Chuck: How can I like a show this much and still not really be that into it? It’s clever and funny, don’t get me wrong, and it’s nice to see Adam Baldwin in a role that plays to his strengths of quiet menace and deadpan comedy. (And Yvonne Strahovski is, I’ll be the first to admit, really hot.) But I’m not finding a reason to keep tuning in week to week beyond that. It’s the same problem I’m having, to a lesser extent, with Reaper: it’s good, but good enough? (And, y’know, Pushing Daisies also has a character named Chuck, although that one female. How many shows with characters named Chuck can one really watch?)

Heroes: The show was a lot of fun last year. And while I’m not convinced it’s found its footing yet (or recovered fully from a somewhat disappointing season finale), I do at least get the impression that the writers have a definite plan for what’s to come. I don’t know if I’m going to like that plan when it’s fully revealed, but it’s nice to think it’s heading somewhere. I haven’t been too impressed yet, but I haven’t been too disappointed either.

Journeyman: I think it’s interesting that the time travel is maybe the least exciting aspect of the show. The week-to-week, Quantum Leap-ish, putting-right-what-once-went-wrong is okay, but much more intriguing are the modern-day character interactions, the family dynamics, and the questions about what’s really going on and why. Put it this way: the boring parts have stayed boring, but the interesting parts have grown increasingly interesting. I’m not completely sold yet on the show, but at this point I do think it deserves a shot at a full season. (And I’ve been a fan of Reed Diamond since his days on Homicide and think he’s well cast here.)

Reaper: See Chuck above. There’s more to like here, partly because I think this show is funnier, but none of the episodes have been as good as the pilot. And I’m not all that into procedurals as a genre — even if the procedure in this case in hunting down escaped souls and sending them back to hell. A string of decent standalone episodes is fine, but I don’t know if it’s enough to keep me coming back. Season- or series-long arcs may have spoiled any other kind of television drama for me.

House: I think this is my one exception to the no-procedural rule. (Well, actually, it’s more of a guideline than a rule.) And so far, House has been at the top of its game. Some of that has to do with shaking up the casting, new faces and new problems, and I’m really enjoying it.

Bionic Woman: I posted about this, briefly, before. I think the show is starting to grow on me a little, but it’s still very problematic. And, in some ways, it’s indicative of one thing that’s really wrong with this season: the dearth of strong, complex female roles. Can we please move past the idea that girl power, female empowerment, begins and ends with a girl who can kick somebody’s ass? This is what made Buffy the Vampire Slayer initially so intriguing: she was a victim who could turn the tables on her assailant, who was a reversal of the helpless cheerleader of so many bad horror movies. But even more important were Buffy’s mental and emotional strengths, which she often possessed because she was a woman, not in spite of the fact. To make a character strong or fast “for a girl” — which is what I’m afraid Bionic Woman is sometimes doing — is to sort of miss the point. The climactic fight scene between Michelle Ryan and Katee Sackhoff in the pilot episode, for instance, feels less like a clash between two strong and complex characters, and more like a rain-soaked cat-fight. (Chuck also had a rooftop cat-fight a couple episodes in…and then another one indoors last week…but it at least had the good sense to forget about the rain for both of them.) Bionic Woman has shown some signs that it’s going to do more than pay lip-service to ideas of “female empowerment,” but I’m still not sold on the show overall.

Pushing Daisies: Definitely my favorite new show of the season, although I can understand how some might find it too aggressively cute. Even with a good ratings start and now a full season order, I think the show has an uphill battle in front of it — and it will be interesting to see if it can maintain the same quirky visual brilliance, pacing, and tone that it’s had in its first couple of episodes. But right now I think it’s working a real good combination of smart and silly.

Life: I’m usually not a big fan of the “quirky detective who sees things nobody else does” sub-genre^*, but there’s something here. Maybe it’s the acting, maybe it’s the mystery at the heart of the back-story, but I’m enjoying it so far. I’ll admit, I only watched the pilot because I heard that Claudia Black was in it — she was re-cast before the episode aired — but for now I’m hooked.

Kitchen Nightmares: Yeah, it’s basically the same show every week — Gordon Ramsey arrives at a failing restaurant, stares and curses in disbelief or disgust at whatever’s wrong, then helps to turn things around — but I’m enjoying it. I may need to worry that this and my recent mini-obsession with Top Chef mean that I need to re-evalute reality television, but so far it’s only cooking-related.

Stargate Atlantis: I feel like some of the cast changes, particularly Amanda Tapping’s arrival, were a little ham-fisted into the program. (Maybe that’s because I’m still bummed that Stargate SG-1 was cancelled. Or because we don’t yet know how those SG-1 DVD movies will fit into the continuity. Or because her arrival changes the dynamic more than I think the writers have been so far willing to acknowledge.) But Atlantis continues to be a lot of fun and I can’t forsee a reason for not watching it.

I also saw half an episode of Moonlight a couple of weeks ago. That was pretty dreadful. That this aired and Babylon Fields didn’t just proves there’s something fundamentally wrong with CBS.