There’s a new non-casual show on this year aimed at 20-somethings. Here’s what it’s about:

• A single, slacker guy has no direction in life
• He can’t have the girl he wants
• He lives with family members
• He has a friend who is funnier and more directionless then he is
• An entity is making him do things that he has ethical problems with, but as he does them he learns valuable life lessons.

Of course, that describes both shows, but here’s the big difference: Reaper loves that it is a sci-fi show and Chuck is denying its true genera.

In Reaper, the guy’s parents sold his soul to Satan and now he has to battle the Hell- escapee of the week with a Dust Devil. Funny? Yup. Sci-fi? Duh.

Chuck had the entire CIA/NSA database accidentally downloaded into his brain and now secret government agents follow him around making hot dogs. Funny? Mostly. Sci-fi/cyberpunk? Ah…

By shamelessly embracing its genera, Reaper is, from the get-go, funny, smart, and settled into its identity. It knows what kind of show it is and it delivers. Chuck, while it is a fine show, is taking itself too seriously. Having the “top agents” in the CIA and NSA indefinitely undercover watching a computer nerd is not funny, it’s just unbelievable. If they were assigned to him because they were screw-ups, boom: funny. But one of them is played as a serious assassin. Not funny, just unbelievable.

Thus far both shows are worth watching if you like this kind of thing. Supporting actors Ray Wise (Reaper) and Adam Baldwin (Chuck) are good enough to carry each show themselves, but where as Chuck feels like its finding its identity, Reaper is out of the closet and yelling “look at me.”