Our Style Is Wild And You Know You Can't Tame Us: GLOW on Netflix

Mulder & Scully, Don & Joan, Leslie & Ron...these are all the most compelling type of tv relationship, so I'm looking forward to Sam & Ruth continuing the legacy.

Oh man, this Betty Gilpin-written piece is fucking fantastic:

http://www.glamour.com/story/glow-star-betty-gilpin-what-its-like-to-have-pea-sized-confidence-with-watermelon-sized-boobs

"runaway" was a minor hit in the us (and huge in NY, not sure about LA) in '84-'85

oh and by this time they were being managed by doc mcghee

anyway

Yeah, I definitely remember Runaway and In and Out of Love prior to Slippery When Wet, and I lived in bumfuck Alabama.

I defer to the American knowledge on Bon Jovi because they didn't make it abroad until SWW. I'm sure there's a Whitesnake ref too though, which isn't till 86/87.

Despite this I'm still not convinced that it was enough of a thing for a rich girl to decide it was going to define her life but it doesn't bug me enough to argue about.

Liking this but when there's nudity is sure is gratuitous.

The nudity is a loss leader like Best Buy putting cds at the front of the store. After you get in, there isn't any more (except for Maron's ass later on in the season).

Oh wait, I forgot about the Cherry/Keith scene later in the season, probably because that's married couple sex.

You're telling me that Cherry and Keith have sex TWICE? They really are married! (I already saw them doing it, I think episode 2 or 3.)

Some less glib thoughts:
Glad that we got to see a real show before the finale -- a real slow drip would've killed me.
Similarly, it was better that Debbie realized that wrestling == soap opera earlier than later, and Ruth embracing being a heel elevates the mood so much.
Do doubles do most of the wrestling in the wide shots? I can't imagine the producers being ok with their leads doing things to their bodies that will eventually require painkillers just to function normally.

Speaking of Keith, I loved when he would have conversations or say really encouraging things to the wrestlers while pretending to be angry for the crowd's benefit.

Yeah! That's hilar, reminds me of the pitcher's conferences in Bull Durham.

I had a really, really great time with this show. wouldn't be upset if there was never another season - I feel like this was perfection and am slightly afraid that more would dilute that somehow.

As with some other shows I love I wonder if I'd love it less if I watched more TV generally, and was comparing this to the other 3-5 shows in my current rotation. But I only watch maybe a handful of seasons of anything per year, so my bench for weighing these things may differ from some folks.

This year it's been, maybe all of The Blacklist (though maybe that was late last year) and Glow and that's it. For the rest of 2017 probably Season 4 of The Blacklist, Black Mirror Season 4, and Stranger Things Season 2 unless someone talks me into something else.

(Example: I've never watched OITNB, so I can't compare these two series.)

hey Veg, I'm sold, this show rules :-D

Really can't tell if i should bother w this or not. I def watched GLOW as a kid otoh I hated Stranger Things and netflix has yet to produce a really solid show imo

This is much better than Stranger Things. It has some problems and Brie doing Shelley Long can sometimes get a little exhausting, but it has a lot going for it. The 80s stuff can be pretty subtle, even when it is not subtle. At the least it feels like a real '80s world.

I will say, had they gone just a touch lighter on the sex and drugs (neither of which are in this so much that their absence would have really been felt) this would have been a great show to watch with my kids.

The idea that this is better than stranger things is crazy to me

stranger things was completely meh. bojack remains their best show but I am curious about this

This does a great job on empowerment and delivers unadulterated entertainment (a plot in the finale that you can tell coming miles away is still invigorating and satisfying and cathartic), but I think like real pro wrestling, it uses ethnic stereotypes shallowly, as an easy way to get cheap heat.

xpost Stranger Things was unfortunately little more than nudge-filled pastiche to me, all mood but no meat. I like the idea a lot, though, and the kids, just found the general plot pretty pro forma and unsatisfying. GLOW is more focused, imo, with a strong central fulcrum to pivot around. I feel like there is a lot more to learn about the characters and their relationships, to each other, to the world, to the sport, to whatever. I feel Stranger Things is a character dead end at this point, which means just introducing more non sequitur weird stuff and familiar sci-fi/horror scenarios. But hey, maybe the second season of ST will be awesome and the second season of GLOW a dud.

Both of them did a really good job of capturing the aesthetic/mood/character of a time/place in which many of us were present. That's the easy comparison. Dramatically, I don't see how they're easily comparable. ST was a weirdo loser pastiche indebted to period genre fiction, GLOW a meta soap opera with an overlay of contemporary feminism. I liked them a lot. Interestingly, some of the dialogue in GLOW seemed far too contemporary, whereas in ST it seemed hokily old-fashioned.

Because ST imo *didn't* do a good job of capturing the aesthetic/mood/character of a time/place, it recreated the way other works did that. Hence the pastiche, for better or for worse. GLOW is trying to recreate the era, not reference works from that era. (Which is ironic, since GLOW is literally recreating a work from its era.)

