It’s considered bad practice as a reviewer to judge a series before you watch it. That said, it’s hard not to assume the worst when you see “Developed from an Omaha Productions skit by Eli Manning” in the show’s logline. Chad Powers never rises above those assumptions and often falls even lower. It gets to a point where I half expected Manning himself to appear and reveal that this too was a prank.
Co-created by Glen Powell and Michael Waldron, Chad Powers follows Russ Holiday, a star college quarterback who makes a crucial mistake during the championship game. That mistake leads to an altercation with the parent of a child in a wheelchair that ends with both of them on the floor in front of cameras. The events ruin Russ’s career instantly, and the subsequent spiral remains mostly off screen. 8 years later, Russ is a bum living with his dad (Toby Huss) and recording depressing Cameos. One day, while delivering his father’s makeup and prosthetics work, Russ gets an idea. He travels to a small Georgia college that he heard is having open tryouts, and Chad Powers is born.
That’s a lot of setup for very little return, which becomes the show’s running theme. The sight of Powell in some off-putting prosthetics and using a strange accent is good for a few chuckles, but quickly wears thin. The series mostly plays like a poor man’s Eastbound & Down mixed with a 00s Adam Sandler comedy. It falls flat because nobody cares about any of this working.
The writers clearly struggle with answering the obvious questions you have while also mining it for comedic material. How does Chad play without sweating off his prosthetics? Won’t even the most basic investigations into his past prove this is all BS? The answers to these and other questions fail to produce anything funny. Instead, the show gets much of its mileage from the awkward encounters between Chad and the rest of the cast.
The best of these are the moments with Frankie Rodriguez’s Danny. Like most of the characters in Chad Powers, Danny is pretty one-note. Rodriguez fills him with such energy that he becomes the standout of the cast. Glen Powell’s charm is a big part of his current ascent to leading man status, but there’s none of it on display here. He nails the jokes and sells Russ’ desperation to be back in the spotlight, but there’s an emptiness that keeps it from clicking together. It doesn’t help that Russ is such an unrepentant asshole that his inevitable redemption feels massively unearned.
It’s possible that this all comes together in the second half of the show’s brief season. As it stands, Chad Powers is a bad idea executed poorly. Maybe it works better as the basis of a hidden camera skit involving the less-wooden Manning brother. Like its namesake, the series never gets out of its own way. Instead, it relies on tired sports tropes and broad comedy that rarely works without an expert hand calling the plays. It’s disappointing, but the type of disappointment you feel when a bad team loses a game. Maybe they’ll win the next one.
Chad Powers is currently streaming on Hulu. New episodes release on Tuesdays.