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

finished season 2 last night. shoulda seen it coming but I still got a little choked up when Ruth finds out that she gets to fly in and take the bouquet. Allison Brie is so great and it's just a terrific character, a borderline-annoying overachiever who is lovable nonetheless. I also really enjoyed the unexpected way they handled her incipient love triangle with Russell and Sam. maybe her decision did seem to hang a little too squarely on her brief conversation with Justine's mom about trying to get past dating guys who ran hot and cold, but it was still not how I anticipated things were going to play out. I will say if I had one gripe it's that it seemed a little inauthentic how abruptly Sam went from being basically a huge dick to suddenly an all-around good dude.

"What's a mother without a child? Just...a person!"

We finally caught up with season 2, and while the first few episodes were kind of inconsequential, the characters were so well drawn that it's a joy to see things play out. Bash (the character and the actor) may be our favorite. Just a complicated dude, and it's harder to act dumb or for that matter act like a bad actor than it seems.

yeah, i really love bash - his happy-do-lucky dumbass rich-kid persona (which seems like it's half actually really him, half a very flimsy defence mechanism) really takes a beating this season and chris lowell does a great job of selling it

that's a lot of 'really's :(

I never knew Bash was/could be short for Sebastian. I had never heard it before but then watched Anne with an E after and they also have a character named Bash.

my favorite Bash moment was the whispered "we can afford TWO more injuries"

We have a neighbor kid named Sebastian who goes by Bash.

loved the show within a show episode. was thinking about starting a career in kidnapping, but now, thanks to GLOW, I know kidnapping is bad!

“When my son Randy was born, he looked just like me. It was surreal. Like, late at night, I would look down at this tiny bald version of myself screaming with my nipple in his mouth. And then sometimes I would wipe his balls and be like, “am I wiping my balls,” you know?”

<3

Finally watched this season, damn it was great. I love that NOBODY phones it in on this show, no matter how little they're given to do. And they tread such a careful line between being-the-thing and being-a-parody-of-the-thing, esp. when you see the "production values" of the show-within-a-show.

That Ruth/Debbie fight in the hospital . . . man, it actually felt *dangerous* to me, like few scenes that are just two characters yelling at each other can be. The whole time I was just internally screaming about how much worse it could get.

oh shit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-gsppRWlb8

aw hell yeah

wish season 3 was coming sooner I could really use it right now

geena davis in season 3!!!!

oh god this will make my LIFE

hi!

Three episodes in, still great. Even though I don't care about Sam/Ruth, and I still don't know much about half the characters beyond "she got fired once and then came back".

Three episodes in myself, they're killing it.

went to start the new series, turned out we never finished the last two eps of S2

they were fun!

Wait is S3 out?

You're not too far behind. Just premiered Friday.

Just finished S3. They must feel really confident about getting a S4, because that would be an awful way to end a series.

it's S3 of a Netflix series, there's no possible way they were confident about it

There's a lot more (confidence in the) nudity, plus the 'we don't actually need to di any in-ring scenes' thing may count as confidence?

Yeah, the actual wrestling content this year was close to ZERO.

I found myself hoping for more in-ring stuff, and then they did the Christmas episode and that wasn't what I wanted at all. I guess the characters didn't have in-ring storylines this season, but I wish they would play up the weird kayfabe/irl relationship dualities that really occur in wrestling. That said, it's still a great show and I love it.

I heard that viewers watching a series through to completion is what matters most in getting a show renewed on Netflix, and since you can watch a whole season of GLOW in five hours, it probably scores quite well on that front.

It took me this long to work out that Rhonda is played by Kate Nash.

there's something v agreeable in the balance of this show, how no one's completely got their act together, nearly everyone's a bit of an arsehole occasionally but not too much of an arsehole, and the underlying strength of the group dynamic keeps kicking in. cld do with more wrestling but the switching episode was really fun, esp debbie as zoya. debbie was so much fun all round in this series, the character has blossomed and she stole the show

I lost interest in this halfway into S2

3 episodes in, am I imagining it or is there far more nudity this season? Feels a lot more gratuitous if not.

Seems like it, but I've never rewatched S1-S2 after inital viewings.

only got through ep 2 and am bummed they are apparently going the full-on Sam + Diane/will they-won't they? route :(

Diane + Coach more like :/

Stick with it - I don’t think it’s so clear cut as that. Still, I’m somehow really invested in their story. The characters’ flawedness plus their chemistry carries it and I find them quite sympathetic.

agree they're both compelling characters, but one of the things I liked best about this show was having their relationship at the center as one of platonic mutual respect/antagonism

this def picks up whenever it focuses on the intersection of the wrestling act w their real life. Awesome Kong's "All That Jazz" morning routine reference was nice, that was a good episode.

the ethnic studies/group bonding ep in the desert was... oy vey

this season is bumming me out

Yeah, the actual wrestling content this year was close to ZERO.

