Chad Powers Review: Glen Powell's Football Comedy Is Like a Dark, Dirty Ted Lasso

In the five years since Ted Lasso premiered, a subgenre of Ted Lasso-style comedies has codified around a handful of attributes. Shows like Shrinking, Stick, and Running Point have at least some of the ingredients of the Ted Lasso recipe: a creator-star; sports; a main character we like even when he (it's usually but not always a he) does things he shouldn't; a redemption/comeback arc; and a positive, feel-good vibe. 

The newest entry in the genre, Hulu's Chad Powers, is a college football comeback story from charming co-creator and star Glen Powell. It shares the weirdly specific detail with Ted Lasso of being based on pretty random source material — Ted Lasso evolved out of NBC Sports promos, while Chad Powers is based on, essentially, a viral prank video from an ESPN+ college football show where retired two-time Super Bowl winner Eli Manning put on prosthetic makeup and went undercover at a Penn State tryout as a weird guy with a cannon arm named Chad Powers.

Chad Powers' biggest difference from Ted Lasso, however, is a hugely significant one: Chad Powers is not a feel-good show. Tonally, it's closer to the dark comic character studies of Danny McBride and Jody Hill like Vice Principals and, especially, Eastbound & Down. Eastbound & Down, which followed disgraced baseball player Kenny Powers (McBride) as he tried to resume his career, is an even better reference point than Ted Lasso, not in the least because Chad Powers' name is a possibly inadvertent, possibly intentional nod to Kenny Powers himself. It's no coincidence that Chad Powers' writing staff features someone who worked on Ted Lasso (Jamie Lee) and someone who worked on Vice Principals (Ben Dougan). 

6.4

Chad Powers

at Hulu

Like

• Funny jokes
• Good use of Glen Powell and supporting cast

Dislike

• Overly derivative
• Plot problems

Chad Powers follows Russ Holliday (Powell), a former college quarterback whose on-field meltdown during the national championship derailed his career. Eight years later, he's become a tabloid fixture for his constant bad behavior. He's a delusional douchebag who blames everyone else for his problems and can't be honest with himself about how miserable he is. But when he finds out that the struggling South Georgia Catfish are doing walk-on quarterback tryouts, he sees his last shot at a comeback. He drives his Cybertruck from Los Angeles to Georgia, where, with the help of the team's mascot, Danny (Frankie A. Rodriguez, hilarious), he becomes Chad Powers, an enigmatic, Forrest Gump-like QB who helps turn the team's fortunes around. As Chad, Russ tries in fits and starts to become a kinder, less selfish person, but he's also trying like hell to keep his secret hidden from everyone in the program, including head coach Jake Hudson (Steve Zahn, perfectly cast as a decent but stressed-out Deep South football coach) and assistant coach Ricky Hudson (Perry Mattfeld, very believable as a jock), the coach's chip-on-her-shoulder daughter on whom Russ develops a crush.  

The series has significant story problems. It's tempting to say that six half-hour episodes aren't enough to develop the character and narrative, but Eastbound & Down's first season only had six episodes; it just knew exactly who Kenny Powers was from the jump. Chad Powers is sketchier on who Chad is. It's never entirely clear why Russ chooses to play Chad as something like Kenneth the Page from 30 Rock-meets-Bobby Boucher from The Waterboy — the show's explanation is that he's bad at improvising — or why people react to him how they do. His cartoonishness undercuts the more grounded character study elements in a way that doesn't feel coherent. And while elegant plotting is not a requirement for this kind of comedy, the lack of effort in Chad Powers is groan-inducing: Chad, a Heisman-caliber quarterback, happens to be the son of a Hollywood special effects makeup artist (Toby Huss), and gets the idea to become Chad Powers when he's dropping off facial prosthetics at the Fox lot and sees a billboard for Mrs. Doubtfire. 

Chad Powers is derivative and makes no attempts to hide it; it's a magpie's nest of borrowed ideas and pop culture references. Fortunately, those references can be very funny. (When Russ and Danny find a gun in an unexpected place, Danny says, "It's giving Chekhov.") The show traffics in the kind of politically incorrect, 2000s-style humor that Powell and co-creator Michael Waldron (Loki) grew up on as guys born in the late '80s. Chad Powers understands the young (and young-ish) male-skewing college football culture it's participating in. There are "if you know you know" references to several porn websites. You may find yourself wondering how the NCAA let them get away with some of this material. 

Chad Powers is also unexpectedly dark, which makes it more interesting than it would be otherwise. In the show's opening minutes, Russ does something bad enough to put him at a pretty severe likability disadvantage that the show is brave to try to overcome. And no spoilers, but the season avoids a tidy, feel-good ending in favor of something cynical and complicated. Change for Russ is not so easy as putting on a fake nose. The ending is a genuinely bold choice that sets up a deeper second season — and feels a lot like the ending of Eastbound & Down's first season. 

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Overall, the show works a little bit more than it doesn't, not in the least due to Powell's performance. Between this and the movie Hit Man, we know that Powell loves a disguise — and to play men whose confident exterior barely hides the pain within. Powell is better as Russ than he is as Chad, gradually peeling back the layers of BS to reveal the emptiness inside. 

Chad Powers pulls too much, too obviously from Eastbound & Down, Ted Lasso, and a bunch of other movies and shows to fully feel like its own thing, but it's a consistently funny, occasionally surprising comedy. It's a dark outlier in the Ted Lasso subgenre. 

Premieres: The first two episodes premiere Tuesday, Sept. 30 on Hulu, followed by new episodes weekly
Who's in it: Glen Powell, Steve Zahn, Perry Mattfeld, Frankie A. Rodriguez, Wynn Everett, Toby Huss
Who's behind it: Glen Powell, Michael Waldron (co-creators); Eli Manning (executive producer)
For fans of: Eastbound & Down (definitely), Ted Lasso (maybe)
How many episodes we watched: 6 of 6