Tonight I’m taping shows on NBC, CBS, ABC, and the CW. If 24 were back on (and not sucking), that would bring it up to five out of five. Facts you didn’t know you didn’t need!

Kristen Bell joins the cast of Heroes tonight! The only frustrating thing is that she won’t be in every scene, a la Veronica, and with Heroes’ track record of cramming a lot of plots into one episode, we probably won’t see much of her at all. But exciting, nonetheless.

Less exciting every week: Chuck. It’s still on the list, but barely.

And then there’s The Only Show I Watch on CBS (Yes, That Includes Viva Laughlin, Ugh; I Will Explain Later): How I Met Your Mother.

Aliens in America continues to impress, though the sitcom-y situations are a little tiresome, even with the cross-cultural satire aspect of the show.

The pilot of Samantha Who? was very promising, especially the first five minutes and any scene involving Jean Smart. Let’s give it a chance, together.

We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming: Alec Baldwin returns to the hot seat on Inside the Actor’s Studio. In general I think Inside the Actor’s Studio is an extended erotic massage for celebrity’s fragile egos, but Alec probably has some interesting things to say.

Sports fans, that was some kind of horrible Red Sox game Saturday. I watched the middle (which was great), went to sleep, woke up with horrible shoulder pain and watched most of the end (which was dreadful, as was the shoulder pain — I kept thinking I had deep vein thrombosis because of goddamn Gregory House; thankfully, I am recovered). Hopefully they’ll bounce back tonight.

Though I don’t hate Chuck as much as my dad, and last week’s episode was almost pretty good, I am close to running out of patience with its too-frequent slackness. For this week, it keeps its season pass.

How I Met Your Mother has been on a hot streak lately. The tricycle episode was phenomenal, except for Robin’s stupid sub-plot.

Totally forgot to add Aliens in America to the list last week. Oopsie!

Speaking of sitcoms, there’s a new one tonight: Samantha Who? starring Christina Applegate as an amnesiac who finds out she was a terrible person, at 9:30 on ABC. I’ve heard good things about it, despite the fact that it’s a sitcom on ABC. I’ll be checking it out for sure.

Heroes seems to be spinning its wheels a bit: keeping Hiro in Japan and Peter in Ireland and Sylar in the middle of nowhere and the Creepy Twins south of the border, shuttling characters back and forth without a discernible purpose (Mohinder, Parkman, the Haitian, Nikki, Micah). I feel like we need an OH WOW moment pretty soon. Maybe when Kristen Bell finally appears?

We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming: The Salt-n-Pepa Show debuts on VH1, for those looking to kill their nostalgia for the early nineties.

I will pay you all for your silence.

• FX is doing a Damages marathon, if you wanted to catch up.
• It there’s a strike, NBC might air reruns of Curb Your Enthusiasm and the British version of The Office.
• Isaac Asimov’s daughter talks about Big Bang Theory(?!).
• Matt Roush talks about Pushing Daisies and The Office.
• A guy from Alias will be on Chuck (and other casting news).
• David Batista talks Dexter.
• Amy Sherman Palladino will direct a movie.
• Yet another new Lostie.
• Conan is moving from NYC to LA.
• An analysis of HBO’s ratings.
• TV Land is going to begin stream all sorts of shows.
• Michelle Rodriguez is going to jail for six months!
• Gossip Girl: NYC and realism. You guys have at it.
• Dare I say it — could this show be the new Arrested Development?
• Scott Adsit (Pete from 30 Rock) talks to Gothamist.

I’m tired and hungry and ready for the day to be over. So here are your viewing options. Imagine them being read in a monotone.

I think Chuck has got two more shows before I give up on its immense promise and say farewell. But for now, I’m still in.

It’s the How I Met Your Mother with Winnie Cooper! If you don’t know how awesome Danica McKellar is, I urge you to learn, quick.

Heroes, Heroes, Heroes. Still exciting/baffling/fun.

And we get to see what cross-cultural shenanigans Aliens in America has up its sleeve. I’m looking forward to meeting some of the supporting cast. I liked the mother and sister’s exchange about the Pill; excellent timing for a throwaway bit.

We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming: For a nap. Goodnight.

Last night, I realized that my original opinion of Chuck and Reaper had reversed. I knew it was too soon (and is still too soon) to really know how a show is going to pan out, but the internet makes it so easy to spout an opinion. So here I go again, no doubt in preparation for completely changing my mind again next week.

Since I find it impossible to think about these two shows independent from one another, there must always be a “winner” in my head. This week, the winner was resoundingly Reaper.

Reaper seems relaxed and unhurried compared to Chuck’s manic MUST ENTERTAIN! WHEEE! pace. Sam struck me as charming and sweet whereas Chuck seems increasingly idiotic and hopeless. Though they’re both utterly ridiculous, the premise of Reaper is a heckuva lot easier to grasp in one sentence than Chuck’s brain-computer-image-thingy. I started to feel a — dare I say it? — Buffy-ish vibe from Reaper’s calm look at the sometimes silly face of evil, whereas Chuck’s vibe can only be described as desperate.

In next week’s match-up, I’m hoping both shows figure out that they are in need of a b-story. Just a little something for Captain Awesome and Sam’s brother Kyle (if I got to choose) to do on their own, because the weight of the whole plot is crushing Chuck and could very well get to Sam, too.

What do you think?

The dust has settled on most of the big premieres, and I’m excited to add some shows to my series pass this week. First up is Chuck, which in my opinion was the one of the top three pilots so far (for those keeping score at home, the others are Reaper and Dirty Sexy Money).

