SPOILER ALERT: The following contains spoilers for Chad Powers Season 1, Episode 5. It also contains a mention of suicide.

Watching Chad Powers Season 1, Episode 5 is like watching two different TV shows simultaneously. The Hulu series starts out as a raunchy comedy, borrowing its big plot twist from one of the best sports movies of all time. And then once that happens, it becomes a very serious drama that’s not laughing at all.

The first portion of “Fifth Quarter” involves Chad botching a College GameDay interview with Marty Smith as the South Georgia Catfish prepare to play the number-one Georgia Bulldogs. There are a number of jokes that are questionable, such as Coach Dobbs making reference to the murder-suicide case of WWE wrestler Chris Benoit. The explosion of the space shuttle Challenger is also mentioned for humor. Whether or not a viewer finds these bits offensive, they’re just not that funny either.

But the episode takes a turn when it follows in the footsteps of classic baseball movie Major League. In the 1989 film, hotshot pitcher Ricky Vaughn sleeps with his teammate’s wife Suzanne, not knowing who she is. In Chad Powers, Russ Holliday goes out to a bar and is picked up by a woman, not knowing that the woman is Coach Jake Hudson’s wife Wendy. He finds out when Chad arrives at the Hudsons’ lake house to re-stage his interview. And similar to Major League, Jake learns when Wendy tells him.

At this point, Chad Powers essentially stops being funny—but this is the most real the show’s ever felt. It has, in the prior four episodes, showed glimmers of depth underneath the slapstick and occasionally crude laughs. It’s thus a little jarring to have it turn so dramatic, but that also allows the cast to really shine. The scene in which Wendy and Jake argue over their marriage is importantly not over the top. It feels real, as does how both Jake and Ricky Hudson react to the revelation. A frustrated Ricky finds herself confiding in Chad that she ran into Russ in the previous episode, while this proves to be the tipping point for Jake; the episode ends with him having a heart attack. Zahn is an underrated dramatic actor, and gets to show that here.

Russ, who’s just decided that he wants to permanently become Chad Powers, thus has to literally face the consequences of his actions. The whole point of Chad Powers, if the creative team wants to do more than one season, is to see Russ Holliday learn anything as a person. “Fifth Quarter” sets the stage for that. Whenever and however Russ is revealed to be Chad (because he will be), it’s not going to go well. Even if he wins the national championship or the Heisman Trophy or whatever he desires, he still has to deal with everyone around him. It’s an appealing cliffhanger because it actually matters, more than jokes about suicide and adult websites.

Chad Powers has been marketed as a straightforward comedy, so viewers who have made it to “Fifth Quarter” might be disappointed by the relative lack of good jokes. But the character development herein is strong, and it pays off the teases of development in earlier episodes. The question now is if the season’s final episode can find a proper balance between making viewers laugh, and making this emotional arc it’s built pay off properly.

Chad Powers streams Tuesdays on Hulu. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Hulu.

Article content is (c)2020-2025 Brittany Frederick and may not be excerpted or reproduced without express written permission by the author. Follow me on Twitter at @BFTVTwtr and on Instagram at @BFTVGram. For story pitches, contact me at tvbrittanyf@yahoo.com.