One of the best parts of Glow for me was how they come to terms with the stereotypical characters, work them out with shades of irony that're understood within the small self-contained group, and when they first perform them for the public the response is completely terrifying. The terrorist character in particular.

Stranger Things about on par with late X-Files.

The interview on WTF today with Kia Stevens is fantastic.

Fair nuff, Josh. My lived sense of the '80s was outer-suburb/rural, largely white, fantasy-tinged and wholly unsupervised. What Spielberg/Reiner/Columbus et al. captured about the '80s isn't – in spite of being strongly mannered – too wide of the mark Importantly, adults were weird, incidental, inconsistent strangers as likely to harm as hurt. ST, through the pastiche, captures that. Whereas, since I didn't have exposure to popular culture (no TV, movies, music), GLOW seems to me like it's signaling its era with pop-culture cues to which I didn't have access.

It's interesting, I was talking to a friend about the early '80s and how much of that period (music, film, etc.) was sort of still the aftershocks of the '70s. I was born in '75 and lived in California for the tail end of that decade. A bunch of "E.T" was filmed in Porter Ranch in the valley, which was right by Northridge, where I lived. So when I see "E.T.," one of the biggest ST references, I think late '70s, not early '80s, which is of course when "ET" was released. Whereas the "GLOW" milieu is to me very much the mid to late '80s - fashion, hair, music. Just my perspective.

Only two eps in, p enjoyable so far. Made me realize that Maron being an asshole plays to his limited abilities/appeal. Also this is v otm:

 Stranger Things was unfortunately little more than nudge-filled pastiche to me, all mood but no meat. I like the idea a lot, though, and the kids, just found the general plot pretty pro forma and unsatisfying. GLOW is more focused, imo, with a strong central fulcrum to pivot around. I feel like there is a lot more to learn about the characters and their relationships, to each other, to the world, to the sport, to whatever

I really like this show but its portrayal of blow is very inaccurate

How so? Sometimes amazing, mostly a bit it sad, doing it in secret bedrooms, seems like what I remember.

I really like this show but its portrayal of blow is very inaccurate

Marc brought his own history as a user to the role, so maybe it's different for everybody?

this was delightful

yeah JF maybe it's different for everyone.

it's not wholly inaccurate, just some aspects of announcing it via the show seem contrived, but it's in all fairness portrayed better than some media.

- saying this as someone who is very familiar with this shit drug

re coke - apparently maron decided that this was a guy who didnt fuck around with the paraphernalia - a bindle & key was a deliberate character choice

prob because that's how he was

What was especially weird about the coke stuff in this? Might have missed some it because I admittedly only caught about 75% as it was on in my house.

So far its been better than the coke stuff in Vinyl lol

that is a v low bar lol

I dont really expect much versimilitude w various drug experiences from tv tbh, as long as it isnt too ridiculous i will let a lot fly

Tangential, but oh my God as far as prestige cable period piece shows are concerned, the one on Showtime "I'm Dying Up Here" based on The Comedy Store in the 70s is abysmal and embarrassing. Never seen Vinyl but it seems to embody all the things I've read about it.

Which Maron has been pushed into saying not-totally-convincing nice-ish things about on his show because I think they're a sponsor.

Yeah, a friend of mine who has terrible taste in movies and tv loves it, so I took it as a heads up to stay far away. xp

I had hopes bc the pilot was somewhat engaging but it's fatally flawed being as how it's a show about comedy that's not funny.

this was consistently enjoyable, a few wrong notes here and there aside. the only remotely similar thing I can think of in terms of ensemble female-focused storytelling is OITNB, and this is definitely better than that, primarily because it's more focused. surprising amount of Mad Men people involved (and not just in the cast).

the only remotely similar thing I can think of in terms of ensemble female-focused storytelling is OITNB

Jenji exec-produces GLOW.

idk who that is

Jenji's the creator of Weeds/OITNB

well s/he's getting better I guess

Pauline's character bothered me a little bit, in that her (albeit infrequently) expressed opinions on film, feminism, punk etc. felt like they were flown in from the 90s more than the 80s. There were not a lot of feminist apologias for/reclamations of exploitation cinema in the early 80s for ex.

also this is miles better than Stranger Things, which is an empty pastiche about nothing with cardboard characters, whereas this is a show that touches on all kinds of themes and dynamics in unusual and unexplored ways.

Pauline's character

???

sorry I meant Justine

Justine's apologia is unique bc of her full story arc & who she is as a character

i dont think it's meant to be a stand-in for a wider feminist view - she's Obsessed with a capital O for... reasons

Seems like Covid-related cancellations are big w/Netflix. Do they just not insure properly?

They canned Teenage Bounty Hunters today too. "

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this was the best show on Netflix in a long time by some margin IMO. Can't believe it. Someone should pick that up, it's extraordinary.