Welcome to Wrexham Season 5, Episode 6, “Hell Week,” follows an intense schedule of fixtures that ends up highlighting what matters most at the football club. This episode doesn’t break the mold or push the docuseries to new places. It revisits themes, like change and legacy, explored earlier in the season. In reality, those themes are cornerstones to Welcome to Wrexham, constantly evolving with every new chapter at Wrexham AFC. Those evergreen elements are all wrapped up in the football club, as they are in the human experience.
Similar to how the season starts, “Hell Week” kicks off the last three episodes of the season with that reflection arising through another transfer window. The club welcomes more players, and there’s just not enough time to get to know them. Likewise, there isn’t all that much time to spend with those who are saying goodbye. Even so, “Hell Week” strikes a better balance. In doing so, Welcome to Wrexham finds all these differing opinions from players and staff about understanding the inevitability of it, but all the complicated feelings in that. There’s an appreciated honesty and vulnerability to “Hell Week” about everything from the pressures of the game to how Wrexham AFC stands out.
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The Schedule Takes Prominence
“Hell Week” finds Wrexham AFC in a familiar part of the football season, if a club competes at this level, where it’s practically wall-to-wall action. All of the matches are so consequential that they could be the sole focus of the episode. Wrexham playing Ipswich twice in the same week – for the FA Cup and a league match – brings its own intensity. The Chelsea game is one of those that I won’t forget as a Wrexham supporter. Welcome to Wrexham creatively retells the epic story of that match. Even without the limitations, this show has always been so great at capturing a match even after it’s over. Welcome to Wrexham puts the viewer right back into the moment. With the Chelsea match, by including so many of the people integral to the club, “Hell Week” taps into the magic of it all.
So, the schedule itself becomes a character on Welcome to Wrexham in its own right; it brings all its own complications and subplots. For example, the heightened chances of injury and the club’s stretched resources are rather weighty effects of the condensed timeline. “Hell Week” is at some of its most interesting places when it turns the camera to the club’s staff, like Paul “Chal” Chaloner, a groundsman, who briefly speaks about the tiring turnaround.
The docuseries could only benefit from hearing from and seeing more of the staff. It does with Kieffer Moore and Ollie Rathbone explaining the schedule’s impact on a player’s mind and physicality. But with only eight episodes, topics that could be entire episodes must be condensed to much smaller segments. That said, Welcome to Wrexham is clever and correct in infusing some levity into “Hell Week” with the running bit of co-owner Rob Mac flying back and forth from Los Angeles to Wrexham. It somehow perfectly captures all the chaotic momentum around this football club.
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The Wrexham Family Is Forever
In all of this kinetic energy, Welcome to Wrexham finds a natural comparison with what has stayed the same in these periods over the last few years. The heart and the mentality of the club remain – no matter if a player or staff member has moved on. “Hell Week” finds an incredibly sentimental example of such when Katrina Jones and Jacob Mendy say goodbye to each other before the latter leaves Wrexham AFC. It’s only a fraction of the episode, but it’s one of the most emotionally effective scenes of “Hell Week.” There’s also a super quick exchange between James McClean and Dilwyn Baker, a member of the staff, that speaks volumes. There is a really tight relationship between everyone at the club.
It’s one thing to hear Mac and Reynolds say that everyone keeps in touch. It’s another thing entirely for Welcome to Wrexham to show that. The episode can pull back footage of the docuseries from the past. It can also show it in the present. “Hell Week” also highlights that through That Wrexham Podcast and the Lee Forde Academy. Past, present, and future players have built their own fixtures that will stay in Wrexham. Wrexham AFC is a lasting community. “Hell Week” puts the perfect bow on that narrative – at least as it is in “Hell Week” – with the Swansea match, for which Mac and Reynolds commentated.
Mac (and the docuseries itself) may call them “Tall Handsome Men, but Ollie Palmer, Ben Foster, Ben Tozer, and Steven Fletcher showing up means so much. Even seeing Humphrey Ker, who is now the club’s community director, in the background of that scene is so effective. Hearing Ker’s candid thoughts is one of the best parts of “Hell Week”. He may have less of a voice at the club, but Ker is still one of the strongest narrative voices that Welcome to Wrexham has – five seasons into an at least eight-season run. That commentator’s bit is just a wonderful way to express how incredibly proud everyone is of their involvement at the club. Wrexham is not fleeting; it’s forever.
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