When it came to new shows on the 2025 TV schedule, Chad Powers was highly anticipated. As a fan of Glen Powell and great sports movies and shows, this seemed like a perfect fit. However, for a while, I wasn’t buying into it, and I even thought I was over it at one point. I stuck with it, though, and I’m so glad I did, because after that finale, I’m locked in for Season 2 if it happens.
For the majority of Chad Powers, I was having trouble buying into Russ’s mission and Chad’s odd charm. Yes, I thought this story had potential, and yes, at times I thought it was funny. However, most of the time, I found myself not being able to support him.
I Wasn’t Totally On Board With Chad Powers
I’m not the biggest fan of a secret that could absolutely ruin someone’s life, and if Russ’s secret got out, it 100% would take down his own career and the team. However, I know that’s the premise of the show, and I was trying to buy into it. But Russ really annoyed me, and I didn’t love Chad either. Like critics’ reactions to Chad Powers, I was mentally giving it a mixed review.
All his actions felt weird and a bit sketchy, and I didn’t fully get why he was doing it. But in the finale, I really saw how Russ had changed; his conversation with his dad moved me, and it was clear that this experience had helped him grow. Then, a new challenge was put in front of him in the final minutes of the finale, and that, my friends, is why I’m actually excited about what could happen next.
How The Season 1 Ending Totally Changed My Mind And Hyped Me Up For Season 2
Along with the finale finally highlighting Russ’s growth this season, it also introduced us to the conflict that will come now that Ricky knows that Chad is Russ.
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I’ve been hoping for this to happen since day one! Considering Ricky and Chad were, at a bare minimum, friends and, at most, potentially romantic interests, I was desperate for her to find out about his true identity. If they ever want to stand a chance at a normal relationship, she needs to know this secret. Now, she does. However, before that can result in peace and potentially romance, drama must ensue first.
That, my friends, is why I’m excited for Season 2. As Russ pointed out, if Ricky exposes him, she won’t just take Chad/Russ down; the whole team, and specifically her dad, will go down, too. So, we have a case of mutually assured destruction on our hands, and that’s very exciting, especially when you mix in their feelings for each other and Russ’s complicated relationship with her family.
I love that right as Russ reached a place of self-acceptance and growth, this hurdle was thrown in his way. It will challenge him in a new way, because he genuinely cares for Ricky, and it will be so interesting to see them play both offense and defense next season.
It also makes me wonder how well Ricky will keep this secret and if they’ll be forced to work together to make sure Russ’s true identity isn’t revealed. That would make for some great drama and comedy, if you ask me.
So, consider me tuned in for Chad Powers Season 2 if it happens.
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As a simple comedy, Chad Powers is a confident, breezy show. Co-creator Michael Waldron previously worked on Rick and Morty and Heels before serving as the showrunner on Loki, and he has no problem drawing us into the pathos of Russ’ failure while doling out quick zingers or visual gags like denoting Russ being a douchebag because he drives a Cybertruck. He also fills out the cast with the reliable supporting characters like Ricky (Perry Mattfeld), an assistant coach looking to prove herself, and struggling head coach Jake Hudson (Steve Zahn), who knows he’s on the hot seat because of the school’s losing football program. It’s not that everyone is particularly memorable, but everyone is where they’re supposed to be to make for some fun, interpersonal dramedy that exists beyond Russ’ antics.
However, trying to work out a full series from what was a bit that Eli Manning did on Eli’s Places (Eli and his brother Peyton serve as executive producers) makes for a heavier lift than just making this a movie. Instead, you feel the intrusion of streaming demands as we can only infer what Russ’ life was like before his life imploded. We understand that he’s a jerk, and that he will overcome being a jerk by pretending to be Chad. However, we know this because we know the genre, not because the narrative beats are effectively employed. It would be like starting Talladega Nights when Ricky Bobby crashes his car rather than building in all the funny stuff about his massive ego and shallow personality. Streaming is so eager to throw viewers straight into the action that it skips to a big moment at the expense of building a character.
This leaves Chad Powers feeling both rushed and oddly languid as we’re quickly shoved into the Mrs. Doubtfire of the whole thing, glancing over at other plotlines like the stuff with Ricky and Jake, and, at least in the first two episodes, finding jokes in Russ’ desire to keep his ruse going. This means a lot of Powell acting like a weirdo, but he’s talented enough to nail the comic timing and remain endearing. However, it would have helped to show some backstory beyond “Here’s why I have access to facial prosthetics,” that would explain why Russ opted to make Chad a bumpkin. There’s not much set-up to the comic payoff beyond, “This guy behaves oddly because his circumstances necessitate awkward responses.” Admittedly, I like the concept of relying on a character who doesn’t have an acting background to carry on a performance, but Chad Powers feels like it’s searching for the joke in the moment rather than having it spring organically from what we know about Russ.
