I used to say I didn't have a TV, and it sort of had that snotty "and if I did I'd only watch PBS" tone. After five months of living alone, however, I've spent so much time watching "television" - thanks Hulu and uTorrent - that it would be kind of pathetic if I didn't have anything to show for it.

1. Zachary Levi
When I first met my boyfriend, I just about doubled at the knees because with his glasses and halo of unkempt curls he looked like a sweet, absent-minded computer science grad student. Of course, he turned out to be an architect, which I'd never really considered as a dream profession for my future significant other (always keep your eye out for the geeks; they're smart and good-natured and generally respectful of women, mostly because they fear the shit out of us). Whereas I'd advise everyone to watch "House" because of House, the character, I have to go with the actor half of the equation here because Zachary Levi is a comic genius and my pretend nerd boyfriend. He doesn't get the funniest retorts or the quirkiest plot lines, but he plays the straight man with wit and charisma while still making you believe he's actually a dork with a computer in his head. With the repetitive aspects of the show (Chuck has to be a spy but isn't good at it! Chuck loves Sarah but can't be with her! Chuck hates his job but is the only competent person there!), it would be easy to start phoning it in, but every time Chuck watches Sarah walk away or banters with Morgan in Nerdish, it's deeply watchable and fresh. In closing, anyone who can make the cross-eyed-I'm-involuntarily-accessing-the-spy-harddrive-in-my-head look hot is worth keeping an eye on.

2. The funny
My stomach muscles still cringe with fear at the memory of the second season premier, when  the Jeff and Lester Thunderdome cage match scene made me laugh so hard my Macbook fell off my lap. There are nerd jokes, pop culture jokes, and continuity jokes; there are parodies and slapstick and dry wit. There's nothing that won't be played for a laugh, and yet the humor is never mean or crude.

3. The music
In "True Blood", the music can be (but isn't always) impossibly hokey: when Sookie's in trouble, you hear "Trouble" by Ray Lamontagne; when Sam smells something, Lynyrd Skynyrd's "That Smell" blares. It's as if a ten-year-old were given the soundtrack as a homework assignment and spent a couple hours using plot-related search terms on iTunes. In "Greek", sometimes a scene will start with such hideously generic elevator crap that you're tempted to fast forward. All of this haterade is to say that on Chuck, you have two sets of music: the score (funny scene, action scene, sad scene) and the independently recorded and found music (Bon Iver, Ra Ra Riot, Bloc Party, Air Supply), and the former is incredibly catchy and the latter is perfectly timed and both actually add to the experience. Whereas one could watch "Mad Men" without sound, I'd be willing to listen to Chuck without visuals.