Glen Powell’s rapid rise from working actor to major film star represents one of Hollywood’s most successful charm campaigns. After positioning himself as his mentor Tom Cruise’s heir apparent in 2022’s cinema-saving *Top Gun: Maverick*, the 37-year-old Texan has captivated Gen Z rom-com audiences with the sleeper hit Anyone But You and revitalized another dormant action franchise with *Twisters*. His most impressive demonstration of versatility to date is *Hit Man*, the 2024 Netflix crime comedy where he plays a timid professor recruited by law enforcement to impersonate an assassin for hire. Not only is Powell equally compelling as the academic and as the increasingly slick and confident killer personas that character created; he also contributed to writing and producing the film, which boded well for his future as an A-list multihyphenate.
Chad Powers, a Hulu comedy he co-created with Michael Waldron (*Loki*, Heels), is another narrative about a man pretending to be someone he’s not. Based on a viral sketch from Eli Manning’s ESPN show Eli’s Places (noting the intra-Disney synergy) and featuring Eli and Peyton Manning among its executive producers, the six-episode series casts Powell as Russ Holliday, a former quarterback desperate to make a comeback eight years after humiliating himself at the Rose Bowl. He spots the perfect opportunity when a college football team announces emergency open tryouts. Because he’s too thoroughly canceled to appear publicly, Russ, whose father coincidentally works in special effects makeup, disguises himself with prosthetics, and Chad Powers is born. Powell might have been engaging enough to make this goofy premise work if Russ and his alter ego weren’t two of the most obnoxious TV characters in recent memory—and if the show didn’t seem haphazardly assembled from older, superior sports comedies.
To be fair to Powell and Waldron, they clearly intend for Russ to be off-putting to viewers. Within the opening minutes of the premiere, we witness him reacting explosively after dropping a ball just short of the end zone, shoving a father into his cancer-patient son’s wheelchair, driving a Hummer, rambling about NFTs, claiming to have competed in *Squid Game*, and spending time with a woman who quickly decides she wants no association with him. He’s on the verge of playing for the XFL when the boy whose wheelchair he knocked over passes away, triggering a fresh wave of anti-Russ sentiment and spooking even that not-especially-squeamish organization into dropping him. “It’s time for you to move on!” his dad (Toby Huss) bellows.
Instead of giving up on football, he gives up on being Russ Holliday. Over his California-boy tan and frosted tips, he applies a fleshy nose, rabbit-like cheeks, and a scraggly, chin-length wig. He adopts an unpleasantly high-pitched Southern drawl. And with some last-minute styling assistance from the team’s mascot, Danny (Frankie A. Rodriguez), he steps into the South Georgia Catfish tryouts as the ultimate impostor: Chad Powers. Russ is terrible at this deception; his portrayal of the sweet, awkward, dim-witted Chad is a poor actor’s impression of a ’90s Adam Sandler-esque buffoon. (Even if Powell’s performance of Russ’ performance of Chad is technically solid, it doesn’t make the annoying character-within-a-character entertaining.) Everything from his fake signature to the fact that Chad neither attends the university nor possesses the necessary identification documents for enrollment creates a new predicament. But he’s still a powerhouse on the field, which is enough to alleviate the coaches’ reservations about his strange personality and smooth his way to becoming the team’s savior.
While Chad embodies a low-rent Sandler, the supporting characters appear to be lifted directly from the playbook of *Ted Lasso*—another sports comedy based on a viral bit, not to mention a massively popular show whose title surely influenced the development of Chad Powers. The more nuanced Ted Lasso to Russ’ exaggerated Jamie Tartt is Jake Hudson (Steve Zahn, delivering a better performance than the material deserves), a good but beleaguered head coach who dispenses avuncular advice. His daughter Ricky (Perry Mattfeld), once a track star but now a “nepo baby” junior member of the coaching staff, is our Keeley, a chronically underestimated young woman who inevitably becomes Russ-as-Chad’s love interest. Danny’s gentleness and outsider status recall Nate Shelley before his villainous turn. There’s even a character akin to A.F.C. Richmond owner Rebecca in Tricia (Wynn Everett), the rich, powerful, *White Lotus*-esque type who heads up the Catfish’s boosters and, in a running gag that epitomizes the show’s sense of humor, possesses an encyclopedic knowledge of porn franchises. None of these characters exhibit any distinctiveness.
I didn’t adore *Ted Lasso*, but I can understand what its millions of fans appreciate about it. The series radiates warmth, celebrating flawed but generally well-meaning people—particularly men—coming together to learn how to show themselves and those around them the love everyone deserves. Chad Powers’ nasty protagonist should grant it license to be more cutting, rather than just unimaginatively crude, in its humor. Instead, it, too, attempts an inspirational pop-psychology approach. Like so many shows targeted to male audiences, it becomes saccharine on the subject of father-child relationships. Jake and Ricky and Danny all seem to exist for the sole purpose of catalyzing narcissistic Russ’ discovery that the nice guy he’s pretending to be is a real facet of his personality. “I’m Russ, but I’m also Chad,” he realizes in what is meant to be a breakthrough scene. If only the latter were actually an improvement on the former.