Hulu’s oddball sports comedy Chad Powers returns for Season 2 with a binge drop of all six episodes, picking up the South Georgia Catfish’s unlikely run with Glen Powell still buried under latex, a wig, and a southern accent that should not work as well as it does. Episode 1, “7th Quarter,” wastes little time reminding viewers that the premise is both the joke and the ticking clock. Russ Holliday’s disguise as walk-on quarterback Chad Powers is already known to mascot Danny and, more uneasily, to assistant coach Ricky. The walls are closer than last season. This opener makes that physical.
The episode opens with pregame energy that is more Remember the Titans parody than locker-room sermon. Coach Dobbs wants the team to picture the opponent as Russ Holliday — the man they still blame for Coach Jake Hudson’s health crisis — and skull-drag them. Chad, asked to speak, instead launches into “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.” Dobbs shuts it down. The Catfish chant “kill.”
On the field, Chad takes a sack that injures his shoulder and, far more urgently, knocks the prosthetic nose clean off under the helmet. He covers his face. The sideline scramble begins. Danny clocks the “Pinocchio” code immediately and pulls Ricky off the field to run interference. Ricky is not happy to be part of the freak show, but she also does not want the winning to stop.
What follows is a frantic mid-game farce: Chad slaps on a surgical mask, acts feral, and bolts from the locker room. Ricky stalls Dobbs. Danny tracks him. Tricia Yeager, watching from her suite with sidelined Coach Hudson, grows impatient with backup Gerry and uses her “Find the Fish” halftime promotion as cover to hunt for answers. Chad and Ricky duck through stairwells, hide from staff, and even don Chad face masks sold to fans so they can move through the club level without being recognized. A brief, charged exchange in hiding makes clear the personal damage from last season has not healed. Ricky saw the defensive end timing Chad’s snap count and said nothing.
They eventually rendezvous in a breastfeeding station to reattach the nose and pop the shoulder back into place. Chad returns to the field. Hudson appears on the sideline “just checking,” clearly unconvinced everything is fine. The trainer wants a COVID test. Coach Byrd puts him back in anyway. Ricky gives him the snap-count warning he needed. Chad throws a touchdown. The team celebrates. Gerry, on the bench, sketches pictures of himself cutting off Chad’s head.
The hour ends with the Catfish still winning and the lie still intact — barely.
“7th Quarter” is a tight, chaotic reset that understands the show’s core tension: the disguise is funniest when it is about to fail. The nose-off gag could have been one cheap slapstick beat. Instead the episode treats it as a full-field problem that forces every character into motion. Powell is especially good when Chad has to perform through a mask or a surgical covering; the eyes do more work than the prosthetics. Perry Mattfeld’s Ricky is sharper and colder this season, which the show needs. Her reluctant alliance with Russ and Danny gives the conspiracy some actual friction instead of just another person in on the secret.
Steve Zahn’s Hudson remains the series’ quietest asset. Sitting in the suite, medically sidelined, he is both booster-club royalty and a coach who cannot quite let go. Wynn Everett’s Tricia continues to be deliciously transactional. Colton Ryan’s Gerry, already established as the Louis Litt of this locker room, is positioned as the season’s most dangerous variable. The closing sketches of decapitation are not subtle. They do not need to be.
The episode is hectic by design. Some of the hallway and stairwell business starts to feel like the writers are stacking obstacles rather than deepening them. A mid-game injury-plus-prosthetic-failure plot is a one-episode idea, and it occasionally shows. What saves it is the character work underneath the scramble: Ricky’s lingering anger, Hudson’s half-retirement, and the question of whether Chad’s folksy weirdness is a performance or the only version of Russ that can function.
Chad Powers is still a silly sports comedy with a Mrs. Doubtfire gimmick and Ted Lasso heart. Season 2’s first episode does not reinvent that formula. It just turns the screws. The Catfish are winning. Gerry is watching. The nose almost came off in public. That is enough to make “7th Quarter” a solid, nervous kickoff.
Chad Powers Season 2 is streaming now on Hulu.
