What will you do when, out of the blue, all of the United States government’s deepest and darkest secrets are downloaded to your brain? Will you get excited and feel a sudden surge of power and importance, knowing that you have an entire database of intelligence right beneath that hard skull of yours? Will you log in immediately to your Friendster, MySpace, Multiply and/or Facebook account and blog about the fact that you’re now a walking supercomputer? For Charles “Chuck” Bartowski, the answer is neither. When all of the United States government’s deepest and darkest secrets are downloaded to his brain, he will pass out. Indeed, in the pilot episode of the relatively new hit TV series, Chuck, Chuck passed out.

Chuck (portrayed by the charismatic Zachary Levi) is an unassuming Stanford University dropout who works at the Buy More consumer electronics store. Regarded as the best and nerdiest of a group of “IT consultants” working in the store known as the Nerd Herd, he is rather good at offering over-the-counter and on-call technical support, fixing busted cellphones and computers in a jiffy. Together with his hilarious bosom buddy and look-alike of another guy named Chuck (Clue: His last name rhymes with Morris.), Morgan (Joshua Gomez) and his caring sister, Ellie (Sarah Lancaster), Chuck lives a fairly normal life. Until… all of the United States government’s deepest and darkest secrets are downloaded to his brain, and he passes out.

Upon waking up, he has no idea what just happened with his head, but before he knows it he is being pursued by a pair of undercover agents sent by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the National Security Agency (NSA). Sent by the CIA, Sarah Walker (Yvonne Strahovski) is as dangerous as she is drop dead gorgeous, a cross between Naomi Watts and a black widow, whereas NSA’s John Casey (Adam Baldwin) is just plain dangerous, period. Together, they inform Chuck that what he now has inside his cranium is everything the CIA and NSA have amassed for years and kept well hidden, hundreds of years and thousands of lives worth of intelligence. Together, they vow to protect Chuck, now a government secret as well, at all costs.

And that’s exactly what they manage to do so far over the course of one season, spanning 13 episodes, 42 minutes each without commercials. And they do this while fighting the featured bad guy in every episode, with Chuck being the hero, of course, as he gets to see flashes of seemingly disparate images that are in fact subliminally embedded with CIA and NSA data and intelligence. They make use of this information to apprehend the baddies, threats to national security whose personas range from a vertically challenged former Olympic gymnast to an eye-catching shawarma delivery girl.

But, mind you, Chuck is not all action. More than anything, it has good old fun in great amounts. The series has more than its share of rib-cracking laughs, mostly courtesy of the perpetually amusing Morgan, the culturally diverse employees of Buy More and tongue-tied Chuck himself. There’s also plenty of romance between our hero and Agent Walker (She’s not drop dead gorgeous for nothing.) to provide hopeless romantic viewers with that all-important kilig factor. And what’s more, one of Fujitsu Ten’s (where I work) very own car audio units makes a special appearance or two on the show, as a car stereo who transforms into a sophisticated, futuristic piece of GPS technology at the touch of a button (although I'm not quite sure if we actually designed something like that). If that’s not reason enough for you to give the series a try, I don’t know what is.

Hot on the heels of the success of Heroes, Lost and Prison Break, Chuck offers a great diversion from whatever is giving your forehead creases and making your blood pressure rise. So, I suggest you catch up on AXN or C/S on RPN, get hold of the complete first season along the curbsides of Quiapo, or download episodes from the Internet to your hard drive. Just be careful if you decide to go with the last option; you might accidentally download all of the Philippine government’s deepest and darkest secrets. I don't think anyone can handle that.