TenForward: Where Every Vulcan Knows Your Name

The whole show, including his character, dramatically improved as it went on. Wesley was awesome in that later episode with pre-Tom Paris.

There is no interpersonal conflict allowed in Gene's vision of Starfleet. Oh they might but heads occasionally, but every episode resolves with everyone putting their differences aside to work as a team. It's practically a cult mentality. Gene would not have let them write episodes telling those kinds of Dead-parent/Step-Parent/Oedipal stories. That doesn't exactly excuse the bad writing of the Wesley episodes, but it does explain why the writing did not go to those places.

Also, he's kind of written as a nerd in a bad way; not bookish or introverted, or almost autistically passionate about one or two topics, but a sort of do-gooder ass-kisser. The kind of guy who'd rat you out for hacking the holodeck to have a booze-fueled orgy with a bunch of simulated women designed from an adolescent's ideal of unrealistic expectations.

Enterprise crew are supposed to be the best of Starfleet, having worked their way to the top of the lists to get there. Wesley's there because his mom made it on the list; there's no reason to expect he'd be any different from other teens: hormonally driven, prone to bad judgment and still figuring out life as a young adult. But that's not how he's written.

Put the Wesley character into any high school, and he'd be bullied. Even nerds wouldn't like him.

I mean, what you said: he's written as if by someone who's forgotten what it's like to be a teenager.

He's very much a Mary Sue-type character.

I wish Will would make a Lemmy account. I've always wanted to chat with him. Dude just seems legit fucking cool.

I wanted to be Riker but ok

I didn't hate him because I wanted to be him, I hated him because he was a gary stu, fellow-kids sort of character.