Now, I watch a lot of TV, but it's been a long time since I've watched a brand new show from the airing of its first episode. I accidentally saw the pilot of House when it aired and liked it a lot, but circumstances beyond my control prevented me from watching any further. This is how it always is for me. Sure, I see pilots from time to time, but I'm more of a wait-for-the-DVD-and-watch-them-all-at-once watcher than a wait-for-next-week's-episode watcher. In fact, when I think about it, the only TV show I've ever watched in its entirety as it aired, from pilot to finale, was the first season of A.L.F.

This year, however, things are different. Armed with a TiVo machine and notes taken from someone else's copy of Entertainment Weekly, I've managed to record many pilots and premieres from the Fall TV season. So now, the only problem is figuring out which shows to keep watching, and which ones to flush.

The Bionic Woman
I suppose its a testament to my maturity level that I said "Wow! She's got some bionic boobs, that's for sure!" about 12 times during this pilot, but that's beside the point. I hate to admit liking this show. But yet ... I do. It's got two of my favorite actors from Battlestar Galactica in it, and like that program, this is a 1970s remake that actually benefits from 30 years of wisdom. Plus, there's a lot of running and jumping. Yeah, it doesn't take much to please me.

Reaper
This one, I'm really not so sure about. I really liked the short-lived Grim Reaper comedy Dead Like Me when I watched it on DVD. And truthfully, how many Grim Reaper comedies can the world handle? This one is directed by Kevin Smith of Clerks fame, and it kind of shows. This is the story of a 21-year-old guy whose parents sold his soul to the devil before he was born, so now he has to bring escaped souls back to Hell as kind of a bounty hunter. Some of his loser co-workers help him with his duties. He also likes a girl. We'll see.

Chuck
Honestly, Chuck has two things going for it: 1) I really like the characters, especially Chuck himself. 2) There's a lot of parkour, which is really fricken cool. On the downside, the whole concept is megadumb. Chuck's college roommate, who was always way cooler than him, ended up being a rogue CIA agent, who also ended up somehow "downloading" an email containing all of the government's supersecrets DIRECTLY INTO CHUCK'S BRAIN. I simply can't suspend my disbelief. Honestly, if they can come up with these great characters, they should be able to come up with a better way of bringing them together. And how can this series have any kind of staying power? Those secrets are going to become stale in a few months or maybe a year as everything changes. What then? Drum up another character to "download" more secrets? Ugh. Just let Chuck date the cute CIA girl and make it an I Dream of Jeannie kind of thing -- we'll love them no matter what. Is it so hard?

Heroes
Not a pilot, but a premiere here. Last year, I watched Heroes sporadically. Sometimes, I couldn't get enough of it. Sometimes I barely paid attention. I watched the episodes out of order on a combination of NBC and the SciFi Channel, and I caught about half of them.

Naturally, I assumed that I had to watch them all in order before I could be truly hooked. The DVDs proved that I had been right all along: Three-fourths of Season One was absolutely fantastic. One-fourth was fine, but boring.

The one episode I hadn't seen was the finale. If you haven't seen Season One of Heroes, here's one spoiler you should read: the finale shits the bed.

It's incredibly difficult to understand how they could make such fantastic episodes mid-season, but make the most important episode -- the finale -- utterly suck. But then ... then they come back with a premiere that is EVEN WORSE! Please. Hiro Nakamura is in ANCIENT JAPAN now!? And his idol is not actually a samurai, but some British douchebag? The writers of this show need to realize that writing a major TV drama is not the same thing as DMing a game of Dungeons & Dragons over three bags of Cheetos and a case of Mountain Dew.

Still, I'll probably keep watching it. I'll probably keep watching all these for a while. And on top of that, there's still more to watch (I'm particularly looking forward to the Pushing Daisies pilot next week.)

I'll keep reporting.