#wayside school

THE ORIGINAL STUDENTS

JOE

Book: Joe STARTS OUT as one of many “gimmick” characters, with his being his inability to count in the right order. That’s an alright gimmick, not exactly a well rounded character but whatever. The problem is, after that chapter, Joe immediately abandons that trait and becomes a generic guy. Most Wayside book students are one or the other, some are both. Joe allows me to cover my bases at the beginning. He’s the worst of both worlds

Cartoon: Cartoon Joe is weird. The Wayside cartoon already boils even the simple book students into one personality trait, but instead of Joe’s existing one interesting trait ever of counting wrong, they focus on him having curly hair??? I guess it’s because Wayside is a very visual cartoon

SHARIE

Book: Another one trick pony character, usually asleep in class. Gimmick characters live and die on the strength of their gimmick, and Sharie has a damn good one. Also when she’s not asleep she’s literally insane even by Wayside standards. Who brings in a hobo for show and tell? What the hell is a zizzle stick? Why is her response to falling 300 feet out a window to GO BACK TO SLEEP? Goated character

Cartoon: Shari- no E. Pretty faithful adaptation, albeit a flanderized one- going from OFTEN asleep to ALWAYS asleep. She only has one line of dialogue as a result. They got the color of her overcoat wrong but it’s. Fine. Also we do get to see her awake in her home video thing and apparently she spends her free time doing XTREME stunts with her family. Also goated

TODD

Book: His one gimmick is getting sent home early on the kindergarten bus every day despite not doing anything wrong. I just feel bad for the guy. He also makes Mrs. Jewls look worse for constantly sending him home every day. What an asshole. Nice teacher my ass. Also, why did they make Todd, the kid who always gets in trouble for stuff he didn’t do and is called a “monkey” the first time Mrs. Jewls meets him, BLACK in the newest prints? DID THEY NOT THINK OF THE IMPLICATIONS?

Cartoon: He has the same “gets sent home everyday” gimmick but he’s the rare Wayside cartoon character to have more development than in the books because now he is the MAIN CHARACTER. This also makes Mrs. Jewls 100 times more unlikable by proxy. Anyway he’s also the new kid at school and the audience surrogate because I guess the producers only read the first book and didn’t know Benjamin Nushmutt existed. Michael Cera played him in the pilot so that’s something I guess

BEBE

Book: The fastest draw in Mrs. Jewls’ class. Her gimmick is being artistic and creative. She’s also a mischievous little shit. She’s alright. Certainly one of the better characters in the books, but that’s not saying much. Her name (Bebe Gunn) is a pun

Cartoon: One of the three black kids in class. Like Shari, she only has one line of dialogue in the entire show. Once again flanderized into a single character trait, this time “artist”. Is able to churn out masterpieces in an instant even though Bebe’s focus chapter in the first book had her drawings all suck and she learned that you can’t rush art. Book Bebe would fucking hate cartoon Bebe and I find that hilarious. Also they pronounce her name wrong and miss the pun entirely so it loses some points for that

Stage Play: In the stage play there are only five students and every single one of them is basically just all the book students chucked into a blender and emulsified into a paste. To be fair, some of them do get sort of recurring character traits and arcs. Bebe is not one of them. She does at least do her “fastest draw” routine when introducing herself to Mrs. Jewls but that’s it really. Otherwise, she’s girl #3. Worst Bebe by far

CALVIN

Calvin is Bebe’s best friend. In the books, they’re a package deal, you can’t have one without the other. And it’s a good thing that’s the case because Calvin is otherwise one of the blandest motherfuckers in this entire school. The most interesting thing outside of Bebe is having a tattoo of a potato. That’s probably why he’s absent from the cartoon (Bebe herself is practically a background character with only one trait) and the play (where tbf he probably had a good chance of getting in because they clearly just drew the names of the students out of a hat and placed them onto homogenous globs)

MYRON

Book: Book Myron is basically Jesus. He is extremely perceptive for his age and his starring chapter in the first book is him sacrificing his role as class president to help Dana when her dog is run over by a car. In the second book they have him trade in his “safety” for “freedom” but the most interesting thing they do with that concept is have him just nope out of music class and make an “and then the opposite happens” joke with Mr. Gorf’s arrival. He’s alright I guess

Cartoon: And then on the opposite end of the Myron spectrum we have the cartoon Myron, the token minority of the main cast. He’s the fat idiot asshole sidekick that every other cartoon seemed to have at the time, particularly Patrick from SpongeBob but ESPECIALLY Canadian cartoons and DOUBLE ESPECIALLY Nelvana cartoons (Trevor from Sidekick, Entree from Spliced, Dave from Scaredy Squirrel). His one book trait is that he was class president once which means he is flanderized into a future dictator. He and book Myron should have a cage match.

