I feel that they are comparably lame, but stranger and therefore more interesting. Wood always struck me as being a "one of these things is not like the others" element.
In fairness, that opinion might come from my having read Greek commentary on the elements and not Chinese commentary. The arguments between Thales, Heraclitus, and Anaximines both ruined the schema's hermetic overtone for me, and dramatically lowered my opinion of ancient Greece. Logical discourse is a lot less cool to read when you know all of the conclusions it is used to reach are wrong.