It is difficult to watch Chad Powers without thinking about Ted Lasso. Both series use football to talk about failure, reinvention, belonging and second chances, but the further Chad Powers goes, the clearer one important difference becomes. Where Ted Lasso usually looks for the humanity hidden behind resentment, Chad Powers seems more interested in discovering how far that resentment can deform someone.

Gerry immediately brings Nate to mind. Both feel that the protagonist has taken a place that should have been theirs, both turn professional recognition into something deeply personal, and both allow envy and resentment to contaminate their relationships. The comparison, however, becomes much more interesting when Alice Chilton is added to it. Because Nate, Gerry and Alice have something fundamental in common: none of them is resentful for absolutely no reason. The real question is what each of them does with the injustice they have suffered and, perhaps even more interestingly, how the series responds when that frustration begins to hurt other people.

Gerry Is Right. That Does Not Make Him a Good Person

Gerry may be the most uncomfortable case precisely because there is an objective truth behind his paranoia. He was the victim of a scheme. Danny Cruz deliberately knocked him down and injured him to get him out of the game and make room for Chad. Chad Powers, meanwhile, is a fraud: Russ Holliday, wearing a mask and assuming a fake identity to obtain the second chance he would never have been given as himself. Gerry, therefore, is not imagining a conspiracy. The conspiracy actually happened.

He lost his place to someone who does not exist. On top of that, Gerry was never particularly popular. Chad arrives and almost immediately gets what Gerry does not have: charisma, admiration, attention, and a sense of belonging. The jealousy and envy are obvious, but they could even gain a certain legitimacy once he discovers that everyone around him is being deceived.

Except Danny points out something essential about Gerry: his cruelty began before he discovered the whole truth. He raises suspicions about Ricky and suggests there is something between her and Chad — and, ironically, he is not entirely wrong. He also goes after Danny, threatens him, and manages to get him fired after discovering that Danny was the one who caused his injury. The fact that Danny really did do it makes everything even more complicated, because Gerry is both victim and aggressor.

That is exactly the point. Being right about the injustice you suffered does not legitimize everything you do afterward. When Gerry finally discovers who Chad really is, he does not use the truth to restore justice or protect the team. He turns to blackmail. The revelation that could have placed him morally above Russ simply gives him a more powerful weapon for a resentment that was already there.

Then he falls apart. Chad’s broken mask begins to take on almost the quality of a persecutory object. Gerry is literally holding fragments of the false face of the man who took his place. He knows something everyone else ignores while watching those same people continue to talk to Chad, trust Chad, and like Chad. Without turning this into a clinical diagnosis, there is an almost psychotic register in the way the season portrays his disorganization. Gerry’s reality begins to be dominated by Chad. The truth does not free him. It destabilizes him even further.

Nate Did Not Invent Everything He Felt Either

Nate is much more complex because his resentment begins long before Ted. When we meet him, he is invisible, mocked, insecure, diminished, and desperately dependent on recognition. At home, there is also the shadow of a father whose approval always seems impossible to attain.

Ted does something revolutionary for Nate: he sees him. He recognizes his talent, listens to his ideas, and brings him onto the coaching staff. And Nate really is very good at what he does. That detail matters because part of his frustration is not imaginary. Ted still does not master several technical aspects of football. Nate knows that some victories depend directly on his decisions, while Ted receives much of the public recognition. Then Roy joins the coaching staff carrying an immediate authority that Nate had spent a long time struggling to earn.

There is, therefore, a legitimate grievance. The problem is what happens when that grievance collides with an already enormous narcissistic fragility. The more Nate discovers that he is talented, the less he can tolerate remaining secondary. The recognition that once seemed sufficient now has to be constantly renewed. When Ted is no longer the exclusive gaze confirming his worth, Nate once again feels as if he is disappearing.

Envy turns into repression, and insecurity is covered over by grandiosity. Nate begins to believe that he is not merely good, but unfairly treated because others fail to recognize just how good he really is. And cruelty grows out of that.

