Chad Powers (Hulu) and Stick (Apple TV) Attempt to Duplicate the Success of Ted Lasso

Stick (Apple TV)

Owen Wilson has played sleazebags (Wedding Crashers, Starsky and Hutch), wide-eyed nomads (Midnight in Paris, Darjeerling Limited, Royal Tenenbaums) and the occasional sweet spot in between (You Me and Dupree, Internship), but this role feels like the culmination of the Owen Wilson persona.

Owen Wilson's character is a washed-out golf pro who is saddled by the end of his career, the comparative success of his nemesis (Timothy Olyphant), and more importantly, a divorce and the death of his son.

At the start of the series, he's runnings a series of hustles with his former caddy and confidante Mitts (Marc Maron).

The duo forms part of what becomes a found family of five, when Owen Wilson discovers a supremely talented young prodigy (Santiago, played by Peter Dager) and seeks to hitch his wagon to him. As Santi is a teenager, his mother (Mariano Treviano) comes along, and he eventually finds a horse whisperer of sorts in Lily Kaye. Kaye's character, Zero, is a typical zoomer who identifies as she/they and launches into poorly times speeches about safe spaces and hirearchy. In spite of this, she's not too divorced from reality to give a hug and accept money from her biggest cynic in Mitts.

If critical reactions are governed by political correctness as they were a few years ago, half the audience will find the treatment of Kaye's gender and zoomer views insensitive, while half will find it not harsh enough. Welcome to 2025!

But here's the beauty: The show delves into issues of generational gaps in the way that a feel-good movie ought to do: By showing people coming together rather than being divided. This is a heartwarming story about a family coming together with a lot of bumps in the road. Each character has at least one solid foil among the other members of the quintet, and evening out those differences is the bread and butter of the show. That, and it's a fun and sincere ride.

Chad Powers (Hulu)

Glenn Powell stars as a has-been quarterback who gets cancelled after pushing over wheelchair-bound kid in the wake of a game-losing fumble.

Powell's character, Russ Holliday, comes up with a scheme that seems highly implausible, even by the standards of someone who knows little to nothing about football (AKA me): Eight years later, throw on some prosthetic, adopt the name Chad Powers, and try out for a college team that he doesn't even attend classes at. The fact that the last part gets swept under the rug is a commentary on the tendency of big college programs to look the other way, it's still pretty weak.

With the assistance of the school mascot (Frankie Rodriguez) (who happens to be gay, so there's an attempt at diversity points here), Chad is able to make it through the tryouts.

The show tries to incorporate a number of elements -- a slow burn romance between Chad and the coach's assistant (Perry Mattfield); a classic sports story; a classic redemption story; a comedy of errors; a B-plot involving a father (Steve Zahn) learning to trust his daughter; an odd couple heart-filled relationship between Chad and the mascot -- but it hardly develops any of these threads.

Besides his relationship with the mascot, almost none of his other teammates is anything beyond an extra. As a result, a lot of team-centered stories are neglected. The romance angle is an incredibly slow burn, which adds a level of realism, but it's not enough to hold audience attention through the first half of the season

With Chad's relationship with the mascot character, the climate of the team is so difficult to gauge, that there's not even enough of a baseline to examine if their partnership/friendship is supposed to be seen as uplifting in a homophobic locker room, or passe in an era where there are already out players in the NFL.

There's also some level of generational trauma between Russ/Chad and his dad, but that doesn't get enough screentime to get us invested in that.

At the same time, things start clicking enough by the fourth episode that there's reason (at least for this viewer) to keep watching. Lots of shows have had poor starts and there's enough room to grow if some of these elements get more densely developed.

Extremely Belated Top 12 TV Shows of 2024

A long tradition that's dated to 2009

1. Decameron (Netflix)-A group of nobles, servants, and a couple of in-betweeners escape the bubonic plague in a castle and hijinks ensure. Think of it as Downton Abbey on steroids. Plus, there is a 100% guarantee that all characters will be medically stupid because, well, medical science wasn’t that were removed from leeches and lobotomies. With Zoshia Mamet, Saoisre Monika-Jackson, and Tony Hale among others, this is a series that's also rich on characters.

 

2. Kaos (Netflix)-The modern reinterpretation of Greek myths swings for the fences with every stylistic choice it makes.
If you're looking for a plot guide, we'd be here all day because it's a combination of seven or eight Greek epics, but the storylines merge impressively enough together towards a coherent whole. It dawned upon me when I was approaching this write-up that Greek mythology might very well be history's first extended universe. If so, it's one I'd take over Marvel any day.

 

3. Ghosts, CBS- Utkarsh Ambudkar and Rose McIver star as a yuppie couple from the Big Apple who inherit a mansion that’s inhabited by eight ghosts of different eras. There’s a Viking who grunts a lot; a Native American; an effeminate Revolutionary War captain; a 19th Century schoolmarm with aristocratic roots; a sassy flapper from the Prohibition Era; a flower child who is permanently tripping through the afterlife; a square scout leader from the 80s; and a Wall Street playboy from the 90s. The octet makes for a brilliantly strange found family of people whose only commonality is that they died in the the same spot -- seemingly all of them in comic ways. Each year, the show does a solid job of finding ways to expand its world further out—whether through recurring characters or new revelations about the existing ten—while also balancing the need for the show to be maintained as popcorn TV.

