It’s annoyingly appropriate that GLOW, despite its earlier renewal by Netflix, has had its fourth season cancelled due to production delays from COVID-19. Loosely based on the real-life 1980s female wrestling promotion, these Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling were always scraping by and struggling to keep their silly little all-women wrestling show alive. But it was that tenacious attitude that made GLOW so endearing, always packing a surprising emotional wallop within its funny digestible half-hour episode seasons.
The show was a fun throwback to the 80s, with giant hairdos, stiff shoulder-pads and a rocking soundtrack, but still served gentle reminders of misfits trying to work in a male (and white and straight) dominated entertainment industry. Using its shabby, bad time-slot TV (and later Vegas live-show) setting, GLOW showed the struggles of these creatives inside and out of the ring.
On GLOW, GLOW is nobody’s first choice. Actress Ruth (Alison Brie) wishes to try something ‘unconventional’ after being rejected from the mainstream’s limited roles for women. Her best friend Debbie (Betty Gilpin) gets written off her soap-opera role and initially joins GLOW to push Ruth off (having discovered Ruth’s affair with her husband) and director Sam (Marc Maron) mainly sees it as a cheap gig to fund his passion-projects with – culminating in an incredible Back to the Future joke. Yet steadily over the course of the show, they and the rest of the cast and crew find a value in constructing this show. GLOW mirrors Dolomite is My Name in displaying the aspirational pride in creating ‘trashy’ entertainment. GLOW validates the creative efforts in wrestling, particularly through stuntwoman Cherry (Sydelle Noel) and wrestling-descendant Carmen (Britney Young). Wrestling’s storylines might be ‘fake’, but the physical exertion is very real. Plus, often GLOW would focus on the direction and camera-operation more than the wrestling itself, demonstrating how the right editing and filmmaking are used to enhance the shows.
But aside from the technical aspects, even the silly storylines of professional wrestling are not dismissed, but shown as a broad long-form mode of storytelling. One great moment comes in “Debbie Does Something”, when the still-skeptical Debbie is taken to a ‘professional’ wrestling match and realizes the complicated storylines and double-crosses are the same as her soap-opera. They are extremely goofy and exaggerated but even wrestling alter-egos come with showmanship and potential for expression. For instance, Ruth is rather timid and desperate outside the ring, but under her Russian arch-heel character of ‘Zoya the Destroyer’, she transforms into a scenery-chewing delight. Alison Brie is excellent in both personas, although GLOW’s real standout is Betty Gilpin as Debbie, a sarcastic and ruthless bombshell who steadily reconstructs her life after it seems to break.
GLOW also recognized the problematic stereotypes that are used in wrestling, casting Cambodian Jenny as yellow-peril ‘Fortune Cookie’ (Ellen Wong) or intelligent Arthie as terrorist-Arab ‘Beirut’ (Sunita Mani). Producer ‘Bash’ Howard (Chris Lowell) might claim the women are simply using what the world already sees, but GLOW upholds tension and comedy from how much they are empowered by the show, and how much they are exploited. One heart-breaking episode, “The Mother of All Matches”, shows sweet African-American mom Tammé (Kia Stevens) performing in front of her son as her character ‘The Welfare Queen’, an ugly stereotype of African-American ‘laziness’ who is beaten by Debbie’s all-American (and startling blonde and white) ‘Liberty Belle’.
Identity was a core aspect of GLOW; who we present ourselves as both externally and internally. It showed the struggles of being a working woman in a man’s world, with the episode “Perverts are People, Too” seeing producer Tom Grant (Paul Fitzgerald) sexually harass Ruth and then killing the show when she won’t comply. Debbie also faces pressure and disapproval as she tries to climb her way into a more senior position behind the show. GLOW’s showrunners, Liz Flahive and Carly Mensch, are both women, as were the majority of its writers, directors and cast. But the ensemble allowed different ethnicities and sizes that addressed the aforementioned stereotypes even within the group, particularly in Season 3’s camping bottle-episode “Outward Bound”. GLOW also examined internal identity, with Arthie and Bash coming to express queer desires. Arthie becomes able to outwardly engage in a relationship with Yolanda ‘Junkchain’ (Shakira Barrera), but Season 3 left Bash more conflicted, especially given the homophobia surrounding the 80s rising AIDS paranoia.
GLOW showed the limitations of being attached to, or repressing yourself into, such singular labels. Ironically it is with Ruth, deemed too ‘unconventional’ in the first Season, that this applies to. Ruth displays high competence in directing and managing GLOW behind-the-scenes, but due to her self-determined persistence of becoming an ‘Actress’, she finds herself unable to change course. She can perform as other people but is unable to shift her core being, and her single-minded goals strain her relationships and happiness. This is beautifully contrasted with Sheila the She-Wolf (Gayle Rankin), who has clung to her ‘she-wolf’ persona inside and out of the ring. But in Season 3 she gets drawn to Vegas’ drag-show performer Bobby Barnes (Kevin Cahoon), and discovers her ‘she-wolf’ armor was also a cage, one that she sheds to embrace the full spectrum of herself. As she tenderly explains after burning the costume, “It was holding me back”.
Sadly, we won’t get to see where GLOW would have gone to next with another season. Netflix’s habit of prematurely cancelling shows, plus GLOW specifically requiring plenty of physical contact (prohibited under COVID production guidelines) are a harsh blow. Although it’s always possible campaigns to ‘Save GLOW’ will prove fruitful. In any case, GLOW’s three seasons gave us a funny and touching ensemble about women and the creative process, people who refuses to quit no matter how many times they were slammed down. GLOW may now, sadly, be down for the count, but they put on a hell of a show while it lasted.
GLOW is available now for streaming on Netflix.
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