The primary story arc of Welcome to Wrexham’s second season is the men’s football team’s quest for promotion to League Two, but the series can’t subsist on purely game-by-game updates. We need more texture and more narrative treats from behind the scenes to ensure that the world of the show is as rich and fleshed out as possible. This week’s double feature of episodes is about the club’s culture: everyone’s well-founded reliance on Shaun Harvey and the need for a winning mind-set to counterbalance the entire fan base’s dread of not getting promoted.
Shaun’s role is technically adviser to the club’s board, but that title doesn’t begin to describe his true function, which seems to be literally everything. He’s a workaholic admired by all for his tenacity and encyclopedic knowledge of running a football club; his wife, Nicola, describes him as someone who “works and works and works again … he’s the hardest-working person I know.†He was supposed to work for the club for no more than six weeks, but those weeks became six months, then an open-ended arrangement that Rob and Ryan hope will last forever.
Shaun’s decades of experience and expertise, combined with a ferocious drive to work almost constantly, have by now made him indispensable to Wrexham AFC. When he and Nicola finally do plan a week away, Humphrey, Ryan, and Rob are intent on respecting and protecting that time off so Shaun can relax and not think about work.
This episode is a comedy of culture-clash errors, narrated mostly by Humphrey. His bone-dry, often self-lacerating wit is exactly what the story needs to highlight its most ridiculous aspects. For all that Humphrey, Ryan, and Rob intending to protect Shaun’s time off, they also prove entirely incapable of doing so. Humphrey’s the first to admit that Shaun’s shoes are nearly impossible to fill, but that doesn’t begin to describe the absurdity of what unfolds around him that week.
First, Rob shows up unannounced to orchestrate a birthday prank for Ryan: a small-scale blimp featuring a hideous picture of Ryan in full Deadpool makeup. This is in retaliation for the urinal Ryan had dedicated to Rob in one of the Racecourse bathrooms for his last birthday. (Noting without further commentary: These men are in their mid-40s.) His basic distaste for pranks aside, Humphrey hates many things about this whole situation, chief among them having to lie to Ryan about whether or not Rob is there and why and having to consider the possibility that this blimp Rob is so into could be breaking Welsh aviation laws. It’s day one of Shaun’s holiday and Humphrey is already calling him in Tenerife.
Day two isn’t much better as Rob sets up both himself and the club to violate yet another, much more significant law by attempting to stream that day’s away match against key rivals Boreham Wood at the Turf. It seems reasonable, but the law, Article 48, is designed to protect and encourage attendance at matches by banning TV broadcasts of Saturday-afternoon football matches. Shaun doesn’t even need Humphrey to get in touch about this; like a big party planned by a teen whose parents are away, word has gotten out about this streaming plan to such a degree that Shaun calls Rob on his own to put the kibosh on his hospitable but ignorant idea.
Things escalate to the point that, on day four, Shaun threatens to come home early from his holiday owing to the severity of Bootgate, a performative media and Football Twitter hissy fit triggered by an Instagram post featuring Paul Mullin’s new boots (cleats). How, you may reasonably ask, do football boots become a political nightmare? Well, when the controversial boots in question bear the slogan “Fuck the Tories!†and the photo of said boots was clearly taken at the Racecourse, some people (disingenuous people spoiling for a fight, but people nonetheless) just might interpret the photo as suggesting a whisper of a possibility that Wrexham AFC itself endorses the political view that the Tories (a.k.a. the Conservative Party, which is currently in power in the U.K.) should go jump in the lake.
Paul takes down the original post and puts up a new one void of any reference to Wrexham AFC, but then Ryan liked the post, which … sir, could you not? In the end, via some Varys-from–Game of Thrones–style tactics, Humphrey wrangles Ryan into convincing Rob to convince Shaun not to come home early, which is a win all around. And speaking of wins, well done to the Reds on their 3-1 win at home over Halifax during Rob’s visit!