That show is nicely complemented by How I Met Your Mother (absurd publicity photo, left). The slap bet countdown is real.

Unfortunately that means that I don’t have space for Everybody Hates Chris. Sorry, EHC! I don’t actually hate you.

But I will have the space in the 8:30 slot to check out the controversial Aliens in America. I expect to feel about it much the same way as I do Everybody Hates Chris: probably good stuff, but not a tragedy if it were to get pre-empted by a joint session of Congress.

Then there’s Heroes, where Nikki and Micah return (great…) and we learn more about Claire’s weird flying stalker. Question for the crowd: Have they really started repeating abilities (if so, sad — I liked the uniqueness), or is Stalkerboy’s ability somehow different than Nathan’s?

We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming: Yes, this means I’ve abandoned Journeyman. I understand there were some surprising twists, and it seemed to have a spark of something, but I don’t care for the guy and I don’t care what it all means. Someone can tell me what happens later.

It’s probably way too soon to turn this in to a proper examination, on par with The Truth-Telling Anti-Hero Asshole With a Heart of Gold or The Persnickety Hero-Genius, but the similarities between Reaper’s Sam and Chuck’s Chuck (and, in a subcategory, Reaper’s Sock and Chuck’s Morgan) are just too many and obvious to ignore.

Chuck is nerd who suddenly becomes a human computer, with government secrets locked away in his brain. Sam is a nerd who suddenly becomes the devil’s henchman, ferreting souls back into the underworld. Though each of these shows have only aired pilots, it is clear that Chuck and Sam share some defining characteristics.

1. The Lack of a Life Plan. Chuck works at the Nerd Herd of a Best Buy type of place, and Sam works as a stockboy at a Home Depot type of place. They probably run into each other in the parking lot all the time. Neither job is particularly fulfilling for our protagonists, but they don’t really have any other ideas.
2. The Troubles With Women. Chuck hasn’t had a girlfriend since his college girlfriend went for his roommate. Sam didn’t go to college, and so doesn’t even have that to fall back on. Beautiful/traumatized women remain juuuuust out of reach: Chuck’s spy friend who’s spy boyfriend just died, and Sam’s co-worker friend whose father’s death keeps Sam at bay.
3. The Incalculably Worse Off Best Friend. Sock is a Jack Black/Jonah Hill/Kevin Smith best bud, always ready with an off-color remark. Morgan is less of a well-defined type, but equally hopeless. Both of these best friends are pretty much the only reason Sam and Chuck can go on living.
4. The Comically Inappropriate Superpower. Chuck’s brain is a computer! Or something! The point is, he can predict terrorism. Sort of. Sam works for the devil! Which means he has the Force! I mean, duh, right?
5. The Immense Difficulty of Their Task. Both dudes are completely unprepared for fighting crime or hell’s escapees. But no doubt they will find themselves learning a little something about themselves in the process.
6. The Secrets That Will Tear Us Apart. Of course, if everyone knew about these superpowers, they’d freak out and probably do something crazy. So Sam and Chuck must keep some things to themselves. Chuck’s lady friend knows but no one else, and Sam can tell his slacker buddies and no one else. I predict that this secrecy will not last long; they’ve got to get their Scooby gang together eventually.

Though they’re both nerds, Chuck is more of a smart nerd and Sam is more of a slacker nerd. This may explain why, in the end, I like Chuck more (both the show and the character). In the pilots, both shows were trying really, really hard to be funny, but I think I laughed more at Chuck. Reaper has the crude Apatow/Kevin Smith thing going for it, but I liked the occasional sweetness of Chuck, and the action sequences were far more well-thought-out and executed.

However, it would be foolish to underestimate the impact of Ray Wise as the devil. I like Adam Baldwin all right, but he needs thirty years and a history of unstable characters to reach Ray Wise’s level of menace.

It will be interesting to see which show prevails in the long-term (if either — or, perhaps, both). And who knows, maybe when (if) they complete their seasons, they won’t even have that much in common any more, and I’ll have to revisit this concept.

That was a lot of television last night. I don’t think I can keep up this pace, frankly.

I found Chuck delightful. The plot requires several major suspensions of disbelief, but if you go with it, there are some funny moments. Personally, I decided halfway through that Chuck is just psychic, and they’re living in a world where computers work differently than they do in the real world. It’s a true action comedy, where the action itself is funny and doesn’t seem like it’s shoehorned in from a different show. Besides, any show that pulls off a joke about a ninja assassin with a vendetta is a-okay in my book.

Heroes was its usual Heroes mix: There were two storylines I thought were promising, one that was boring, and one that was awesome. You’ll have to decide for yourself which was which. This is not to say that Heroes isn’t great. I love Heroes. The ending, in the container… amazing. Can’t wait to see what’s going to happen.

Mandy Moore has finally found a role worthy of her awesomeness, and it is a tattooed bad girl on How I Met Your Mother. Though I occasionally find the sentimentality cloying, when that show works, it really works. Excellent season premiere.

The Pick-Up Artist. Brady’s make-over on his student? Absolutely amazing. I was shocked. But also relieved at the outcome. And as much as I love that show, I’m so glad it’s over. I can’t take the tension any longer.

And then I started watching Journeyman this morning. Meh. When Monday night is filled with that much entertainment, the weakest link must go. And it just felt like territory that The Time-Traveler’s Wife did much more thoroughly and interestingly several years ago.

Care to argue with me?