10 Reasons You Should Watch "Chuck"

1) You have an inner geek. We all do. Mine gets her kicks from grammar books and Renaissance literature, plays with a Rubik's cube on the subway, finished the entire Harry Potter series in just over a week, and not-so-secretly loves Michael Cera, board games, and kitchen appliances. She also watches Chuck every Monday and sometimes wishes she had an Intersect in her head to teach her how to play darts or throw a boomerang or disable a bomb. Admit it—you wish that too.

2) Your real life is woefully devoid of covert missions and cunning adversaries who threaten every day to destroy the world as you know it. Maybe that's a big assumption. Maybe you actually do fight evil in airplane cargo holds and take down elaborate crime rings on a regular basis. If that's the case, you probably shouldn't watch Chuck. It'd be like working all day in an ice cream store and then going home and devouring a pint of Chunky Monkey. If you're like me, however, and you don't moonlight as James Bond in your spare time, you can fulfill all your spy fantasies vicariously through Chuck. It's the perfect compromise: You get all the action but none of the heart-stopping fear.

3) Captain Awesome is, in fact, awesome. Ryan McPartlin was supposed to appear in only a handful of episodes, but his character (Devon Woodcomb, better known to viewers as Captain Awesome) was so popular that the show's writers beefed up his role and made him a series regular. Awesome is Chuck's brother-in-law—a handsome, athletic cardiologist who speaks fluent Spanish, enjoys hang-gliding and rock-climbing, and knows how to tango. He's almost annoyingly great, but McPartlin is so perfectly cast that you can't help but like the guy.

4) You can only watch Firefly: The Complete Series so many times in a year. I miss Joss Whedon's short-lived space-age Western as much as the next Browncoat, but Adam Baldwin as John Casey is almost as brilliant as Adam Baldwin as Jayne Cobb—and certainly better than no Adam Baldwin at all. Casey is essentially Jayne anyway: He's quick to shoot, slow to trust, surly with a well-concealed soft spot, and hilariously short-tempered. He also shares Jayne's predilection for inanimate objects (see: Bonsai tree, Crown Vic, a firearm named Vera) and once very nearly betrayed the people he was hired to protect (see: "Chuck Versus the First Date," "Ariel"). If you have no idea what I'm talking about but correctly think you're missing out, finish reading this list and then immediately track down a set of Firefly DVDs.

5) Your first impression is probably wrong. I'll admit: When I first heard about the show back in 2007—PARADE featured it in our Fall TV Guide—I thought it sounded completely ridiculous. A nerd downloads a computer into his head that causes him to go all cross-eyed and flash on random top-secret government files? Yeah, right. I only tuned in to the pilot because I thought Zachary Levi was cute, but two episodes in, I was hooked. As the show's title character, Levi is charming, vulnerable, endearing, goofy, and—incredibly enough—believable. And if he doesn't win you over, someone else surely will. In addition to Adam Baldwin and Ryan McPartlin, whom I've already singled out, the cast includes Yvonne Strahovski as Chuck's handler/love interest Sarah, Joshua Gomez as Chuck's best friend Morgan, and Sarah Lancaster as Chuck's sister Ellie. There have been some pretty fantastic guest stars, as well, including Rachel Bilson, Dominic Monaghan, and Chevy Chase.

6) You have a heart. Let's get personal for a second. It's a widely known—and mostly accepted—fact among my family and friends that I'm, well, less than sentimental when it comes to relationships of a romantic nature. I'm the girl who laughs at lines like "You complete me" and yells at the TV when people choose love over work. But even I can't help melting a little when Chuck looks longingly at Sarah and then smiles sadly—which, by the way, happens at least twice every episode. The chemistry between Zachary Levi and Yvonne Strahovski is incredible. It brings out a soft side of me I didn't even know I had. You can't not root for those two to make it. I think even the Tin Man would feel a twinge watching them.

7) Laughter is good for your soul. And on Chuck, there's plenty of it to go around. I defy you to be grumpy or sad watching Buy More employees Jeff and Lester (a.k.a. Jeffster!) perform "Mr. Roboto" at Awesome and Ellie's wedding. It's impossible.

8) There are no rules. And if you think you've figured out the game, you're probably wrong. Chuck's writers aren't afraid to shake things up. They do it often and they do it well. Plot twists are par for the course, and even characters you think you know could turn out to be other people entirely. Three seasons in, I'm still not sure where everyone falls on the spectrum of good and evil. And I like it that way.

9) You're a sucker for the underdog. Chuck is David to Goliath, 2004's Red Sox to Joe Torre's Yankees, and Susan Boyle to Simon Cowell all rolled up in one. Both the character and the show have confronted superior opponents—The Ring and NBC, respectively—and both have triumphed, against all odds. Case in point: When the series failed to attract large-enough numbers last April and faced the possibility of cancellation, fans launched an elaborate "Save Chuck" campaign to get it renewed. On the air date of the second season finale, they rallied to purchase footlong sandwiches from Subway, one of the show's biggest sponsors. Zachary Levi himself led an army of supporters to a Subway in Birmingham, England (pictured). Viewers also started "Have a Heart, Renew Chuck," for which people donated money to the American Heart Association in Chuck's name. By May, more than $17,000 had been raised. That might seem like a lot of fuss over one little show, but if you watch it, you'll understand.

10) You have no reason not to. It's on Hulu, so if you have a life outside TV or, like me, you just have 8 million other shows to watch on Monday night—which is a grievance I'll cover in another post—you can catch up on your own time, on your own terms. And if you watch an episode and hate it, you've lost nothing except maybe 43 minutes of your life, which you probably would have wasted on something else down the road. But I don't think you'll hate it.

Photos courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/bramus/ / CC BY 2.0 (Rubik's cube), http://www.flickr.com/photos/ravenu/ / CC BY 2.0 (Adam Baldwin), and http://www.flickr.com/photos/vagueonthehow/ / CC BY 2.0 (Zachary Levi)