Stage Play: Good news! Myron is one of the stage play characters with a semi-consistent arc! The bad news is he gets none of book Myron’s traits. The worse news is that he’s Paul instead. We’ll get to Paul

MAURECIA

Book: Her gimmick is that she likes ice cream. THAT’S IT. You can appreciate a gimmick like being unable to count in the right order a lot more, even if they abandon it immediately, when other characters have students like this. And aside from that? She’s… nice I guess? She’s friends with Joy? (WE’LL GET TO HER TOO) They mention she can beat up any boy in class and imply a crush on Todd but those never come up again (in the books…) She’s lame as hell

Show: Weirdly enough the show has a surprisingly good grip on Maurecia’s character? Many of her traits are present, accounted for, and way more visible than in the books (can beat up the boys easily, fairly nice and sweet despite that, has a crush on Todd and expresses those feelings through VIOLENCE) and they form the new core of her character, sometimes to her detriment (Maurecia’s crush on Todd makes up way too much of her personality) But two notable traits are absent. One is her friendship with Joy (who is absent from the show so there’s no way they COULD have carried it over) and the other is… her love of ice cream. HER PRIMARY CHARACTER TRAIT FROM THE BOOKS AND THEY FORGOT IT. LMAO. Also this shift in focus ironically turns her into Deedee which. Isn’t exactly a bad thing

PAUL

Hoooo boy, Paul. His one character trait. His ONE character trait. Is that he pulls Leslie’s pigtails. THAT’S. IT. He has no personality outside of this, he’s just an asshole who pulls pigtails. They try to do some arc where he TRIES to get over it, but it never sticks. Ever. Paul only exists to pull Leslie’s pigtails. Paul sucks. All my homies hate Paul. Good news, he has technically never been adapted in either the cartoon or the stage play. (Nor the live action pilot but literally nothing from the books was carried over, not even the school’s height) Bad news, they both still try to adapt the pulling pigtails plotline. The stage play gave it to Myron but it’s really just Paul but they call him Myron but really it’s just Paul. The cartoon gave it to Todd pulling Maurecia’s ponytail but the first two times were accidents and the third time was actually Dana being an asshole. It is written: “Todd must suffer.” Even I adapted this plot into my Wayside movie idea with Todd again. Forgive me lord, for I have sinned. Fuck Paul

DANA

Book: Dana’s main visual descriptor is that she wears glasses. Her chapter literally opens with “With two eyes she was pretty. With four eyes she was beautiful. With six eyes she would have been even more beautiful. And if she had a hundred eyes, all over her face and her arms and her feet, why, she would have been the most beautiful creature in the world.” I did not want biblically accurate Dana haunting my nightmares tonight thank you book. Anyway outside of this her main character trait is being really emotional. She gets way too into Mrs. Jewls’ storytime. One of the better character gimmicks to have though in fairness that’s because the other characters have traits like “likes ice cream” and “pulls pigtails” and “rides the bus home early”. At the very least she is relatable to someone like me, who’s autistic and would get in trouble for having meltdowns in class.

Cartoon: They made her a NERD because she wears glasses and she wears glasses because she’s clearly a NERD. She’s also more goofy looking than the books where she’s described as very pretty but to be fair that prettiness is a direct result of her glasses and maybe they weren’t able to capture that in the simplified cartoon art style. Despite her new character being a rules stickler and a NERD they do still let her be overemotional a lot and even legit unhinged at times. She’s probably the closest to her original book counterpart except this time she’s a NERRRRRD. Her real name is “Yodana” or “Yo, Dana” and that is cool as hell

JASON

He talks too much and he gets in trouble a lot. He’s what Todd should have been. The better Todd. The Alpha Todd. If he’s going to be sent home early everyday, and it’s mostly due to supposedly talking out of turn, it should be because of his own tragic inability to shut the fuck up as opposed to Mrs. Jewls just being an asshole and singling him out for no reason. Also he has that “they only pick on you because they LIKE you” thing with Allison. Ugh

