Review: 'Chad Powers' on Hulu

Imitation is the sincerest form of television. Friends begat umpteen Nineties sitcoms about attractive twentysomethings in the big city. TV in the 2000s and early 2010s was loaded with Sopranos and Lost wannabes. If something is a huge hit — and especially if that something is a surprising hit, which doesn't follow an existing formula — there will inevitably be a land rush to see if anyone else can exploit the same territory. 

Look, sometimes it works — spectacularly well, even. Among the bastard sons of Tony Soprano are Vic Mackey from The Shield, Walter White from Breaking Bad, and even Don Draper from Mad Men. (And Mad Men in turn inspired a bunch of mostly terrible imitators, plus one seeming imitator in Halt and Catch Fire that quickly turned out to be its own brilliant thing.)  

Usually, though, the copycats only serve to remind you that making the original wasn't nearly as easy as it looked. Do any of these shows ring a bell? 

• How about Can't Hurry Love, a sitcom that debuted on CBS the season after Friends, starring Nancy McKeon (one of the runners-up to play Monica Geller) and a young Mariska Hargita? 
• Did any of you watch Falcone, which was technically a TV version of the Al Pacino/Johnny Depp movie Donnie Brasco, but which was so blatantly aiming for Sopranos viewers that promotional images for it positioned star Jason Gedrick, like James Gandolfini before him, between his character's family and his character's Family?
• Surely you've memorized every episode of Threshold, one of a bunch of mythology-laden sci-fi dramas to debut in the year or two immediately following the debut of Lost, with a stacked cast (Carla Gugino, Peter Dinklage, Brent Spiner, Charles Dutton, and more) pursuing an alien conspiracy in the most boring way possible. Right?

When Ted Lasso exploded onto the scene as the surprise smash of that first summer of Covid, it was inevitable that the business would try to copy its blend of sports and feel-good vibes, early and often. One of those, FX's Welcome to Wrexham, has turned out to be great in its own right — and hasn't made any of the missteps that became so frequent by the end of Ted Lasso Season Three. During the brief period when Ted's future was in limbo, Apple attempted to replicate its biggest comedy hit by putting Owen Wilson on the golf course in Stick, to middling effect. 

Now comes Hulu's Chad Powers, co-created by and starring Glen Powell as Russ Holliday, an infamous former football star who imploded at the end of his college career. Years later, desperate to get back to doing the only thing he's ever been good at, and with a stolen case of his movie makeup expert father's gear, Russ decides to disguise himself as a younger man, calling himself Chad Powers so he can compete at open tryouts for the fictional South Georgia University.