Starkly contrasting the game-focused previous episode, episode 4 of Chad Powers focuses entirely on Russ’s character off the field. On a trip to Tennessee, Danny realizes that the glue dried up, so he and Russ venture out to find more before the bed-checks. Danny steals a cheerleader’s car keys and drives the duo to a Spirit Halloween. Russ sees a costume parodying his initial football run, but the duo still manages to steal glue from a Tennessee fan. Their victory is short-lived, as the cheerleader’s car is revealed to have been broken into. Chad cuts his hand as Danny finds the location of his bag. They recover bits of Chad’s face outside of a mysterious house, nervously brandishing the cheerleader’s sweet sixteen-gifted pistol. They get scared, drop the pistol, and flee. At the hospital, they get into a heated argument in which Danny dumps out the glue and leaves. Back at the hotel, Russ runs into Ricky and they have a surprisingly sweet conversation. Danny pretends to be Chad during the room checks, and the duo works together constructing the next day’s mask with the medical adhesive Russ stole. On the way home, Russ sleeps on Danny’s shoulder while Ricky looks deeper into Russ Holiday.
“4th Quarter” was a very strong, punchy episode of Chad Powers that successfully relied on the relationship between Russ and Danny. Additionally, the atmosphere was extremely interesting, as the overwhelming Tennessee orange is in the background of nearly every scene, being both silly and threatening. The added details of Tennessee fans helped make up for the lack of football in the episode, as the college football culture loomed everywhere. Even though their dynamic was fairly predictable, Russ and Danny’s adventure and friendship ups and downs were fun to watch, especially with Danny’s clever, modern dialogue bouncing off of Russ’s dated dude-bro language and temperament. The climactic montage of the duo cooking a mask was great, as it showed them in sweet harmony, provided an interesting insight into the mask-making process, and added an effective comedic flavor with the choice of music. On said musical choices, heavily featuring The Phantom of the Opera was a clever, albeit tongue-in-cheek, choice that spoke to Russ’s scheme as well as his codependent relationship with Danny.
As for weaker points in the episode, the focus on Danny and Russ left a lot of other characters in the background. Notably, Russ’ teammates and the coaching staff still have a lot of potential and intrigue. Despite Russ’s great scene with Ricky, her apology to her father felt a little rushed, as well. On one hand, her stuttering through the words and her father’s understanding worked comedically and was very sweet, but the show could have gotten a lot more out of their tension. Overall, this episode was extremely simple yet effective, having entertaining and engaging character bits that relied nearly exclusively on Russ and Danny.
Rating: 8/10