Great geeks

Both "Chuck" and "Reaper" are about young, nerdy guys who work at big-box stores, who aren't really going anywhere in life and who suddenly find themselves imbued with powers and sent on missions to save the world.

Both shows are sort of action/comedies.

And both shows get off to strong starts this week.

How this sort of coincidence happens, no one inside the television industry can ever explain. But, in this case, the viewers are the winners — so who cares?

CHUCK (tonight, 7 p.m., NBC/Ch. 5): Chuck (Zachary Levi) is a computer geek. He spends a lot of time playing video games, he hasn't had a girlfriend in years, and he's a member of the Nerd Herd (a fictionalization of the Geek Squad) at an electronics store that's clearly patterned on Best Buy.

His ex-best friend/high-level CIA operative — in mortal danger — sends Chuck an e-mail that contains all of the government's top secrets, which are downloaded into Chuck's brain.

So, quite suddenly, Chuck is a target for both America's enemies and its own agents. And he's caught in the middle between the National Security Agency's Maj. John Casey (Adam Baldwin) and CIA operative Sarah Walker (Yvonne Strahovski), who, he's hoping, might end his dating drought.

"Chuck" is an action/comedy from the creator of "The O.C.," and it's got similar sensibilities, at least in terms of the humor. There's sly, funny stuff amid the assassins and terrorists.

REAPER (Tuesday, 8 p.m., The CW/Ch. 30) comes to us about eight years after writer/producer Tara Butters made an off-the-wall suggestion to her writer/producer friend, Michele Fazekas — that it "would be kind of funny to do a show about a kid whose parents sold his soul to the devil."

They've been kind of busy since then, working on shows like "Ed" and "Law & Order: SVU." "But we always had this in the back of our minds," Fazekas said. "We always knew we wanted to be comedians. That was always our tone even though we were on a lot of cop-show procedurals."

Actually, Butters and Fazekas were meeting with incredibly successful producer Mark Gordon and his team about something entirely different.

"We pitched them our cop-show idea, and they were, like, 'Oh, that sounds great,"' Fazekas said. "And I said, 'Well, do you want to hear our other one? It's about a kid who is a bounty hunter for hell and also works at Home Depot.' And Mark started roaring, laughing."

The result is "Reaper," a supernatural action comedy that's a hoot.

Sam (Bret Harrison) is a slacker whose parents have never expected anything from him. He works at the local Work Bench (as Home Depot has been disguised) and doesn't do much of anything.