‘Chad Powers’ Is Way Better Than It Has Any Business Being

As someone who grew up in the 1980s, I have seen countless comedic characters transform their appearance because they need to meet a short-term goal and haven’t necessarily thought through all the repercussions of living a huge lie. A couple of broke ad men tried drag so they can live in an affordable women’s residence hotel in Bosom Buddies. A white kid posed as Black to snake a law school scholarship not intended for him in Soul Man. For a case, a male FBI agent went undercover as an elderly woman in Big Momma’s House. For another case, two other FBI agents went undercover as white chicks in White Chicks. A jewel thief who was a Little Person posed as a baby to steal a diamond in Little Man. And 30 years after Bosom Buddies, two OTHER guys got into drag to keep their jobs in Work It. 

Given what has come before, the story of a disgraced college quarterback posing as a relatively virtuous college quarterback sets itself apart by not being horribly offensive. Chad Powers is, in fact, surprisingly watchable.

The character of Chad Powers was conceived as a one-off: for the unscripted ESPN show Eli’s Places, retired New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning had a professional makeup artist disguise him with a shaggy wig and facial prosthetics so that the show could film him participating in an open tryout for the Penn State Nittany Lions. 

Ted Lasso was a character who broke containment from the NBC Sports soccer ads he was originally created for and got his own namesake sitcom, and Chad Powers has done the same. Now, his alter ego is Russ Holliday (Glen Powell, who also co-created the show with Michael Waldron; both Eli and Preston Manning are among its executive producers). Once a hot prospect, Russ humiliated himself in a pivotal Rose Bowl game, losing his chance at a career in the NFL. We rejoin him eight years after the worst moment of his life, and learn that he’s spent that time making every possible wrong choice: buying a Cybertruck, getting a hideous forearm tattoo, starring on The Masked Singer, making friends in crypto. 

Russ is about to claw back some of his credibility by signing with the XFL’s Vegas Vipers when current events rocket him back to the terrible night that changed everything. When the Vipers offer evaporates, Russ doesn’t know what to do next — until he sees a clip on TikTok about walk-on tryouts at the University of South Georgia. Russ is at the Fox lot to deliver facial and hair prosthetics — designed by his Oscar-winning father Mike (Toby Huss), for a Davy Crockett in a Michael Bay movie — when a perfectly timed glimpse at a Mrs. Doubtfire poster on the side of a studio stage gives him an idea. Before long, Russ has driven his Cybertruck across the country so he can try out for the Catfish. Chad Powers premieres its first two episodes on Hulu September 30th, with the remaining four dropping once a week on Tuesdays.

Starting in the early aughts, Powell worked steadily, and mostly unmemorably, for years. Then, in 2016, he had not one but three breakout vehicles: Richard Linklater’s period college baseball comedy Everybody Wants Some!!; the campy Ryan Murphy thriller Scream Queens; and Hidden Figures, in which he played astronaut John Glenn. A few years later, his Tom Cruise-ian affect landed him a role as Hangman in Top Gun: Maverick. 

The year after that, Powell re-teamed with Linklater on Hit Man, for which Powell also co-wrote the screenplay. This was the first time Powell seemed very intentionally to be dimming his natural charisma, as his character Gary Johnson donned a series of disguises and personas to pose as an assassin in murder-for-hire stings. Chad Powers is on another level of physical transformation: whereas Gary relied on costuming and wigs, Russ’s facial prosthetics give him a beaky nose, round cheeks and a pitifully sparse mustache. But both Hit Man and Chad Powers seem like proof of Powell’s desire to challenge himself as an actor by giving himself a handicap: concealing his good looks and winning charm.

Disclosure: I don’t know anything about football, and I never plan to learn. But there’s a reason I watched the entire run of Friday Night Lights, and it wasn’t because I thought gaining or losing a yard during a game was particularly exciting. Sports narratives work, when they do, because themes of failure, redemption, mastery and teamwork are universal. (Did I ever play a team sport? No. But I was in a marching band, which is basically the same thing.) 

Russ is presented to us as such a trash cliché that after he loses the Vegas Vipers offer, Haliey “Hawk Tuah” Welch (as herself) orders him not to tell anyone they met; you’d think he has nowhere to go but up. But there’s a lot for Russ to learn from life at the bottom — like everything he doesn’t know about acting or improv, but gets the chance to bone up on after a chance encounter with Danny (Frankie A. Rodriguez), a USG theater kid who moonlights as Whiskers, the Catfishes’ costumed mascot. 

Danny initially throws himself into helping Russ pull off his deception because he’s delighted to be so close to the juicy drama, but their friendship unfolds over hilarious peaks, like Danny smoothly lifting a mean cheerleader’s car keys for an emergency trip to buy adhesive for Chad’s prosthetics at Spirit Halloween (“In early September?” asks a shocked Russ. “We live in spooky times,” Danny replies). There are also equally hilarious lows, like meeting the kid who’s going to counterfeit all the IDs and transcripts Russ needs to play as Chad just in time for Russ to find out how careful he needs to be about smacking bugs on his fake cheeks. Given what we see of pre-Chad Russ, it’s possible Danny is the first true friend Russ has ever had. If the show continues, it would be good to show Russ learning how to be a friend as well as having one, because Season One is mostly about him imposing on Danny.

That the show can convincingly glide from Russ and Danny doing slapstick in one episode to having a genuinely affecting fight a couple of episodes later speaks to the show’s ambitions — considering how preposterous the central premise actually is. Overall, this is a grounded, real show. And yet, even when “Chad” leaves his helmet on after practice because Russ’ wig is stuck inside it and all head coach Jake Hudson (Steve Zahn) does is blink, or when “Chad” ends up coloring a kid’s whole ball with a silver Sharpie because Russ started to autograph it with his own name, I was still bought in. 

Sure, this whole charade would unravel if any Catfish coach asked about two follow-up questions about “Chad”’s extremely weird behavior and background, but they have dozens of players to juggle and an intense booster Tricia (Wynn Everett) to dodge; Chad is good enough at football that it behooves authorities at the team not to question how he came to them.

Perhaps most preposterous is the romance between Chad and Ricky (Perry Mattfeld), who’s both an assistant QB coach on the Catfish and Coach Hudson’s daughter. Even burning as slow as it does, this is sort of like the relationship between Elizabeth Perkins’ and Tom Hanks’ characters in Big: Leaving aside their quasi-professional relationship, is Chad, as Ricky knows him, even capable of consent? Someone who tells ESPN his inspiration for playing football is Benjamin Franklin because if not for electricity there wouldn’t be stadium lights? Who explains his closeness with Danny by saying their families took turns Blind Side-ing the boys so that they’re kind of both Michael Oher? Who claims he can’t shower in the locker room with the rest of the team because his unusually large “pee hole” can’t get water in it? If Ricky is really that hard up for company in south Georgia, perhaps she should move. 

The season finale is all over the map, including literally. Danny meeting a character who’s mostly been off-screen sets up fun possibilities for the show’s potential future. But the credits rolling when they do is sure to annoy a lot of people. (What annoyed me a lot more than that: Russ, as Chad, using the “r” slur more than half a dozen times in a single conversation earlier in the season. I probably shouldn’t be surprised that a show about Russ, who casually mentions that he has an account on Truth Social, would have his alter ego use hate speech so casually, not considering that doing so runs counter to Chad’s sweet and humble personality. Add it to the list, I guess.) 

Still, the nod to Mrs. Doubtfire tells us the show’s creators know they’re borrowing from the best. If Hulu does order more episodes, which seems inevitable, I will be watching.