When the stories are focusing on the characters, this is fine, but it means the show falls over completely whenever they do go to the ring. e only see them wrestling when they change the show - swapping roles, playing A Christmas Carol - but the changes mean nothing to the TV viewer, since we haven't seen the regular show at all. The wrestlers have suddenly gone from wrestling a new story every week to performing the same piece eight times a week, and we have no idea how this affects any of them: their emotional journeys are completely disconnected from it.

Carmen FINALLY says she's dissatisfied, once, after performing it 2,900 times, but were most of the other non-pros instead happy to not have to develop their non-acting skills? Wasn't anyone frustrated that they'd spent a year learning to wrestle and getting better every week, only to throw that away? Wouldn't doing the exact same moves every week have greatly increased the chance of injury, to more than one of them? They take huge, recharging delight in the one night where they swap roles, but nobody has any other indication of boredom every other night of the year, and the delight doesn't lead to them trying to have fun - either for their sakes' or the audience's - by making any other changes or tweaks for another six months.

I still liked the season, but this was a really weird move, and sidelined one of the series' greatest strengths: being able to express the characters' personal and emotional struggles through metaphor that they generate themselves.

being able to express the characters' personal and emotional struggles through metaphor that they generate themselves.

yeah, jettisoning this approach was a really bad idea. I didn't like this season at all tbh.

also felt like all this focus on gay culture of the 80s kinda came out of nowhere and felt really shoehorned in. Like why did they bring in the whole drag performer/show thing?

The exception is Bash's storyline, which developed naturally from previous seasons and felt the most authentic and affecting.

If the series hadn't brought the drag performer in, Bash's storyline of AIDS panic --> realising closetedness would have felt hideously unbalanced and shoehorned. The drag character also let them interact with another Vegas performer, and compare and contrast a successful show with a more marginalised one.

But this also felt unbalanced since they don't interact with ANY other performers in the entire city, even the dancers from the other show *in the same casino* as theirs.

any thoughts on why Ruth turns down Debbie at the end? I didn't get that at all

I love these characters, and overall there was a lot to like about this season but it just felt so all over the place, almost manic with the number of plotlines they were juggling

not a huge fan of Maron but by god is he good in this

Makes total sense, she wants to act and Debbie came at her pretty hard about her not making it. She’s not without pride or stubbornness obviously and she just had a blast acting in the Xmas show. My sense is that Ruth is determined to be a serious actor but her true gift (and one of Brie’s gifts) is at comedy. She doesn’t recognize it yet even though Zoya is comedy. She thinks she’s slumming but she’s doing good work.

Good season, very different but in ways that held onto the core principles of the show. Lots of the stuff with regards to racism and feminism and sexuality couldn’t be avoided at this point so when it went serious it was a tonal shift but I thought it worked. I think in the year of our lord 2019 they felt they had to take on some stuff more directly.

Bobby was a good addition, he assisted Sheila is coming to terms with shit too. The character was likable and felt correct for the era.

The acting on the show is generally superb but I think Betty Gilpin is phenomenal. To stand out on a show with Alison Brie as your costar is no small feat.

I also think it’s good to recognize that this show is trying something vv different and it’s so not made for golden age of showrunner tv fanboys. I love that fact. I don’t doubt you all recognize that of course. This is the anti-MRA shit I crave.

yeah overall I love it, it's got a good heart

similar to Red Oaks in that respect

she wants to act and Debbie came at her pretty hard about her not making it. She’s not without pride or stubbornness obviously and she just had a blast acting in the Xmas show. My sense is that Ruth is determined to be a serious actor but her true gift (and one of Brie’s gifts) is at comedy. She doesn’t recognize it yet even though Zoya is comedy. She thinks she’s slumming but she’s doing good work.

huh yeah okay that makes sense. Agree that Gilpin is a real standout.

I love the turnaround on Tex. He was cool up until the very second he wasn't, and then she made him pay for it immediately.

As an aside, I really love that the 2010s have been Toby Huss's playground. I never would have expected when watching Pete & Pete that the guy who played Artie, the Strongest Man in the World would be turning in some excellent dramatic character work 25 years later.