Glen Powell to star in one of the worst ideas we've ever heard
Hulu's Chad Powers is Invincible mixed with Mrs. Doubtfire, as performed by the improv stylings of Eli Manning, and Glen Powell deserves better
It’s easy to forget, after all the Emmys, Golden Globes, critical accolades and backlashes, etc., that Ted Lasso was originally created as a pitchman for NBC Sports, appearing in a series of ads that operated on the basic premise that it’d be funny to see Jason Sudeikis play a Southern football coach who didn’t know enough to know how little he knew about soccer. We suspect it will not be as easy to forget the origins of Chad Powers, a new TV show that’s just been ordered by Hulu and which seems, as far as we can tell, utterly determined to waste Glen Powell’s charms on one of the worst TV premises we’ve ever heard.
In case you, like us, were unfamiliar with the “Chad Powers” character, here’s the basic idea: About a year ago, football star Eli Manning decided to do a sort of Undercover Bosses thing and use Hollywood prosthetics to disguise himself as an extremely unhealthy-looking college student, so that he could try out as a walk-on for the Penn State football team. (This was for Manning’s ESPN+ show, Eli’s Places.) The result was 15 of the most uncomfortable minutes of TV we’ve ever watched, as Manning—not a gifted improviser, by the by—lumbers around doing the worst Matthew McConaughey impression we’ve ever heard, before stoking his own ego by easily crushing a bunch of hopeful kids at football, the one thing our society generally agrees that both of the Mannings do pretty well.
We do not know why Hulu has decided this would make a good TV show, but it has, ordering Chad Powers to series, and—
Actually, no, we can’t move on yet from how bad the above clip is. In a clever touch, at one point, they show Peyton Manning trying to tell a joke, to distract you from how bad Eli Manning is at telling jokes, but there is no distraction from how profoundly bad Eli Manning is at telling jokes. (His version of humor is repeatedly muttering “Chad Powers” to himself.) For some reason, they use stock music from It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia! There are so many shots of actual teenagers looking at this homunculus in horror, and that’s before Manning tears his face off in front of them. This is scarring television, is all we’re saying.
The one saving grace of the fictionalized version of Chad Powers is that, while Manning will executive produce, the Chad in question (who, in the fiction, is a hotshot college quarterback forced to go undercover as a freshman after being cut from his team for bad behavior) will not be played by charisma void Eli Manning, but by actual charming actor Glen Powell. (Who, at 35, will still be straining some of that college-age credulity, but at least a little less so.) Powell is a good actor, and showrunner Michael Waldron has made some good TV in the past. Even so, this is one of the worst ideas for a TV show that we’ve ever heard.