Even before a trio of teen geeks raked in box-office gold in the summer movie hit "Superbad," TV was poised for its geekiest fall yet.

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GEEKSPOTTING

Four key indicators of Geekdom, and where to spot them this fall on TV.

• Outdated hair-do, as seen on Aliens in America.
• Rick Moranis-style geek specs sported on Big Bang Theory.
• Strange, self-made safety gear a la "Ghostbusters," found on Reaper.
• Classic pocket protector, an homage to "Revenge of the Nerds," featured on Chuck.

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After last year's breakout hits with nerdy characters -- Betty Suarez (America Ferrera) on ABC's "Ugly Betty" and Hiro Nakamura (Masi Oka) on NBC's "Heroes" -- it was only a matter of time before viewers would begin to see these everymen (and women) everywhere, including these four new shows, three of which air simultaneously:

"Chuck" (8 p.m. Monday, NBC, premieres Sept. 24): Chuck Bartowski (Zachary Levi) works at a Buy More electronics store as part of the Nerd Herd that diagnoses and fixes problemsome computers. But his life changes when he opens an e-mail filled with government secrets that download to his brain, leading him to become a government agent in this action-comedy.

"The Big Bang Theory" (8:30 p.m. Monday, CBS, premieres Sept. 24): Brilliant physicists Leonard (Johnny Galecki) and Sheldon (Jim Parsons) live together, pine for the dim bulb next door (Kaley Cuoco) and hang with their nerdy CalTech scientist friends, Howard (Simon Helberg) and Rajesh (Kunal Nayyar).

"Aliens in America" (8:30 p.m. Monday, The CW, premieres Oct. 1): Outcast 16-year-old Justin Tolchuck (Dan Byrd) has few friends and isn't one of the cool kids, so his mom (Amy Pietz, "Caroline in the City") tries to import a friend. Everyone is surprised when the exchange student is not a blond Norwegian, as pictured in the brochures, but Raja Musharaff (Adhir Kalyan), a 16-year-old Muslim from a small village in Pakistan.

"Reaper" (9 p.m. Tuesday, The CW, premieres Sept. 25): When underemployed big box store employee Sam (Bret Harrison, "The Loop") turns 21, he learns his parents sold his soul to the devil. When Sam isn't playing video games or at his dead end job, he hangs with slacker pal Bert "Sock" Wysocki (Tyler Labine, "Invasion").

Already there's the CW reality show "Beauty and the Geek" (season premiere Sept. 18), which pairs brainy guys with beautiful-but-not-so-smart women, and even on the ABC Family series "Greek," the male lead isn't a cocky frat boy, it's an insecure curly-haired kid, Rusty (Jacob Zachar).

Then there's the annual San Diego Comic-Con, a long-running event that began. humbly, as a gathering place for fans of comic books. Now it's a showcase for media companies to peddle their upcoming movies and TV shows every July, and fans who've never cracked a comic book show up in droves.

Why the geekapalooza? It's a combination of coincidence, TV having success and copying itself and writers getting in touch with their inner nerd.

"As a writer, you want to write what you know," said Josh Schwartz, executive producer of "Chuck." He helped launch TV's geek ascendancy with Seth Cohen (Adam Brody), the indie-music-loving outcast on "The O.C." "We know many more writers who resemble Chuck than, say, Jack Bauer. Just saying."

The Chuck character may also be more relatable. Viewers may wish they could be as daring as Jack Bauer, but in reality, they're more likely to identify with Chuck's awkwardness.

"As Chuck succeeds, it gives you that sense of maybe I could succeed," Schwartz said, noting it's similar to the everyman quality of Peter Parker in "Spider-Man" and Neo in "The Matrix." "That's just a very appealing part of the pop culture mythology right now."

"Aliens in America" executive producer David Guarascio pointed to a past TV show about oddballs as inspiration, NBC's 1999-2000 series "Freaks and Geels."

"We loved the honesty with which it portrayed the high school experience and that was definitely an influence in how we approached "Aliens" in wanting to be honest about the high school experience and still be funny," he said.

That attempt to be authentic also had an impact on Jim Parsons, the actor playing one of the dweeby scientists on "Big Bang Theory."

"Everyone is very sincere. There are not any hidden motives or agendas, nothing nefarious; everyone is just open to each other," Parsons said of the "Big Bang" characters. "They let Sheldon say some of the most odd things in that openness that someone with a knowledge of how you should talk in social situations should not let themselves say. ... It's a pleasure to see someone put themselves out there and make a huge social gaffe. It's endearing, maybe not for the person doing it, but to observe."

"Big Bang Theory" co-creator Chuck Lorre said the show began as an effort to write about people with remarkable minds, not as a geekfest.

"The comedy is in their inability to deal with everything that we take for granted," Lorre said.

Co-creator Bill Prady, a former computer programmer, said he was inspired by people he's known in real life, including former co-workers and his father-in-law, a pediatric rheumatologist who wrote the protocol for treating lupus in adolescents.

"He has an unbelievable mind, but doesn't understand that discussing my wife's cycle at the Thanksgiving table is socially incorrect," Prady said. "I'll say, 'Graham, maybe that's not the kind of thing that's appropriate.' And he'll say, 'But it's a natural human function, just like eating, which we're doing here at the table.' "

Ben Silverman, who helped launch "Ugly Betty" and is now NBC's Entertainment co-chairman, has his own theory on why geeks are hot.

"Acceptance is cool," he said. "We're in a moment of pop culture and pop humanity where the world's a little murky, and we're looking for some purity. I think part of what's interesting about nerds is there is this sense of purity to them. They're not always governed by the way you look or how rich you are. They're governed by a different set of rules, like intelligence.

"Hopefully there's a popular shift in celebrating intelligence again," Silverman said. "We haven't necessarily had the most intellectual leaders, not the most intelligent role models, and there's a push to bring brains back into the mainstream."