I was thrilled and excited to finally get to settle in for a night of NBC premieres after hyping them for over four months now. I decided to start with Chuck and see how far I got through the night. It was a bit of a roller coaster of emotions for me though as I sat through the two and a half hours of TV dramedy, dramaction, and dra-huh? That last one explains why it was only 2.5 hours instead of the full 3 for me. I’ve already started to hear some feedback from our readers on what they thought so I wanted to go ahead and share my reactions to each of the three premieres.

First up was Chuck, the action / comedy / drama starring our hero, a member of the Nerd Herd (think Geek Squad) who has come into possession of all the nation’s secrets. Fortunately/unfortunately for him the secrets are embedded in his brain making him a high value target for the bad guys and a high value prize for the good guys. The pace of this pilot was great and wasted no time diving into the characters and exposing their niche for this series. The entire cast seems to have been very well selected, especially with our protagonist Chuck, Zachary Levi, but don’t forget the very good looking Yvonne Strahovski as Sarah Walker, the agent sent to protect Chuck. As long as the writers keep including scenes of her wandering around in her apartment just wearing underwear I think they’ll keep the male demographic tuning in each week.

While the storyline is obviously a little out there the show still looks like it could be a great series with plenty of fun. I like the way the pilot set up the story and characters by giving us just enough on each of them to know what to expect. This should be a nice, light hearted alternative to some of the deeper, harder to track shows going on all around it. Chuck has earned itself a place on my DVR schedule for the season.

Next up was the season 2 premiere of Heroes. I came into this series a little late first season but quickly got drawn in and watched everything I had missed online. Last season ended on a huge note with lots of excitement and potential for nearly all the characters. So I’ve gotta admit that I was actually a little bored with last night’s season 2 premiere. The story skipped ahead 4 months which means we miss a lot of the immediate reactions to last season’s ending. Only Hiro’s story picks up right where it left off and that whole thread has turned up dry for me with the twist on his hero from the past, Takezo Sensei, though it was nice to see Sark (David Anders) back on TV.

Then there was Claire who has moved to a new town and started up at a new high school. This area of the show looks like it could quickly turn into One Tree Heroes with the budding 11th grade romance and the clique cheerleaders. Claire’s character had been nice before because despite being a high schooler her issues were much bigger than stealing someone’s boyfriend and having trouble in PE. I hope they don’t keep going in that direction with her. It was also funny to see HRG’s family in another, nearly similar, very nice home despite his new job as a stock boy in a local Kinko’s type store.

Something better happen in the second episode because I don’t want to see Heroes turn into another nomadic Lost show with its wandering, “nothing happened” episodes. But oh boy I can’t wait to find out who is the new bad guy whose special power seems to be wearing dark hoodies. And if you were wondering about Sylar’s absence from the premiere, don’t worry because they already flashed a scene of him relaxing on the beach in next week’s preview. I’m going to put Heroes in the “draw” column so far.

I hadn’t even planned to watch Journeyman before I sat down last night, but I figured I should give it a try. Before even getting into the show I noticed it had the death-kiss timeslot of 10pm on Monday night. We all remember what happened to Studio 60 in that spot, right? So anyway, the show started right off and I can’t really tell you much about the characters other than the main guy is married and has a kid. The time travel flashes started up pretty quickly and didn’t get much explanation. While using scene transitions may explain to the audience that things have jumped I couldn’t figure out how the main character was suddenly surprised to see he had moved back to the present from the past when he noticed a late model car drive past him.

Maybe my brain was just tired after watching 2 hours of shows already, but I just couldn’t get into this one. I didn’t care about the characters, their motivation, or where the show was going. I decided to shut it off half way through, so I could have missed some huge revelations, but after the first 30 minutes I didn’t really care. If you watched Journeyman and enjoyed it please feel free to share why. So far I’m going to pass on this show as I already have two much better alternatives that night. NBC should consider shifting this one to a different, less competitive night if they really want this one to succeed.

So after three premieres I’m going to say the night was a tie with Chuck getting a gold star, Heroes with a “needs improvement”, and Journeyman with “have you considered a job in marketing?” What were your impressions? If you missed any of the shows and want to catch up then you’re in luck. Saturday night NBC will run encores episodes, but in case you can’t wait that long you can see them online at NBC.com.