Unpopular opinion: Wrigley's not a good person, you just think he's hot

At first I thought it was just because the bar was so low that people on this sub liked Wrigley, but then I realized Evan is objectively a much better person, he's made exactly one mistake so far, but no one fawns over him on the sub.

But let's just focus on Wrigley. As people have admired about the show, the characters are written super realistically, and Wrigley is no different. He's the typical jock who's fine with bullying and using his social status to hurt others, but as soon as he faces the smallest amount of adversity, expects everyone else to instantly treat him like a victim. Everyone talks about how Stephen manipulates people into being friends with him, but Wrigley isn't much different. Wrigley picks his friends as people who would never be friends with him if he didn't have the looks/social status he does, and constantly makes sure his "friends" know he's above them socially, including Stephen. Think about how he treats Evan, Evan invites them all to his super fancy house with a pool and all but begs them to be respectful and take their shoes off in the house. Wrigley then rushes in and rubs his genitals all over the sheets of the best bedroom so he can have it, and ends up throwing a bowling ball and breaking Evan's parents' glass table. Is that how a good person acts?

And let's talk about how he treats Drew. Are we going to pretend that before Drew stops talking to him, he was actually a good brother to Drew? He was straight up a bully to him, constantly made him feel less than, and there's a pretty strong reason Drew didn't want to talk to him until he was begged to. He even confirms that Wrigley was making jokes on the phone, and Wrigley admits it was because he was worried, but are we going to overlook the fact that Drew was triggered by that because that's likely how Wrigley treated Drew when he had real problems throughout his life? I wouldn't be shocked at all if in high school Drew went through a tragedy and Wrigley essentially ignored it and made fun of Drew for it, but when it's reversed he expects everyone to take his own problems seriously. And then can we talk about the night out that Drew died? Obviously Wrigley didn't want to kill him, but you know your brother's in a bad place and want to connect with him, and your response is to give him drugs? I don't mind having a few drinks in that situation, but again it just shows Wrigley's all about himself. He likes getting wasted and doing drugs, but instead of taking the night off and really being there for his brother, he takes his brother out to do exactly what Wrigley wants to do. That night out wasn't about helping Drew, it was about helping Wrigley feel less shitty about Drew, it was just selfish.

And then finally there's the letter. He instantly breaks up with Pippa and allows the other football players to treat her like shit for over a year because of an assumption, even if we say he believes Stephen, who's to say there wasn't another car that night that saw Drew drive off? He's supposedly in love with this girl, but is pretty fucking quick to dump her and allow his teammates to treat her like absolute shit and not believe her in the slightest because he's convinced only a few people knew and "obviously" it couldn't be Stephen. Then when his "best friend" admits to something which is way worse, because now not only did Stephen do what he thought Pippa did, but he also caused Wrigley to not believe Pippa and treat her like shit and ruin his relationship, and also is now responsible for the death of Drew, and it's all fucking good? That part enraged me, and I really hope in season 3 we see that Wrigley only reacted that way due to grief and realizes Stephen admitted to doing far worse than Pippa was even accused of doing.

So yeah, Wrigley's one of the better guys in this toxic as fuck friend group, and he does show small flashes of empathy. The fact that he feels bad at Pippa faking orgasms and wants to actually give her one? Sure that's good and better than most of the other guys in the show, but I'd argue any good guy would act that way with a girl he cares about. The fact that he starts to realize the future is important and if he doesn't change he will be relegated to reliving these "glory days" for the rest of his life? That's a little bit, but do we think that even would have happened if he was still captain of the football team and everyone was still worshipping him? And that's the thing with this show, it is extremely accurate at portraying this type of guy, I knew plenty of Wrigley's in high school, they were still people with empathy, they were just treated like royalty by their peers and even their teachers, and most abused it and bullied others and treated them like shit. Some have improved and become functioning adults with families and careers, some are still reliving their glory days in their hometowns from when they peaked in high school and are pretty sad. Wrigley shows flashes of hopefully being the former, but again the only reason this makes him look good is the bar is so damn low. And if he wasn't conventionally attractive, I'm also not sure how many people would be fawning over him as a good guy.