RONDI

Book: She starts out having no front teeth and the joke is that everybody thinks her front teeth are cute despite the fact that she has no front teeth. The joke spirals into everybody liking stuff about Rondi that doesn’t exist. Funny enough. Then she gets her front teeth in the second book. She spends a chapter panicking about how this doesn’t make her cute anymore then she immediately morphs into generic student #12 but maybe a little more naive. Girl Joe

Cartoon: Her gimmick is “teeth” even though she didn’t have her front teeth in the original book. The joke is ruined. F double minus

Stage Play: They mention her having the “cutest teeth” in her introduction but again she still has her front teeth, again ruining the joke. After this she turns into the same emulsified student paste that the rest of the characters are. Z triple minus

DEEDEE

Deedee is nonironically my favorite student because she is by far the most fleshed out of the characters. I can name FIVE recurring character traits of hers. One, she’s tomboyish and athletic (which doubles as her “gimmick”). Two, she’s hotheaded and competitive. Three, she struggles with academics, particularly spelling. Four, despite this, she is very intelligent in other areas, such as problem solving. And five, she ultimately has a heart of gold. Compare this to even students like Dana or Sharie who have a decent gimmick but it’s JUST the one gimmick like “overemotional” or “sleepy and also insane”, nevermind the ones who are “pigtails” and “ice cream”. Absolutely criminal that she never appeared in the adaptations but the cartoon almost makes up for it by accidentally turning Maurecia into Deedee. That green ball story would have been PERFECT for Maurecia in the cartoon, it even has Todd in it as her accomplice.

DJ

Happy boi. “You need a reason to be sad. You don’t need a reason to be happy.” Deep shit. He’s also a goody two shoes which… we already have Myron but admittedly DJ is more consistent with it. Happy boi.

JOHN

Book: In his focus chapter his gimmick is that can only read upside down. They flip his brain and then he becomes generic boy man. Joe 2.0. He and Joe are even friends

Cartoon: Once again a hyperflanderized version of his initial gimmick. Instead of reading upside down, he just is upside down. In the books he’s not good at standing on his head but in the cartoon he can do it just fine. And he is ALWAYS upside down, presumably because it’s a funny visual and Wayside is a visual cartoon. His whole FAMILY is upside down. I actually like cartoon John more than book John because they actually commit to the bit

LESLIE

Book: The other half of the Paul/Leslie dynamic. I hate Paul more because his role in the pulling pigtails routine automatically makes him the asshole but they both suck. Paul only exists to pull Leslie’s pigtails, Leslie only exists to have her pigtails pulled by Paul. Leslie at least gets that one focus chapter where she tries to sell her toes in the first book but even then it builds to a punchline about her pigtails. Her personality is pigtails. Her favorite color is pigtails. Her religion is pigtails. Pigtails pigtails pigtails. AAAAAGH.

Cartoon: Once again she is pigtails girl. They adapt the pulling pigtails plot for an episode but Leslie wasn’t the one getting her pigtails pulled, it was Maurecia (and it was her ponytail but the episode was still called “Pull My Pigtail”). She looks kinda cranky most of the time, probably because Maurecia stole her thunder and now she’s a background character. If Leslie is not pigtails girl then who is she? Riddle for the ages

Stage Play: For once, FOR ONCE, the stage play adapted a student semi-correctly. Leslie gets her pigtails pulled. She is a part of the pigtail pulling plotline. Leslie is in character. Leslie is Leslie. BUT ALSO SHE’S JOHN??? Yeah they also give her John’s plotline of reading upside down. She doesn’t get her brain flipped either and she can stand on her head just fine. Stage play Leslie is a better John than book John while simultaneously still being Leslie. She is the best student in the stage play for this reason and I don’t know how to feel about that

KATHY

Oh Kathy. Kathy Kathy Kathy. You had such a good thing going for you. That gimmick about you preemptively hating everything due to reasons that were your own damn fault was hilarious. Of all the class assholes, you were the best. But then you changed. The fourth book completely fucked you up. They gave you that weird opposite plotline and now you’re just another happy goody-two-shoes character, even though Myron and DJ exist. You fell off. You lost the sauce. Sad

RON

Deedee’s personal Calvin- that being, a regular-ass vanilla-ass guy stapled onto a more interesting female character as her best friend. I mean it gives Deedee somebody to talk to I guess. Initially he’s “a bad athlete but a good sport” but after his focus chapter he is almost never put in more athletic situations so this isn’t really that important in the grand scheme of things. In the fourth book they stapled the Deedee-Ron friendship to the Joy-Maurecia friendship into a new friendship called “The Unbreakables” because nobody can ever tear them apart. Never mind that everybody hated Ron in the third book due to Ms. Nogard’s machinations, this whole “Unbreakables” schtick falls apart when you remember this is the first time Joy and Ron have interacted ever.

