There’s one thing I will never understand in vertical dramas: the idea that keeping a child a secret is somehow the noble choice. That goes double when the father is your best friend. It isn’t protecting him. It’s lying to him. And worse, it’s making a choice for a child who never got a say.
Yes, I know. Best intentions and all that. But the best intentions aren’t always the right ones.
That’s exactly the space where Worth the Chase lives. Ryan Collins (Talia Wynzel) and Carsen Blake (Joel Erdmann) have been best friends since childhood. He’s a football prodigy, and she’s the girl who’s always been in his corner. After one unexpected night together, right before Carsen leaves to chase his NFL future, Ryan finds out she’s pregnant. She decides his rising career matters more than his right to know, so she keeps the secret and faces motherhood alone.
And let me say this up front: I loved Worth the Chase. I also have notes.
She Should Have Told Him
I know, I know. It’s a drama, and drama needs conflict. I’m aware. But being aware of it doesn’t mean I can’t call it out.
What frustrates me most about this trope is how often these stories expect the woman to step aside so the man can have his dream, while she quietly absorbs the cost. It takes two people to make a baby, so it should take two people to carry the weight of one. Carsen was there that night. He gets to be there for what came after, too.
The show does deserve credit for what it does with that choice, though. It doesn’t treat Ryan’s secret as romantic. It treats it as heavy. The sleepless nights, getting up to change Charlie’s diaper when she’s running on nothing, a roommate watching with real worry as Ryan works herself into the ground: these aren’t throwaway beats. They’re the cost of her decision, and Worth the Chase makes you feel every bit of it.
That’s what makes the single motherhood storyline land. Ryan isn’t a martyr in a pretty montage. She’s exhausted, she’s scared, and she’s doing a job meant for two people. You can admire her strength and still wish she hadn’t taken all of it on by herself, and I think the show wants you to feel both.
The Chemistry Is the Whole Game
What makes this work is that Ryan and Carsen’s love feels like it was always there, long before that night. Years of friendship are built into how they look at each other, how they fight, and how they can’t quite stay away even when one of them is trying very hard to.
When Carsen comes back to campus a year later as a college star, Ryan pushes him away again and again. She even humiliates him publicly. He doesn’t budge. And then comes the moment that wrecked me: he promises to accept Ryan and her baby as his own, without knowing Charlie is his daughter.
That’s the heart of the show. Before he knows the truth, Carsen chooses Ryan, and he chooses Charlie. That isn’t obligation. That’s love.
Talia Wynzel Makes Ryan Real
Talia Wynzel is versatile enough to play the heroine or the villain, and she does it convincingly either way. Which is why I have to laugh when a production thinks glasses and braids are enough to turn her into “the nerd.” That isn’t what sells Ryan. Wynzel does. (Also, plenty of nerds dress better than the popular crowd. Just saying.)
The costuming shorthand doesn’t really matter, because Wynzel has the kind of presence you notice the second she walks into a scene. She makes Ryan’s defensiveness read as fear rather than coldness, so even when you’re yelling at the screen for her to just tell him, you understand why she can’t.
Joel Erdmann Is the Green Flag
I’ll be honest: I didn’t know Joel Erdmann before this. A quick look at his Instagram told me one thing right away, which is that the man is proud of his abs. No complaints. You do you.
But his performance is why we’re here, and it’s a strong one. He hasn’t done many verticals yet, but based on this, he’s going to have plenty more soon. Erdmann plays Carsen with an intensity that never tips into pushiness. His refusal to give up on Ryan comes across as devotion, not entitlement. Carsen is the kind of green-flag male lead who puts love and family first, and Erdmann makes that steadiness magnetic.
Fatherhood as the Final Piece
When Carsen finally learns the truth, the story could have turned into a blowup and a breakup. Instead, it does something more mature. Ryan’s instinct to run gets stronger after she overhears his coach warning that fatherhood could derail Carsen’s career. That’s her worst fear said out loud by someone with real power over his future.
Carsen doesn’t flinch. He sets out to prove to the world, and more importantly to Ryan, that Charlie won’t ruin his football dreams. She’ll complete them. Seeing the man she loves holding their daughter is what finally breaks down Ryan’s walls, and it’s earned. When he proposes and she says yes, it doesn’t feel like a fairy-tale ending. It feels like two people finally sharing the load she should never have carried alone.
More Than Its Tropes
On paper, Worth the Chase is a stack of familiar tropes: secret pregnancy, toxic exes, best friends to lovers. But under the twists is a story that’s more emotionally grounded than most sports romances. The conflict doesn’t come from pettiness or cheating. It comes from love, fear, and a bad decision made for what felt like the right reasons.
Do I still wish Ryan had told him? Absolutely. Do I still roll my eyes at a story that once again asks the woman to suffer for the man’s dream? Yes. But Worth the Chase knows the cost of that choice, and it gives us a hero who refuses to let her pay it alone.
Grade: B+
