Oh lordy, but Mondays are going to be a crowded night of television. Let's go through tonight's premieres network-by-network, starting with ABC.

America's inexplicable love for dancing continues with another season of "Dancing With the Stars" at 8 p.m. You can find a complete list of the "stars" who'll be hoofing along this time around on the show's Web site, but we'll admit, we don't really have a horse in this race. Although as far as entertainment legends go, c'mon. Wayne Newton! (Two more episodes will air tomorrow and Wednesday.)

Following "Stars" at 9:30 p.m. is yet another season of "The Bachelor" and horror or horrors joy of joys, there is actually another Bay Area gal vying for her 15 minutes this time around. Sheena from Walnut Creek, we'll be watching you!

Moving on to CBS, it's sitcoms and overacting night. First up is "How I Met Your Mother" at 8 p.m. At the end of last season Ted broke up with Robin, whom we had learned at the beginning of the show wasn't, in fact, their mother, which means we might finally find out how Ted met their mother, although, really, that's probably the least fun part of the show. Barney, Lily, and Marshall are the characters who bring the consistent laughs, so we hope the show continues to focus on them more than Ted and his love life. But when their mother does show up? Well, she better be worth the wait. Enrique Iglesias and Mandy Moore guest star tonight.

"The Big Bang Theory" follows at 8:30 p.m., and it's another show about "loser nerds who can't get dates" (see "Chuck," below). In this case it's two roommates, played by Jim Parsons and "Roseanne"'s Johnny Galecki, who are thrown into a tizzy when a beautiful blonde moves in next door. While the "humor" of the show seems to be based on the fact that they are incredibly intelligent geeks who are totally inept when it comes to girls, we can't help but get the feeling that the reason they can't score with chicks is because they are GAY. Seriously, watch the show and tell us we're wrong.

Of considerably less interest on CBS are the season premieres of "Two and a Half Men" at 9 p.m., "Rules of Engagement" at 9:30 p.m., and "CSI: Miami" at 10 p.m.

Which leads us finally, to NBC, beginning with the series premiere of "Chuck" at 8 p.m. This is the second show former "O.C." creator Josh Schwartz has his fingers in this season ("Gossip Girl" being the other), and based on pilots alone, it's the far more entertaining one. Essentially a spy comedy, the story focuses on Chuck, one of those Hollywood versions of a "loser nerd," which is to say he's a lot more attractive, funny, and socially acceptable than most of the hardcore nerds we've met in our lives. So, despite being cute, partially charming, and free of B.O. (at least, he's shown showering at one point), we are lead to believe he's a total dork who can't get a date. He's also unwittingly downloaded all the CIA's secrets into his brain via a rogue agent's email (yeah, don't even try to figure out how that could work) and is now enmeshed in their shadowy world. And, of course, the agent assigned to him is a beautiful blonde (played by Yvonne Strzechowski, try saying that three times fast). (His nemesis is played by Adam "Not a Baldwin Brother" Baldwin, probably best known at this point for his part in the series "Firefly.")

We'll admit the pilot did make us laugh once or twice, but that's mainly because we're real suckers for slapstick. But other than those few funny moments we can only hope this episode's ho-humness can be blamed on its need for a lot of exposition, and with that out of the way it can proceed to get on with the funny for the rest of the season.

All last season, "Heroes" was the show we hated to love. We're not here to fight with the show's many rabid fans, but come on. It really is pretty ridiculous and often dumb. But week after week they'd do things like end an episode with the cheerleader flayed open on an autopsy table, alive, or revealing that Sulu is Hiro's dad, and thus ensure that we would keep watching. We're not really sure what happened during last season's finale, (so, is Sylar a cockroach now?), but we're looking forward to even more heroes the year, including a multi-episode arc featuring Kristen "Veronica Mars" Bell, and the addition of another "Star Trek" alum, Nichelle Nichols, who will join the cast for a few episodes.

Following "Heroes" is the series premiere of "Journeyman," a time-travel drama set right here in San Francisco. Sort of. Have fun trying to figure out just where the hero's huge house is located (and how he can afford it on a reporter's salary), or just where you can catch the "18 Columbus" bus line. Aside from the fake San Francisco hilarity, the show is actually kind of engrossing, much like The Time Traveler's Wife was. Kevin McKidd, one in a large number of Brits playing Americans on TV this year, stars as a "San Francisco Register" reporter who finds himself jumping back in time, and his own past, perhaps to right his own wrongs, or save other's lives. Of course, friends and family back in real time just think he's a drunk disappearing on benders, but an intervention isn't going to do much to help him. As tends to be the case with most time travel stories, there are some, "Wait a second...if he did that, how did this happen?" moments (like, what's up with the photo he finds online of the guy holding the glass of wine? If either past scenarios were to play out, that photo doesn't make a lot of sense), but such is the curse of the time traveling tale. The show plays nicely into a common desire to go back and do things differently in one's own life, and as long as it plays around with that notion more, and focuses less on the helping-random-strangers thing, it'll keep a season pass on the old TiVo.