Chad Powers Review: Dumb But Fun All the Same

Chad Powers Is Dumb Fun In All the Best Ways

It feels important to say that Chad Powers is not going to be a show for everyone. Its premise is functionally ludicrous. Its humor is epitomized by the sort of politically incorrect jock jokes that powered an endless array of mid-aughts college comedies. Its characters can sometimes feel cartoonish. And it is absolutely not what anyone might call prestige or high-brow entertainment. And yet, the show is somehow strangely charming, a largely unbelievable comedy about an obnoxious jackass who may or may not be fumbling his way towards becoming a decent person that’s seasoned with just enough edge to avoid becoming overly cloying or saccharine. Nothing about this show should work. And…yet. In all its dumb, ridiculous glory, it (mostly) does.

In a clear attempt to follow in the footsteps of Ted Lasso, an award-winning series that started its life as an NBC Sports skit, Chad Powers is based on a one-off character first originated by Eli Manning for an ESPN+ docuseries. Its premise is basically its plot: Current Hollywood It Guy Glenn Powell plays Russ Holliday, a superstar University of Oregon quarterback who manages to lose a national championship game so spectacularly that it torches both his professional prospects and his personal reputation (although his subsequent bad behavior plays no small part in the latter). Eight years later, Russ is still struggling; he’s bought a Cybertruck, dabbles in crypto, and is obsessed with outlandish conspiracy theories and social media. He can’t even land a spot playing for a B-list XFL team. Determined to turn his life around, he decides the answer is to start over as someone else. Literally.

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Using a prosthetic kit stolen from his makeup artist father (Toby Huss), Russ transforms into the eponymous Chad Powers, a puffy-faced idiot savant with an unnaturally high-pitched voice and one heck of a throwing arm. His goal? Enter the open tryouts at a fictional small south Georgia college, win the role of quarterback, and get a chance to rewrite his worst mistakes. Now, there are many (many) aspects of this plan that Russ has not thought through in any tangible way. But, thankfully, he’s almost immediately befriended by Danny (a consistently hilarious Frankie A. Rodriguez), the South Georgia Catfish mascot who instantly clocks his fake identity, but for inexplicable reasons that are best not considered too closely, decides to help him pull his scheme off.

What follows is a fairly predictable sort of underdog story. While Russ as Chad scrambles to stay on top of the increasingly sprawling series of lies he’s told about who he is and keep his fake face from falling off, he also begins to bond with his various new squad mates, including the world weary Coach Jake Hudson (Steve Zahn) and his assistant Ricky (Perry Mattfield), a genuinely talented nepo baby struggling to be taken seriously in the male-dominated sports world that judges her for both her gender and the fact that she’s the coach’s daughter.

But, you’ve seen a lot of this before: Chad’s talent is evident, and his exceptional abilities immediately lift their tiny team into the national football conversation. (Your mileage may vary when it comes to whether you think South Georgia could ever competitively hang with schools like Ole Miss and Tennessee. Do they even play in the SEC?) But with their newfound fame comes more scrutiny, and Russ must scramble even faster to keep his identity a secret. Can his success on the field save him if anyone discovers the truth?

To be fair, Chad Powers, as a show, is exceptionally dumb in many ways. But it’s self-aware enough about it that it’s fairly easy to handwave the most egregious plot holes. How does no one notice that Chad is practically a decade older than the rest of his new teammates? Who could possibly believe his increasingly outlandish tales of an early life spent homeschooled in a small town where feral wolves occasionally steal residents’ babies? Could a bad wig and some awful fake cheeks ever really make Glen Powell not look like, well…Glenn Powell? There’s no real way to satisfactorily explain any of those things, so Chad Powers doesn’t even try. It simply leans into the absurdity of almost every situation, finding uncomfortable humor and surprising heart in what are objectively ridiculous running gags and borderline offensive jokes.

It helps that, as a unit, its cast is gamely committed to the bit. Powell’s abundant natural charm covers a multitude of sins and, as OG Scream Queens fans already know, his comedic timing is wonderfully on point. (I’m almost embarrassed to admit how many times I laughed myself silly over Chad regaling his coaches with some made-up story about his supposedly backwoods upbringing.) More importantly, he makes the sporadic flashes of warmth and humanity that flourish in Russ over the course of the season’s six episodes (all of which were available for review) feel believable. Can pretending to be a good person help make you a good person? Or, at least, a better one? That’s a key question at the heart of the show, and it may surprise many viewers to learn that Chad Powers isn’t afraid to make the answer to that question a morally thorny and emotionally complicated one.

The show also smartly surrounds Powell with an outstanding supporting ensemble: He and Fernandez have great bestie chemistry, and his turn as catfish-wearing, musical theater-loving sidekick comes very close to stealing the show right out from under his more famous co-star. Zahn and Mattfeld do some excellent—and surprisingly subtle, for this show— work together, as a father-daughter duo trying to navigate the complexities of their personal and professional relationships. (Mattfeld also gets some of the season’s richest emotional material toward the end of the season, and her performance in the finale is steal-your-breath good.) Colton Ryan is another scene stealer as Gerry, the team’s try-hard backup QB, but our general awareness of the larger Catfish locker room is (sadly) fairly limited. Perhaps something the inevitable Season 2 will work on.

Something else Season 2 could stand to work on is jettisoning some of the show’s more outdated humor and/or comedy tropes. Yes, this is a male-skewing sports series about college football, but do we really need to drop the r-word quite so regularly or lean into so many jokes whose punch lines essentially boil down to homophobia? Its surprisingly cynical finale proves that this is a show that’s capable of rising above the stereotypical choices of its genre when it wants to—it absolutely can do better than simply modeling the worst of frat bro culture.

That said, there will likely be two camps of viewers when it comes to Chad Powers: Those that find its outlandish premise and occasionally mean-spirited humor off-putting and those who simply revel in the stupid fun of it all. (Against what is perhaps all good sense and logic, I am in the latter category.) Sure, you might have some questions about the internal logic of some of Russ’s choices or the narrative consistency of the world this series exists in. But if you don’t think about it too hard, you’re going to have a surprisingly good time.

Chad Powers premieres September 30 on Hulu.

Lacy Baugher Milas writes about TV and Books at Paste Magazine, but loves nerding out about all sorts of pop culture. You can find her on Twitter and Bluesky at @LacyMB

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Chad Powers Is Dumb Fun In All the Best Ways