 

 

4. Nobody Wants This, Netflix-The incompatibility between Jewish values (which discourages intermarriage, if not outright bans it in some sects) is never easy to reconcile with our modern-day conception of romance and free will. Kristen Bell plays a sex podcaster , Joanna, who falls into an unlikely romance with a hunky junior rabbi, Noah, played by Adam Brody. Although he seems more convincing as a yarmulke-wearing Sex and the City love interest than as a religious leader (he skips out on the sabbath to go on a double date, oy vey!), the series deals with his character inconsistencies well. He seems to be broadcasting entirely different things between his head and heart. It's an episode where we have no idea what's happening. Why is he following her into a car on the middle of Shabbat. Even crazier, why is Sasha going along? Is this a date? It's also the start of Morgan and Sasha as sublime third and fourth wheels to this pairing.

 

5. Krapopolis- Animated show set in a city adjacent to the glory of Athens. The show gets endless mileage out of reality-bending plots and mythology gags. There's plenty of amusing in-fighting within this clan, but it's more along the lines of a family sitcom, making it a kinder and gentler cousin to the nihilistic-leaning Rick and Morty and Solar Opposites.

6. What We Do in the Shadows-The show about vampires living a mundane ennui-filled existence in Staten Island closed out its run with a necessary change in direction. Guillermo, no longer a familiar, but a crasher in their guest house who’s giving corporate America a go? Sure. But add in Nadja speaking in bro-code, Nandoor as a meek janitor, and Colin Robinson as an employee with rage issues: Sign me up! And the best new addition was Michael Patrick O’Brien (who I’ve never has never really done it for me before) as Jerry- a straight man vampire awakened from a 30-year slumber who seeks to rectify the fact that they’ve never done anything productive. Like last year, the season ended in a debatable move for Guillermo. Was it forward progress for the character? I vote no, but it wasn’t enough to move it out of the top 12.

 

7. Bodkin, Netflix - I’m willing to concede that Will Forte fans might not even remember this charming Irish murder mystery years from now when their doing a retrospective of his career. It’s a shame because this moody piece does a great job of bringing equal parts regional quirk, character beats, and moving parts. Will Forte stars as the titular podcaster looking to tell a good story, and his two assistants make great foils as he tries to refine his values in the face of adversity. His co-conspirators serve as excellent foils and rich characters alike. 

8. Futurama (Fox——> Comedy Central ——> Hulu)- In it’s 12^th season over 25 years, Futurama hasn’t eased up on the visual spectacle in its retro-futuristic tale of a delivery company that seems to do everything other than actually deliver packages. It’s episodes are divided by day-in-the-limelight character pieces (Bender’s Mexican heritage and Hermes inheritance of a Jamaican coffee farm were highlights), trippy sci-fi premises (it was hard to top “The Temp”), and through-the-looking glass takes on today’s cultural flash points (this year touched on Fashion Week, AI chat bots, NFTs and the Squid Game) to a mostly successful set of ten episodes.

10 The Gentlemen (Netflix)-Theo James (White Lotus) plays Eddie, a member of the British idle rich -- complete with title and all - who finds himself in over his head when he inherits a drug empire at his father's funeral. The show’s villains are wickedly cultured (great character actors like Max Beasley and Giancarlo Esposito do the trick); the aristocratic family (Daniel Inge, Joely Richardson) is amusingly aloof; and there’s a great Remington Steele vibe between Eddie and an heiress to a mob dynasty (Kaya Scodelario) for whom the flirtation is off the charts. The series is masterminded by Guy Pierce so there’s a definite visual touch with a lot of playful graphic overlays.

 

11 Cobra Kai (You Tube Red —-> Netflix) cobra Kai made the mistake of tying up so many loose threads before its final season. As a result, we had to endure a painful episode revolving around Johnny Lawrence throwing a girls sleepover complete with a Cyndi Lauper soundtrack. With the detente among warring dojos, Cobra Kai devolved into more of a hang out show, but by those standards, the show still succeeded in juggling a large cast of characters. Besides in the world of Cobra Kai, there is always adolescent anger out there in the world to be tamed (via increasingly epic karate battles) and new enemies to face. Maybe it’s my sentimentality over a show coming to an end that has consistently delivered at a transcendent level for its genre but the show deserves its victory lap and a place in my top 12 this year.

 

12. Tires, Netflix- Shane Gillis it is certainly a lightning rod that will equal parts hate and admiration (often for unjustified reasons with both camps). From a pure aesthetic perspective, Gillis’s comedy is not easy to decipher beneath the surface. His persona is of an overgrown sloth-ridden frat boy, there’s a lot to be said for how he uses that persona as a sledgehammer against political correctness. If you’re going to read the show solely as a manifesto against watching your words, however, you stand to miss that the show has a solid cadence and makes for good popcorn TV.

Runners-Up: Bad Monkey (Apple), Life and Beth (Hulu), Mulligan (Netflix), Thank God You're Here (Australian Channel 10), Baby Reindeer (Netflix), Death and Other Details (Hulu), X-Men 97 (Disney), Star Wars: Skeleton Crew (Disney), Manhunt (Apple), Resident Alien (SyFy)

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