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

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.

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.

this whole thing seemed to very closely mirror Joan's fling in the last season of Mad Men

think Ruth was also really struck/inspired by Carmen going off to chase her big wrestling dream

She sees Carmen go for what she wants/is fulfilled by, AND she just missed out on a role she thought she was a shoo-in for (& had earned through Sam knowing how talented / what a hard worker she was, not through their intimacy), AND Debbie comes at her as a power play.

Debbie wants her for her directing skill, but frames it as Ruth being a failure who needs to settle, not that her passion for acting is what helps her tell stories in the ring and through cameras. Probably she could have been won by praise in the latter vein, or maybe by a promise of collaboration & equity, but Debbie’s framing underlines that Debbie is The Man - Ruth’s only way to resist capital’s oppression in that moment is to withhold her labour.

omar’s point abt comedy is also v relevant

this is otm too, love the way it happened so fast it’s basically off-screen:

He was cool up until the very second he wasn't, and then she made him pay for it immediately

I liked this a lot like I always do, but I also felt like it didn't get rolling until halfway through; and there were some weird things that just got dropped, like Cherry's debt to the casino. I suppose we're to assume she paid it off mud wrestling?

yeah there was just a lot going on

She mentioned at one point celebrating because she was debt-free (I think at the fundraiser event?)

Finally finished. I thought this season was pretty great, up until the last couple episodes, when it kinda fell apart. I didn't buy the Ruth/Sam stuff, and it gets negated in such a lame way when she doesn't get the movie part and they just sorta forget about it.

The stuff with Debbie was very strange this season. She REALLY screwed over her boyfriend, but she also screwed over Sandy doubly (pulling the money from Rhapsody AND having GLOW bail on the casino), which seemed like maybe setting up Debbie for a heel turn, I guess? They haven't done (afaict) a ton with using wrestling metaphors in their real lives (maybe I'm dense and there is a ton of this going on, but I haven't noticed it if so), so that could be interesting, but it was pretty sudden.

The saddest part of the season is poor Reggie the Viking. Everyone around her is having love interests and spilling about their traumatic pasts. Her thing is that she's pretty good at camping and hiking. The last scene where she announces "Redwood National Park, here I come!" was just painful, and borderline cruel to that actress after a season of nothing. I suppose the old biddy characters are in the same boat.

Also, we bought an OLED TV a few months ago, and godDAMN Netflix stuff looks incredible in HDR. Any scenes with neon lights look amazing, but really everything looks so beautiful in HDR.

old biddy characters are there for comic relief so they at least get that, the viking character gets literally *nothing* to do

Some of the characters or maybe actors are weak enough that I kind of would rather they be kept in the background since there are so many other better stories. I could've dealt with a lot less Melrose and Kate Nash this season.

Ruth's styling this season seemed weird. They make her look so sickly.

Finished last night, and this season never took off for me except for the role swap and camping episodes. I really missed the group camaraderie from the first two seasons, and the character interactions were so much more atomized and compartmentalized that the energy dragged a lot for me.

I definitely would've preferred more Tamme than Rhonda.

Forgive the thread spam, but I wanted to note that this show's 2019 season is nominated in the 2019 ILX TV poll:

ILX's Best Television of 2019 Poll / VOTING AND CAMPAIGNING THREAD / Voting Ends January 31

If you like this show and you'd like to see it have a good showing in the poll (running in February) all you need to do is submit a ballot including it and your other favorites (4 minimum, 25 maximum, organized by your favorite to least favorite) to forksclovetofu at gmail by end of day today. It'll take five minutes; get to it!

Fuckin' canceled. >:(

Despite a final season being greenlit, Netflix pulled the plug. It ends where it ends.

Fuck.

Fuck that shit. That show was the best.

goddamn it

Like this just shows that Netflix doesn't know wtf it'd doing. Go ahead and greenlight another season of Stranger Things you fucking morons.

it's

They canned Teenage Bounty Hunters today too. I hadn't watched that, but people seemed to generally like it. All this on the heels of them canning I Am Not Okay With This, a show I LOVED, about a month ago. Meanwhile, just like network tv, there's a new "unscripted" series popping up on the platform every five hours.

https://i.gifer.com/hPx.gif

fuck u netflix ;_;

Between this and Dark Crystal, I second VG's sentiment.

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

They canned Teenage Bounty Hunters today too. "

;asldfjas;ldkfjals;dkfjadls;fjdfaoidpoijaijfda

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.