Chad Powers Almost Made Me Lose My Mind

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Chad Powers is essentially what happens when a very simple idea is quickly developed into a full streaming series. Similar to how Ted Lasso started as an advertisement for NBC’s English Premier League broadcasts, Chad Powers originated as a joke on Eli’s Places, Eli Manning’s show on ESPN+ where the former Giants quarterback disguises himself with prosthetics to pretend to be a hopeful walk-on player at Penn State. The joke became popular online, and that was apparently enough to turn it into a marketable idea. The formula is simple: cast a well-known actor (Glen Powell), give the project to a talented showrunner (Loki’s Michael Waldron), and release it on Hulu. This is the state of TV development today, and the result of the Chad Powers process is mostly uninspired – a corporate attempt to create content that feels like a coloring book where all the lines are already drawn. However, despite all that, there’s a surprising hint of something genuine hidden within it. You just have to look closely to find it.

Okay, so the story goes like this: Powell plays Russ Holiday, a former star football player from the University of Oregon who totally messed up a championship game – like, *really* messed up – and got shut out of the pros. He’s basically a washed-up celebrity, always in the tabloids, and just feeling sorry for himself. At the start of the show, he’s a pretty annoying guy – drives a Cybertruck, plays around with crypto, and even wears a diamond earring when he goes clubbing. He thinks everything is going wrong for him, especially when a chance with the XFL falls through. But then he sees another opportunity with the South Georgia Catfish, a struggling college football team that’s holding open tryouts. So, get this, he *steals* prosthetic materials from his dad, who’s a Hollywood makeup artist (Toby Huss, by the way!), drives his Cybertruck all the way to Georgia, and tries to disguise himself as this guy named Chad Powers – he’s got floppy hair and puffy cheeks. It’s wild!

This story feels very similar to other comedies like Juwanna Mann, 21 Jump Street, She’s the Man, and Never Been Kissed. Russ gets help with his deception from Danny (Frankie A. Rodriguez), the Catfish mascot, who becomes his close, supportive friend after learning about Russ’s plan. The team’s coach, Jake Hudson (Steve Zahn), is under pressure from Tricia (Wynn Everett), the program’s outspoken leader (who feels like a different take on Hannah Waddingham’s character from Ted Lasso), and he’ll do whatever it takes to improve the team’s performance. His daughter, Rickie (Perry Mattfeld), is working hard to earn her place on the staff, even though she benefits from having connections and is a woman in a male-dominated field. The central questions are predictable: Will Russ, pretending to be Chad, regain his former success? Can he rescue the Catfish team? And can he keep his true identity a secret?

Chad Powers generally follows the typical story of an underdog in sports, so it’s never really a surprise what happens. We know Chad will make the team, he’ll win the game, and he might even find romance. Ricky develops feelings for Chad, even though Russ portrays him as a quiet, possibly naive country guy who acts like a child. The show also has to promote other Disney content, so it includes references to many other Disney properties for marketing purposes: Danny sings songs from Aladdin and Mulan, Catfish games are shown on ESPN, and Stephen A. Smith even makes a quick cameo. This need to fulfill promotional obligations also affects the writing, with jokes that are often inconsistent in tone. They jump between outdated pop-culture references (“You are just scrubba-dub-dub from the web like Hillary’s emails”) and typical jock humor (Chad avoids the team shower by mentioning a medical issue; he later uses a derogatory term in a joke that could have been removed) which feels like a forced attempt to appeal to a wider audience.

Despite all the interesting talent involved, Chad Powers isn’t a complete failure. The show unfortunately hides the appeal of co-creator Powell’s natural good looks because he’s covered in prosthetics that make him resemble a capybara. However, his charm still shines through as a somewhat clumsy person trying to do the right thing in difficult situations. All six episodes are directed by Tony Yacenda, who also co-created American Vandal, the clever and often overlooked true-crime mockumentary on Netflix about high school vandalism involving cars. Waldron, previously with Rick and Morty and known for inventive storytelling – including a fantastic first season of Loki that combined strong characters with thrilling cosmic horror – allows Chad Powers to become increasingly strange as it progresses, subtly raising unsettling questions that are typically avoided in shows about secret identities. How can Russ keep up this deception? What if he actually *prefers* being Chad Powers to being himself? And what is he prepared to give up to achieve his goals? The script occasionally hints at a bleak conclusion, suggesting the most likely outcome of the premise. For example, when Russ is feeling particularly down, Danny asks him what’s wrong. Russ, as Chad, replies in a playful tone, “Metamorphosis. I’m going to kill myself.”

Stories like these often jump from one forced plot point to another, but Chad Powers manages to create a truly complicated problem by the end. In fact, the final part builds to a showdown that’s so intense and biting, I actually stopped to wonder, Wait, was that a really good scene? Am I imagining things? And that’s what makes the show so interesting. Chad Powers is mostly a calculated, corporate project, carefully planned from beginning to end, but occasionally it feels like it could become something more. This internal struggle reflects Russ’s own path, where brief moments of kindness suggest he might overcome his past and, crucially, the lies he’s built around himself. The real question is whether those small glimmers of hope are enough, or if he’s destined to always face the same reality: you can’t escape who you really are, even when you’re pretending to be someone else.

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2025-09-29 22:55