Happy November, Happy End to Daylight Savings Time, and welcome to Issue #003! In this edition of THREE NEW THINGS, I’m talking about the new Hulu show Chad Powers and how it punches above its weight, the Toronto-based, all-female band, The Beaches, and Dispatch, the half-game /half-animated superhero series.

There’s really only ONE rule, and it’s this - new means RELATIVELY NEW. I’ll cover a lot of stuff that just came out the previous week. But I’m also going to cover things - video games especially - that may have come out in the last few years. It’s completely at my discretion to decide what qualifies as NEW, so consider this newsletter a “seantocracy” in that regard. With that out of the way, let’s get to it!

I did not have high expectations for Chad Powers when I decided to binge-watch it. But I like football, and my wife likes Glen Powell, so we decided to give it a try. My expectations were tempered because the show is based on a bit Eli Manning did for ESPN, where he “tried out” for the Penn State football team disguised as “Chad Powers.” Here’s the original piece.

Can that premise be stretched out to series length? Yes and no. Season 1 is just six episodes long, and it ends on a rather abrupt note. According to the showrunner, Michael Waldron, there were two reasons for this. One, Glen Powell is pretty busy these days. And two, Waldron himself recognizes you can only take the premise so far. It’s not a show designed to go 5 seasons, 10 episodes per season. The fact that Waldron and Powell (who helped create the show) know this is why it works.

Powell plays Russ Holiday, a star quarterback for Oregon who loses a national championship because he starts celebrating a sure touchdown too early and drops the ball at the one-yard line. And if you think that sounds preposterous, Phoenix Cardinals runningback Emari Demercado did exactly that just a few weeks ago. Russ’s life spirals further out of control when he knocks over a child in a wheelchair suffering from cancer.

The show picks up a few years later when Russ is such an infamous fuck-up that there’s a Spirit Halloween costume based on him called “Loser Quarterback.” The fictional South Georgia Catfish are having walk-on tryouts, so Russ puts on prosthetics and a wig and makes the team in disguise.

To the show’s credit, it knows what a ridiculous premise that is and leans in HARD to how difficult it would be to wear prosthetic makeup while practicing and playing football in the Georgia heat and humidity. The show goes to great lengths to explain how he does it. Chad Powers further commits to realism by doing such things as filming during the halftime of a Georgia game and having the crowd participate (by booing Chad).

But what truly makes the show stand out is that it has surprising heart and depth. There’s a line in the first episode where Chad’s best friend tells him, “You THINK your life would have turned out differently if you hadn’t made that ONE mistake, but it would have turned out exactly the same.” A lot of us have that moment in their life. The one thing we wish wouldn’t have happened. In my case, it was the owner of the best place I ever worked selling the company. I’ve fixated for a long time on how much more smoothly my career might have gone had that one thing not happened. But it’s very possible things would have turned out the same because WE drive our lives more than circumstances do.

Chad Powers is a short, hiliarious binge featuring a deeply flawed character - which is my favorite kind. It’s available now on Disney+/Hulu.

For about five minutes in the early 90s, Juliana Hatfield was alternative rock’s “it girl.” She combined a breathy singing voice with crunchy guitars and pop hooks. She even appeared in an episode of “My So-Called Life.” Her song “Everybody Loves Me But You” is the one that brought her fame (I’m not so sure about the fortune). If you watched MTV’s 120 Minutes back in the day, you probably caught it.

Hatfield started her career as the founder of the band Blake Babies. Shortly after that, she joined the Lemonheads and played on their one-hit wonder, “It’s A Shame About Ray.” Then she went solo with her album “Hey Babe.”

Her music was always a little more offbeat and eclectic than the instantly catchy “Everybody Loves Me,” so she never quite went mainstream. She fell off the radar in the late 90s and early 2000s and in the 2010s started doing tribute albums, her best being an album of Olivia Newton-John cover songs.

This week, she’s back with original music that really harkens back to her early days. That’s why it’s such a treat. The song starts off with a signature Hatfield 90s-style discordant guitar riff before getting more melodic. It’s something Dave Grohl uses to great effect, especially on the song “Everlong.” Anyway, throw on some flannel and enjoy “Popsicle” from Juliana Hatfield! She’s a little older now (aren’t we all?), but she’s still cool AF.

Dispatch is an odd creation. Is it a game? Yes. Is it an animated streaming series? Also, yes. The game is made by AdHoc, founded by former employees of Telltale, most famous for the game The Last of Us, which went on to become an HBO show. So, games that are more story than game are kind of their thing. Dispatch is also made in conjunction with Critical Role, the voice actors turned Dungeons & Dragons players turned makers of the animated series Legends of Vox Machina.

In Dispatch, you play a disgraced former superhero named Mecha Man. You’re actually the THIRD Mecha Man, having inherited the mantle from your father and grandfather. After your mecha suit gets destroyed, you take an office job dispatching (hence the title) heroes to tackle various crimes and emergencies around the city. Only you don’t get heroes. You get former villains. Or as Jeffrey Wright’s character calls them, “Your own motley crew of dangerous fuck-ups.”

The game mostly consists of trying to assign the right hero or heroes to the right job based on their strengths, weaknesses, and abilities. There’s also a mini code-cracking game that you engage in on occasion. Between assignments, the story plays out like an animated series. You can either choose just to kick back and watch the cinematics or participate in them by making choices the main characters will remember later. Obviously, the latter is the more fun way to play the game.

The voice acting is top-notch. I already mentioned Jeffrey Wright, but the lead character, Robert Robertson (yes, that’s really his name), is voiced by Aaron Paul, whose dry delivery really punches up the humor. And there’s a lot of humor. Humor in video games can be hit and miss, but Dispatch is so well written that nearly all the jokes land.

In the end, it doesn’t really matter that Dispatch is more animated show than game, because it’s so well done it’s something I’d watch even if it was “just” a show. Check it out for yourself! Dispatch is available on both PC and PS5 (sorry Xbox fans).

This week’s BONUS THING is a recipe. My wife, Brenda, and I have a yearly tradition. On the first Saturday that the high temperature doesn’t get above 59 degrees, we declare it soup weather and make our favorite— Tuscan Soup.

There are numerous recipes out there, and we put our own twist on it, but the base recipe mimics Olive Garden’s Zuppa Toscana Soup. Pro Tip - put the kale in the bowl and pour the soup over it rather than putting it IN the soup; otherwise, it goes bad in the fridge should you have any leftovers. Pro Tip 2 - cook the Parmesan cheese directly into the soup (a half cup or so). We did this on accident once and loved the flavor, so we stuck with it.

That brings us to the conclusion of Issue #003! Next week I’ll be covering the show The Lowdown, a very Coen Brothers-esque crime drama that is a love letter to both literature and my former home city of Tulsa, Oklahoma. I’ll also get into the music of The Beaches— a Toronto-based all-female indie rock band. As for what game I’ll talk about… we’ll see. Thanks for joining me for Issue #003, and I’ll see you again for Issue #004!