And yet I can’t deny that the first two episodes had me constantly laughing, and wishing for when we had more sports comedies available. Ever since Harold Lloyd ran around the turf in The Freshman back in 1925, we’ve found humor in athletics, and Chad Powers is fully comfortable in its genre. However, that comfort level also never feels inclined to impress or demand our attention. It’s a show that’s funny, but rarely uproarious. It’s a show with R-rated jokes, but never daring. It’s comfort television, and that works well enough here. I’m not sure a TV show spun out of a former pro-QB’s sketch is burdened with great expectations, so the fact that Powell and Waldron have made a charming, inoffensive comedy is a nice surprise. It’s just strange to watch it scramble about to meet the demands of streaming series rather than being more effective as a tight, 100-minute movie.
But the most striking aspect is how this simple premise had to be contorted to fit the demands of a streaming series rather than just letting it be an agreeable feature.
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Chad Powers airs Tuesday nights on Hulu.
On internet forums, groups of lonely, frustrated, socially challenged young men have constructed their own social belief system. They call themselves incels, the “involuntarily celibate,” and their worldview is steeped in a malignant brew of misogyny and self-loathing that has led to violence. To get an idea of their perspective, put aside the world you know. Imagine instead that women are not fully human, and exist primarily for the sexual gratification of men. Imagine further that men don’t merely desire but deserve sexual service from women. This supposed right, however, is being denied to a segment of men, incels, because of a warped sexual economy. Those ultra-hot men, whom the incels envision as big, handsome jock types, are referred to by the name Chad. Chads are resented by incels, but also envied and admired. Their female counterparts are called Stacy and pictured as curvaceous blond cheerleader types.
Chad and Stacy, alpha jock and cheerleader names? Not today, they’re not.
Chad and Stacy were two of the defining baby names of the early 1970s, but social concepts and name era to make their impact.
The names have been frozen in time to summon a cultural ideal of childhood innocence.
Real ’80s alpha jocks and cheerleaders were more likely to be named John and Mary than Chad and Stacy.
To exemplify the image, a name would have to be gender-marked (e.g. vowel endings for for girls) and generation-marked, trendy for its time and representative of the broader sounds of the era. Stacy and Chad hit all the targets. In the 1980s, the two names were nearing the top of a sharp popularity peak among teenagers. Stacy was a leader of a wave of nouveau-girly names like Tracy, Jodi, Holly and Kerry, while Chad ran with the bluntly confident likes of Brent, Todd, Lance and Brad.
In Chad’s case, the hot alpha-male fit isn’t coincidence. The name’s popularity was built on precisely that fantasy by a 1950s-60s talent agent named Harry Willson. A gay man notorious for his “casting couch,” Willson scoured Los Angeles for a particular type of good-looking guy. His target was tall young white men with smooth features and long, square-jawed faces. Acting experience was not required. Willson totally reinvented his proteges, retooling their speech and grooming and giving them new, macho backstories. Shirtless publicity photos helped spur their popularity. He also renamed them, dreaming up short, energetic names that became the fresh sound of their time.
The incel archetype name Chad, then, grows out of a ’60s gay fantasy, filtered through ’80s teen movies. Those are influences that all of us have been exposed to, directly or indirectly. They make the archetype names click, even though we know from experience that those archetypes have never been real. The real world is full of happily coupled men who look nothing like Rock Hudson.
Given the success of Ted Lasso (or at least its first two seasons), I’m surprised we didn’t see a boom in uplifting sports comedy series. Sports stories are so structurally easy that it’s almost a plug-and-play formula that works because it’s as comforting as the rules of any game. There are sports narratives that upend the genre tropes, but when it comes to the sports comedy, the audience expects a level of reliability. In that sense, Hulu’s Chad Powers is a success, taking the star-athlete-learns-humility story (e.g. Mr. Baseball, Talladega Nights, etc.) and setting it in the world of college football with Glen Powell donning some goofy makeup and silly southern accent.
The streaming demands are apparent from the outset, giving us no exposition on athlete Russ Holliday (Powell), and instead diving into his worst moment. At the Rose Bowl, Russ, the star QB for Oregon, was about to win the game, but dropped the ball at the one-yard line thinking he had already crossed into the end zone. The opposing team runs it back and wins the game. A brutal loss becomes worse when an irritated Russ strikes a fan, sending him backwards into his wheelbound chair child who is undergoing chemotherapy. Eight years later and Russ is still professionally radioactive, and he’s unwilling to own his mistakes. Desperate for another chance to prove himself, he steals some prosthetics from his father (Toby Huss), a Hollywood makeup artist, and wears them as a disguise to an open tryout at the University of South Georgia. Going by the name of “Chad Powers,” and with the help of Danny (Frankie Rodriguez), the team’s mascot who learned Russ’ secret, the washed-up athlete tries to make it back onto the field while realizing that “Chad” is an opportunity to be a better person.
Chad Powers Season 1 Teaser
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