of 2007, a famous movie director shot the pilot of a funny action show which featured a slacker getting a unexpected (and somewhat unwanted) power. The slacker loved hanging around with his friends and family and was interested in a girl who wasn’t interested in him. The show had a few rough patches before ending the season on an amazing run of episodes. People were worried about there being a second season due to low ratings. Then, as a surprise to all, the second season was scheduled and the rough patches came back and never went away. The show was mercifully canceled.

Did you think I was talking about Chuck? No, I was talking about Reaper. Reaper was the show I decided to watch instead of Chuck. And I made a mistake. Reaper was a Kevin Smith project and Chuck was a McG project. I trusted Kevin Smith more, but the show (after a great end to season one) just failed miserably in season 2. Chuck increased it’s quality (even with some directions that people disliked in season 3) and has soared. I was wrong and should have followed the buzz sooner.

For those of you who don’t know what Chuck is about, let me introduce you. Chuck Bartowski is a slacker who was kicked out of Stanford and currently lives with his sister and her boyfriend Captain Awesome (named such because everything he does is “Awesome”). He works at the Buy More with his best friend Morgan and isn’t really sure what he wants to do with his life. His ex-friend/roommate Bryce (who got Chuck kicked out of Stanford) stole (and destroyed) a secret government computer and sent a disk to Chuck. The disk contained The Intersect. A set of classified government secrets put together into a subliminal image map. When Chuck opens up the image, his brain is turned into the computer. He’s paired up with a CIA agent Sarah (who pretends to be his girlfriend) and an NSA agent Casey (who works at the Buy More and is played wonderfully by Adam Baldwin from Firefly).

Sarah and Casey are guarding Chuck (with his head full of government secrets) and using his computer brain to help solve cases. The show does a great job of covering action scenes, personal growth on all the characters, a lot of humor and a lot of fun. It’s a giant load of fun that everyone (or at least more people than watch it now) should watch. I’d love to say that NBC has committed a full season order, but so far only 13 episodes have been ordered. Hopefully the ratings will be high enough to get the back 9 episodes ordered and not have the fans waiting and worrying next summer.

Watch Chuck.