THE THREE ERICS

Book: They are literal joke characters. They all have the same name, and each Eric has a nickname that applies to the other Erics but not themselves. Pretty funny gag but that’s all they are. They are an Abbot and Costello routine

Cartoon: As usual, the character’s nuances are removed. The nickname gag is out so they’re just all named Eric. Eric Fry is skinny in this one despite the fact that he was plus-sized in the books and that was instrumental to the joke. Also he is black, the last mentioned of the three black students in the show. Would his nickname in the books have been “Whitey”? In the show it is apparently a rule that every class has to have three Erics or else the universe implodes or something. One of the Erics briefly quits being an Eric, and Maurecia takes his place. Would her nickname have been “Dude”? The world may never know

ALLISON

Allison is weeeeird. Sometimes she’s another goody-two-shoes like Myron or DJ. Other times she’s kind of stuck up and bitchy. She is Rondi’s best friend and yet she has apparently knocked her teeth out and has used that factoid as a threat. The most consistent trait is that she is one of the more “normal” students and attention is drawn to this fact. She has an arc where she has to learn to accept her classmates’ weirdness after a trip to the nineteenth story. This would make her potential protagonist material for adaptations to make her the audience POV but she has never appeared in any of the adaptations. Like, forget not being made protagonist because “no girl protagonists allowed”, she just straight up isn’t in them at all. I’d say Allison is a “depending on the writer” type character but she only ever had one writer, she’s just inconsistent.

DAMEON

Book: I legitimately forgot that Dameon existed. I mean, I remembered his crush on Mrs. Jewls. I remembered his gimmick of running up and down the stairs (btw, lame gimmick). But I transplanted those traits in my mind onto CALVIN, remembering him running up and down the stairs to get to the nineteenth story that doesn’t exist. These characters are legitimately starting to run together

Stage Play: Speaking of students running together, despite being named after Dameon, stage play Dameon has two gimmicks, much like stage play Leslie except none of them are Dameon’s gimmick. At the start he mentions having DJ’s gimmick of being happy all the time, even bringing up the “you don’t need a reason to be happy” quote, but then it doesn’t come up again. His MAIN gimmick is Joe’s initial gimmick of counting out of order except this time they run with it. The climax of the play is Dameon having to count to five in order so Mrs. Jewls doesn’t get sent to hell. This play is nuts man

JENNY

Book: Her gimmick is that she… shows up late for class. The most interesting thing about her is that she gets there on her dad’s motorcycle and wears her motorcycle helmet to school. Aside from that, zzzzz

Cartoon: Like Joe, the cartoon tosses aside her actual gimmick in favor of focusing on a more visual trait, her motorcycle helmet. As such, Jenny is now an extreme badass daredevil constantly doing stunts on her bike. UNLIKE Joe, this is an improvement by leaps and bounds, in part because Jenny’s new personality is so cool and fun and partially because her book incarnation is so lame. Also she’s Maurecia’s new best friend (fuck you Joy) and they fit SO well together. WHEELS EXTREME!!!

TERRENCE

Typical school bully. He roasts people in rhyme and that’s kinda funny. eat a dick, moldy frick

JOY

FUCK JOY. Joy is an asshole who does nothing but cause shit and nine times out of ten she gets away with it, usually by pinning it one somebody else. Usually Todd. Yeah, 90% of Todd’s chapter is her fucking with Todd so he can go home on the kindergarten bus WHICH INEVITABLY HAPPENS. She cheats on her spelling tests. She chews gum in class and, instead of throwing it away when caught, puts it ON ANOTHER STUDENT’S SEAT. She steals shit. She steals ALL THE SHIT. (BTW in the new books, Joy, who steals shit all the time, is also black. This is the problem with colorblind casting.) She tried to steal Todd’s toy dog. She stole Mrs. Jewls’ poem and Mrs. Jewls didn’t even fucking notice. She stole Dameon’s lunch and blamed it on everyone else. She stole Maurecia’s lunch and she’s her BEST FRIEND. She also gets mad that Maurecia is better at jump rope math than her and again, she’s her BEST FRIEND. I hate Joy with every fiber of my being. I’m glad she was never included in the adaptations. They did adapt the gum-on-Jason’s-seat thing in the stage play but ONLY that and Rondi (the one who put the gum on the seat) actually gets punished and doesn’t have her punishment magically removed. They say Maurecia in the cartoon is like Joy but I don’t see it. Is it because she’s kinda rough around Todd? Because giving him overly enthusiastic slugs on the shoulder is not the same as intentionally trying to get him in trouble all the time. Joy sucks, the end

