Zachary Levi has returned to where it all started, you know the Buy More, and "Chuck" fans couldn't be happier.

In fact, most of them tuned in Monday to see the return of "Chuck" allowing it to earn a 3.5 rating/5 share in Fast National ratings from The Nielsen Co. That was the best outing of "Chuck" since April 27 when it earned a 3.7/6. However, it was below last season's average of 3.6/6, and was more than 18 percent off its season premiere in 2009-10.

Still, "Chuck" seems to be holding on to the audience it already has, and sometimes, that's just enough to keep things going.

While last year, "Chuck" was seen as a way to save Mondays on NBC, this year it's a bit different. "Chuck" was actually NBC's lowest-rated show Monday, behind the series premieres of "The Event" (6.8/10) and "Chase" (5.0/8). "The Event," starring the likes of Jason Ritter, Blair Underwood and Laura Innes, gave NBC its best Monday outing since the series premiere of "The Jay Leno Show," which picked up an 11.0/18 en route to a disappointing 3.5/6 Monday average outing.

"The Event" was welcome news for NBC, however, its audience a 122 percent improvement over what the network showed in the timeslot previously -- namely "Heroes" and later "Trauma." It didn't keep viewers interested in "Chase," however, which lost 26 percent of its lead-in audience to finish behind the premieres of "Hawaii Five-0" on CBS (8.6.14) and "Castle" on ABC (7.2/12).

However, "Chase" was nearly 30 percent better in the timeslot for NBC than last year, serving as the home for "Jay Leno" and later "Law & Order" (4.2/7).

Fast Nationals usually provide a snapshot of what Americans are watching by pulling numbers from the top urban markets that includes both live viewing and same-day timeshifted viewing. A rating point generally represents more than 1.1 million households while the share indicates the percentage of televisions turned on that was tuned to the specific program. These numbers typically shift when final ratings are issued.

Data collected from The Nielsen Co., as distributed by Zap2it. BlipNetwork tracks non-news, non-event programming, and figures for this story reflect airing of new episodes only. For more information on the Audience Loyalty Index, click here.