Chad Powers starts off simply yet quite strongly, promising an entertaining season of light-hearted comedy television. The episode has a familiar setup, with star college quarterback Russ Holiday literally fumbling his chances of a championship. Eight years later, Russ is in a pathetic place, overcompensating with an obnoxious personality and drugs, especially when his upcoming football deal falls through. On his way to deliver prosthetics to a film set, Russ gets the idea to take advantage of a college football team’s walk-on tryouts. Assisted by the mascot Danny, Russ attempts to walk on as “Chad Powers,” using the prosthetics to conceal his true identity. After some cold feet, he impresses the coaches and secures a spot on the team. He decides to maintain the facade, avoiding telling the truth to Coach Hudson. While excited, Russ ends the episode knowing, just as the audience does, that this lie can not last forever. 

Many similar sports shows focused on washed-up athletes walk the line of making them pathetic, but having their pain manifest in them excitedly trying to relive their glory days with infinite drugs and girls. Chad Powers swaps out the drowned sorrows and random girls with Instagram gawking and conspiracy theories, resulting in him coming across as a genuinely pathetic mess. The only scene of any debauchery is deliberately cut short, shifting the focus immediately to Russ doing grunt work for his father.  Russ is an unlikable character, especially at the beginning, but the show manages to add minor elements of tenderness through his genuine fears and cringeworthy personality, making him a compelling lead. Building a show around such an unlikable character is always a risk, but the awkwardness of the Chad Powers persona makes him a richer character than the other has-been athletes in other series. It’s impressive and refreshing to see an unlikable character with genuine flaws, quirks, and advantages, as the audience can then shape their perception of him. If someone hates him, they will likely see him hilariously embarrass himself to keep up his facade. If they fall in love with him, odds are he will succeed eventually. Either way, Russ Holiday’s journey and facade will be entertaining. 

As is the case with such a focused pilot, many of the side characters end up not having much to do. Ricky, for example, is an underappreciated assistant coach whose plays are tossed in the garbage. She was a relatively thin character, and whether she’s strengthened or harmed by being the coach’s daughter remains to be seen. In this episode, at least, her voicing her nepo-baby imposter syndrome helped flesh her out a little bit. This awkward exchange she had with Chad was sweet, and helped define her as the one side character to benefit from more screentime later in the season. The other side characters are similarly thin thus far, but this is not too worrisome this early in the season.  Finally, the storytelling was nothing groundbreaking, with a decent sprinkling of sports tropes (cold feet, flashbacks, etc.), but this did not significantly hinder the episode. Overall, “1st Quarter” was a very solid start for Chad Powers, with entertaining jokes, engaging characters, and certainly room to grow. 

Rating: 8/10