Welcome to Wrexham season 4 reviewed: McElhenney's pep talk, Mullin's hurt, and Ker's nipples

New York Times

a day ago

No matter how far Wrexham go under the ownership of Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney, that first promotion back into the EFL two years ago will take some beating.
Not just in terms of the record points tally, with the 111 garnered by Phil Parkinson's side en route to the National League title likely to remain unbeaten for a long, long time. But also the intense emotions released by the final whistle sounding at home to Boreham Wood to signal 15 years in the non-League wilderness were finally at an end.
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As enjoyable and satisfying as the subsequent back-to-back promotions from Leagues Two and One proved, neither could hold a candle to that glorious April evening when dreams came true in north Wales. Even reaching the Premier League, a level Wrexham have never played at in their 160-year history, might struggle in comparison.
It's been a similar story with the Welcome to Wrexham documentary series, which has helped earn the record-breaking income levels required to fund a rise through the divisions so rapid that the club now sit just one more promotion from taking a seat at the top table of English football.
The finale of season two — and specifically how the endorphin-releasing Rocky theme tune, Gonna Fly Now, kicked in just as the crowd invaded the pitch to celebrate that non-League exile was over — felt similarly unassailable. Until now.
A quite brilliant final episode of the current run builds towards a motivational pep talk from McElhenney to the squad a day or so before the home game against Charlton Athletic.
Knowing victory in that 5.30pm kick-off will be enough to clinch promotion to the Championship, providing rivals Wycombe Wanderers failed to win at Leyton Orient earlier in the day, the It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia co-creator had sought the opinion of an unnamed 'all-time NFL great' beforehand as to what message should be relayed.
A need to play with the freedom they'd enjoyed as youngsters was the gist of the reply.
'You already did the work of a man,' urges McElhenney, having moments earlier asked the players to close their eyes and visualise those days before football became a job for them. 'Now go out there and play like a little boy.'
As the co-chairman continues to push the need to channel that inner 10-year-old, the episode switches to home movie footage of the players as kids, interspersed with match action from the game against Charlton.
It's cleverly done, with the audience treated to a young Ollie Rathbone weaving in and out of an opposition defence to score with a thumping finish in junior football just moments before being shown doing exactly the same to break the deadlock after 15 minutes.
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Then comes a video of Sam Smith as a toddler being urged to kick a ball in the hallway of the family home, followed straight after by the striker's acrobatic finish to put Wrexham 2-0 up just three minutes on from Rathbone's opener.
By the time Smith heads in the third goal from a Max Cleworth cross with nine minutes of the 90 to go — 'This one's hitting him,' promises a pre-teen Cleworth to camera in presumably his back garden when growing up — the hairs on the back of the neck are well and truly up.
It makes for great TV and suitably caps another triumphant year for the production team behind Welcome to Wrexham, a show that has developed a happy knack of striking just the right balance between sporting action and turning the spotlight on the local community since debuting in autumn 2022.
The latest run is no different, with a touch of Hollywood glamour sprinkled on top for good measure. Neither of their celebrity co-owners was a regular at games last season, with Reynolds attending just four and McElhenney five, including two on the road at Birmingham City and Blackpool, but the pair are a more regular presence on screen, usually talking to the camera together or via Zoom.
Both bring humour to go with their storytelling skills, such as when using what McElhenney describes as 'Disney tropes' to chart the 10-week period in Wrexham's season that sees autumn become winter, including the traditional 'all is well with the world' start to a typical film in the movie company's stable that soon morphs into events taking a nosedive through tragedy.
I'm not sure my traumatised six-year-old self would quite agree striker Jack Marriott breaking his leg is on a par with Bambi's mum being killed, as is suggested by Wrexham's co-owners here, but the general analogy works, especially when the required happy ending arrives courtesy of Rathbone netting a last-minute winner against Barnsley to close out an episode.
The show also deals sensitively with big off-field emotional events.
The 'farewell' to the late Arthur Massey, who was Wrexham's oldest supporter, is beautifully done. As is Paul Mullin and Ollie Palmer befriending Archie White, a young fan suffering from a rare form of blood cancer, and the serious heart attack suffered by Maurice Jones in the crowd at Wycombe in March, which held up play for 20 minutes as medics battled to save his life.
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Also handled well is the season's biggest talking point, the sudden ostracising of Mullin and Palmer.
We know by now that Welcome to Wrexham is not a 'warts and all' production. Uncomfortable moments, such as when Luke Armstrong's record £500,000 transfer from Harrogate Town collapsed due to a failure to submit the relevant paperwork in time, have previously been totally ignored.
But, here, the show tackles head-on a topic that continues to split opinion. By filming Mullin speaking to his performance coach about his axing in a coffee shop as Palmer chats to his father, Andy, on the telephone, the producers got far more than would surely have been the case with a more formal interview to camera.
Both players were obviously hurt by Parkinson's decision, but handled themselves well. Never more so than when Palmer was watching April's win over Burton Albion at home on TV and the commentator described Steven Fletcher as 'an icon at the Racecourse'. This prompted the striker's young son to ask innocently, 'Are you an icon, Daddy?'. The reply — 'It's not up to me to decide, Buddy' — was perfectly judged.
As the man who ultimately set McElhenney on the road to buying the club during the pandemic, Humphrey Ker has been another integral figure in Wrexham's rise. Thankfully, he's sticking around, even if his role has changed in the past 12 months to allow more of a family and career focus back in the States.
Ker's attempts to get fit enough to run a marathon in aid of the Wrexham Miners Project proved an entertaining subplot throughout series four. He clearly hated every minute but still brought his customary good humour to proceedings, even when his nipples started to bleed during the 26.2-mile slog around the streets of Manchester.
There were no such mishaps for Parkinson's team in their own distance race, lasting almost 10 months.
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As with previous years, the show really steps up a gear when covering the matches themselves, as slick editing and great camerawork helped replicate the tension of the run-in, particularly during the slew of 1-0 wins that kept Wrexham on course for automatic promotion when performances perhaps didn't warrant it.
That intense rush as the final whistle blew against Huddersfield Town, Rotherham United et al, invariably followed by the manager or another member of his staff puffing out their cheeks in relief, could certainly be felt through the screen.
There's plenty of other great footage, too, including the November afternoon at Stockport County when Parkinson displayed much quicker thinking than his unusually off-key players during a 1-0 defeat.
Having been called a 'f***ing t*t' by a female home fan standing just behind the technical area, the Wrexham manager turns around, mid-game, to shout, 'You're supposed to be a lady!'. Cue merriment among the other Stockport supporters within earshot, one even quipping, 'Who told you that?'.
The camera quickly moves on, but the clip helps explain why Welcome to Wrexham retains sufficient appeal that a fifth series is already in the pipeline.
Sure, the show excels at the big moments, such as the season's final episode, but it can also turn the most minor of footnotes in the Wrexham story, such as that random touchline exchange involving Parkinson at Edgeley Park, into TV gold.
Welcome to Wrexham, series four, is available in the U.S. on FX and streaming on Hulu. UK viewers can watch the final episode on Disney+ from Friday, June 27.
(Top photo courtesy of FX Networks)