MAC

Mac’s initial story where he was called “Nancy” is so beautifully transmasc-coded in a way only Wayside can do- a boy trapped in a female identity literally trades his identity with that of a girl trapped in a male identity, and comes out of his shell in the process. Peak. Kino. And then afterwards he just becomes Jason 2. I suppose you can only do a coming out story once I suppose

STEPHEN

Book: Stephen’s gimmick was so great. He wore a goblin costume in book 1, and a fancy suit in book 2. Bebe even said he wore “lots of” silly costumes before. He would dress up in different outfits for different reasons in his focus chapter. That was fun, that was creative! AND THEN THEY DROPPED IT AFTER TWO BOOKS. WHY. WHY. WHY. Oh, but in book 4 he has the arc about wanting to ring the gong! DOES HE HAVE A GONG RINGING SUIT? IF NOT, THEN I DON’T CARE.

Cartoon: Being the Wayside cartoon, the greater details are scrubbed out and the character is one exaggerated note. In Stephen’s case, instead of wearing a variety of outfits he just wears goblin ELF Halloween costume all the time and his personality is “I love Halloween”. On the Halloween outfit his costume is that of a normal boy which was the OPPOSITE of how it was in the book. The show had so puny of a budget that they switched to Flash halfway through and the producers probably only read the first book anyway so it’s. Fine I guess. No, the REAL unforgivable sin was giving Stephen RED hair. HIS HAIR IS GREEN. That was the punchline of his chapter in the first book. THERE ARE ALREADY CHARACTERS WITH WEIRD HAIR COLORS IN THE SHOW. DANA HAS PURPLE HAIR. LOUIS HAS TEAL HAIR. MRS. JEWLS HAS PINK HAIR. WHY CAN’T YOU GIVE STEPHEN GREEN HAIR. THE BACKGROUND CHARACTER ELIZABETH ALREADY HAS GREEN HAIR. This is a problem with the new illustrations too. They’re mostly black and white but the covers are in color. Stephen’s on the Little Stranger one and he has BROWN HAIR. IT SHOULD BE GREEN. MY GOD

THE EXTRA STUDENTS

SAMMY

Book: Sammy’s existence is hilarious to me. What do you mean that a dead rat. An actual dead rat. Is able to walk and speak and join the class and roast the shit out of everybody. Fucking hell, that’s genius. This is what I love about Wayside School.

Cartoon: He’s not as fun in this one. He’s just a dead rat. He acts exactly how a dead rat would act. Apparently if you hold him he automatically motivates you. That’s something I guess. He’s just a dead rat though

SUE

Beep beep, ideal protagonist coming through! You got the new kid angle from Benjamin Nushmutt (I’ll get to him next) combined with Allison’s comparative “normality” and struggling to accept the strange nature of Wayside. She is the perfect audience surrogate, hence why they put her archetype in the cartoon with Todd and in the live action pilot with Andy, and yet she herself is not in the cartoon. She’s not in the stage play. She sure as hell isn’t in the live action pilot. SHE’S NOT EVEN FUCKING CANON. She only appears in the math spinoff books and a chapter in the third proper books decanonizes that duology in a way that SPECIFICALLY writes out Sue- the class had 28 students in the third book, and that is mentioned, but if Sue were there it would be 29. The actual disrespect. Don’t worry, she IS the protagonist of my Wayside movie idea. Sue will get the respect she deserves

BENJAMIN NUSHMUTT

Again, the new student angle does work for an audience POV, but outside of that… he’s another Joe, or John, or Rondi, or Mac! Throughout the second book where he debuts everybody thinks his name is Mark Miller, and he’s too scared to correct them because his last name is ridiculous. At the end of the book, he confesses his real name, and everybody accepts him. After this, not only does he cease to be interesting, he practically CEASES TO BE. He has no focus and barely shows up in passing, you forget he’s even there. Sue’s better

ELIZABETH

A literal background character. A space filler invented for the cartoon. She didn’t even have a name until one of Nelvana’s social media posts gave her one. Not even worth commenting on. wait a minute-

IN CONCLUSION