I drew two lessons from this episode. First, Rob is a well-intended chaos Muppet who refuses to heed Humphrey’s reasonable guidance, while Humphrey is a little too Mr. Nice Guy for his own good. Second, filmed reenactments of key dramatic moments don’t have to be a drag if they’re cast and shot to be as silly as possible. Shaun wisely nixed the idea of cameras following him and Nicola in Tenerife, so instead we are treated to slo-mo re-creations of their experiences that week. The actor playing Shaun is enormously jacked, but these scenes dilute his imposing physique through his dour-to-mournful facial expressions, ever-present flip-flops, and succession of tiny brightly-colored Speedos. Trading Shaun’s usual Kindly Yet Intimidatingly Competent energy for a gently needling homage suits, to a tee, the episode’s overall tone of self-aware absurdity.
We now turn to the cultural shift that manager Phil Parkinson is trying to render on the little team that could. After languishing for so many years in the wilderness of the National League, lighting a sustainable fire of belief in the belly of both the team and its supporters is no small task. Veteran in-stadium commentator Mark Griffiths contextualizes the fans’ cynicism by explaining that Wrexham AFC has a long, long history of crumbling to dust in postseason games. Since 2012, Wrexham has held the record for the most points ever won by a team that didn’t get promoted in the history of the top-five levels of professional football. Griffiths, who has quickly become my favorite talking head on the series for his encyclopedic knowledge and knack for wry, concise explanations, describes that catastrophe as “what Wrexham do — another heroic, frustrating failure.â€
The team’s supporters seem to believe this state of affairs is unchangeable, yet they also want to believe the lads can overcome it. This is all of a piece, says Humphrey, “with a very British mentality of Everything is bad. Don’t expect better for yourself. Just get on with your life until you’re dead.†This attitude is wholly unacceptable for the team as well as for Rob and Ryan. Second place — which Rob describes as being “first losers†— won’t cut it in 2023; the Reds must clinch promotion or die trying.
Ryan likens beloved sports teams coming in second to his disappointments whenever one of his films opens to a second-highest gross, teeing up the best part of the entire episode. Friends, let us gather round and hearken unto the wisdom of the one and only Ms. Susan Lucci. Viewers of a certain age will remember Lucci’s long quest for a Daytime Emmy in the category of Best Dramatic Actress for her performance as Erica Kane in All My Children. After going 0-18, Lucci finally won in 1999 and was nominated a total of 21 times.
In addition to her reflections on how losing sharpened her drive to win and the value of sticking with the thing you love, Lucci shares helpful insight about the similarities between actors and athletes, noting that “we are our own instrument; what we do with ourselves is shown, and it’s very disciplined. You’re part of a team, and at the same time, you have the opportunity to do something individual.â€
Wrexham’s new defender, Jacob Mendy, is an exemplar of Lucci’s philosophy of tenacity, individual effort, and teamwork, which Parkinson considers integral to the winning mentality the team is building together. Mendy’s personal story as an immigrant — first from Gambia to Spain and then from Spain to England — pairs with and informs his dedicated, hungry playing style. For his part, Mendy liked coming to a team that he knew would be hungry for a win following its 2022 heartbreak.
Another model of relentless drive toward success is another team in the National League, Dorking Wanderers FC, which has spent the past 23 years developing from a team of casual weekend players to an underresourced and disproportionately successful team within shouting distance of playing professionally. Its record of being promoted 12 times in 23 years is the inverse of Wrexham’s high-points-without-a-promotion record. Humphrey credits the Wanderers’ owner and manager, Marc White, and his being “divorced from the conventional way of doing things†with a great deal of the team’s success over the years, thereby winning my personal award for Most Complimentary Way to Describe Someone As Fully Unhinged. White’s singular, possibly terrifying focus on winning extends to lurking in the stadium in disguise even when he has been sent off by one of the referees. It also works. Remember Notts County? The team Wrexham has to beat but hasn’t yet? Dorking beat them 3-1.
Up the Town!
• Apropos of Lucci and Humphrey’s comment about a certain defeatist attitude among the British, here’s my English husband’s go-to explanation of the differences between the U.S. and the U.K.: Our soap operas are about glamorous, beautiful, rich people and their problems, while theirs are about very normal, regular-looking, working-class people and their problems.
• Regarding Article 48, is it a contributing factor to the strong and enthusiastic tradition of football fans traveling to away matches en masse?
• A totally inessential question that is now burning in my mind: Does Shaun Harvey watch Shaun the Sheep, and if so, with which character does he identify the most? If you have yet to watch Shaun the Sheep and you value joy, I encourage you to get on that ASAP! Several films and a six-season TV series await you on various streaming platforms.