Kevin Smith, McG and James Burrows Get in the Pilot Seat

Chuck is pure fish-out-of-water silliness, a what-if pop-up show in which the scrawny PC jockey cracking geek-wise in the headquarters scenes of any Jerry Bruckheimer action flick is suddenly the guy front and center on the poster. If creators Josh Schwartz (The O.C.) and Chris Fedak can keep their pocket-protector 007 notion from wearing out its welcome, it should work. The sweet-faced Levi doesn’t overdo the dork shtick, allowing us to see the openings through which a little derring-do will transform him, while Strahovski ably handles her strangely layered hottie mission: Look fiercely sexy wearing only underwear and knife holsters, flirt with Chuck in a manner that makes him feel safe, but also show that he’s beginning to grow on you. And sure, we’ll all be reminded that Schwartz also gave us the blossoming of goofball Seth Cohen into a cool-chick magnet, but isn’t this trend easier to take than the sitcom spurt from a few years back of slob blowhards who somehow ended up with babes for wives?

At least Strahovski’s Sarah is her own woman, a comic-book fantasy but a formidable presence. The pretty, affable blonde who moves across the hall from a pair of Poindexter physicists (Johnny Galecki and Jim Parsons) on the new CBS half-hour comedy The Big Bang Theory is basically another sitcom ditz. She’s there to spark the show’s two equation-addled outcasts into emerging from their bookish cocoons, or is it just to brainstorm with their dicks? (You can practically hear the Beavis-y “heh heh” after saying the show’s title out loud.) It’s, uh, hard to tell what the creators had in mind for the role of Penny (Kaley Cuoco), whose main task is to stare blankly when mathematical jargon is dropped and pretend not to notice when the nerds ogle her, erasing yet another opportunity for an actress to be funny in prime time. If her character were sexy and batshit crazy, even that would be an improvement — something to wring a personality from. Hallowed sitcom director Jim Burrows (Cheers, Taxi, Will & Grace) steered the pilot, and while it’s got that professional Burrows sheen of unerrant joke delivery — especially from the talented Galecki, who can do this in his sleep — you have to assume the pile of scripts on his desk in this hurting age for the three-camera studio-audience format isn’t what it once was.

REAPER | The CW | Premieres Tues., Sept. 25, 9 p.m.

CHUCK | NBC | Premieres Mon., Sept. 24, 8 p.m.

THE BIG BANG THEORY | CBS | Premieres Mon., Sept. 24, 8:30 p.m.