But Ted Lasso gives him a great deal of time. It allows Nate to betray, hurt people, leave Richmond, pursue power, and, eventually, try to rebuild what he destroyed. There is room for redemption. And there is one important difference: Ted never truly gets to punish him.

Alice Is an Even More Uncomfortable Comparison

Alice Chilton fascinatingly enters this equation because her frustrations may be even more complex. Her playing career was interrupted by injuries; she had to rebuild her relationship with football through another path and, when she finally has a chance to advance professionally, there is still one issue that Gerry and Nate never had to face in the same way: she is a woman trying to rise within a structure historically built by men.

Alice was passed over. So when she begins resenting Ted, we are not simply looking at someone jealous because somebody else received more attention. There is loss, professional frustration, grief over a career her own body brought to an end, and a very real gender inequality.

None of that justifies the moment when Alice starts taking her frustration out on the players and using her position to humiliate them. But it makes her behavior far more complicated than a simple repetition of Nate.

And this is exactly where Ted surprises us. He suspends her.

Ted Learned From Nate. But There Is an Irony in That

The first reading is probably the one the series wants us to make: Ted learned from Nate. The first time around, he believed kindness, space, acceptance and patience would be enough. He failed to notice, or refused to notice, when Nate’s pain was beginning to turn into cruelty. This time, he recognizes the pattern sooner.

With Alice, he sets a boundary. And that is growth. Ted finally seems to understand something essential: understanding why someone hurts others does not mean allowing them to keep doing it. Empathy does not have to mean permissiveness.

There is, however, an irony that is difficult to ignore. Nate had a great deal of time to make mistakes. He was understood, welcomed, and rarely disciplined by Ted. Even after displaying resentment and aggression, he was given room to continue on his path until he himself broke away from Richmond. Later, once he began his redemption, he was again met with understanding.

Alice is punished.

That does not necessarily mean Ted is wrong. The suspension may be entirely justified. But the question remains: why does the boundary he could not establish with Nate appear precisely when the person standing in front of him is a woman?

Perhaps the answer is simply chronological. Nate came first, Ted learned from him, and Alice is facing the consequence of that lesson. Even so, narratively, the choice is provocative. The woman whose career has already been limited by her own body and by male-dominated structures is also the person with whom Ted finally discovers the necessity of authority.

We do not need to conclude immediately that Ted’s behavior is sexist. But it would be a waste not to notice the asymmetry.

Three Forms of Resentment, Three Different Paths

That is why Gerry is not simply “the Nate of Chad Powers,” just as Alice cannot be reduced to “the new Nate.” The three begin from different places, have different reasons for their resentment, and transform their frustrations in different ways.

Gerry suffered a real injustice, but he had already shown a willingness to destroy anyone who threatened his position before learning the whole truth. Once he finally gets proof that he was deceived, he turns justice into revenge.

Nate has real talent and concrete reasons to feel that some of his work did not receive the recognition it deserved. But his older wounds transform a legitimate grievance into an insatiable need for validation.

Alice lost one career, had to reinvent another, and still faces a barrier the two men never had to confront: gender. Yet when her frustration begins turning into an abuse of power, she is stopped immediately.

And perhaps this is precisely where Ted Lasso is maturing. The series has always been extraordinary at explaining where cruelty comes from. Now it seems to be asking a harder question: how far does understanding someone have to go?

Because the origin of a wound may explain a behavior. It does not necessarily absolve it.

Ted Lasso’s Darker Cousin

Chad Powers takes this same discussion into a much more fantastical territory. Nate looks at the mirror and tries to create a new version of himself. Alice is still at the beginning of what may become either a transformation or a correction. Gerry looks at someone else’s broken mask and begins to lose his own stability.

Perhaps that is the best way to understand the kinship between the two series. Ted Lasso still believes that wounded people can change, but it finally seems willing to admit that love also requires boundaries.

Chad Powers asks a darker question:

What happens when someone really was deceived, but the truth only reveals what was already worst inside them?