GLOW Season 2 review: Gorgous Ladies of Wrestling are back and raring to go…

Netflix’s GLOW is back for Season 2 as the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling grapple with love, loss, divorce, death… and wrestling.

The Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling are back for another triumphant team-up, trying to capitalize on their cult following as a local San Fernando Valley ’80s TV oddity and transform into something thriving and meaningful.

And while this outrageous band of misfits, hailing from all walks of life, attempts to turn a shoddy and lovable wrestling/variety act into a successful venture, the series itself continues its wonderful winning streak as a totally addictive, utterly consumable, dramedy.

GLOW is one of Netflix’s best offerings and what a joy it is to watch GLOW. The show’s second season confirmed that it is among the best on television, and offered rich portraits of every character it introduced last year.

It is about the relationships between the group of women, and what’s at stake when those relationships are tested. Just as crucially, the show is about how wonderful those relationships can be when they work and don’t work out.

Part of what makes GLOW such an easy, smart pleasure is its insistence on episodic storytelling. Despite its home on Netflix, each episode tells a story that is in some way wrapped up by the episode’s end.

That doesn’t mean the show doesn’t offer its audience the occasional cliffhanger – there’s one this season that’s quite effective. What it does mean, though, is that the show has a structure that many of its counterparts on the streaming service lack.

On a show where every episode works, Season 2 offers three standouts that are worthy of mention for wildly different reasons.

About halfway through GLOW, the series delivers what might be its funniest and most affecting episode to date — which has the effect of making episodes like ‘Mother of All Matches’ feel like the kind of standout episode that it is.

Episode 4 offers a delicate portrait of two mothers, Tamme and Debbie, at two very different stages of their lives. It’s full of smart storytelling, dedicating its time to a pair of storylines: Debbie’s (Betty Gilpin) simmering anger over her failed marriage and divorce reaches a boiling point, and Tammé Dawson (Kia Stevens) reveals to her son Earnest (Eli Goree) that she’s a professional wrestler whose character is an offensive racial stereotype. 

For Tamme, the episode gives her a chance to come to terms with the uneasy stereotypes at the heart of Welfare Queen, the character she plays inside the ring. At the same time, the episode takes time to remind us that Debbie’s life is falling apart, so much so that she feels the need to sell off all of her furniture

It’s the kind of episode that illustrates what’s great about the series while also serving to raise the bar of what a show like this is capable of accomplishing.

The big match between Liberty Belle and Welfare Queen serves as the backdrop of the episode, but like most things on GLOW, the wrestling match is only a small fraction of what makes this series so much fun to watch.

It’s undoubtable that there’s more to those wresting matches than meets the eye, but the ease with which the actors make it look easy and not easy is part and parcel to how the second season of the acclaimed comedy has improved on an already winning formula.

GLOW Season 2 Episode 8 is remarkable for entirely different reasons. It presents a half hour of the show as an audience would view it. The show is weird and devoid of wrestling, as it’s being aired at two in the morning after it’s been shafted by the network.

Instead of wrestling, it features music videos and extended skits. It’s hilarious and a perfect example of what a show can do when it allows itself to be purely creative.

There’s an awkward and lengthy encounter between Ruth and a network executive who wants to take advantage of her. If only The #MeToo was about at that time. The international movement against sexual harassment and assault spread virally in October 2017 as a hashtag used on social media to help demonstrate the widespread prevalence of sexual assault and harassment, especially in the workplace.

The scene is necessarily horrifying, and the show doesn’t shy away from how terrible this kind of encounter is, even as it serves as a sad reminder that very little has changed since 1985.

Allison Brie is at the peak of her powers here, showing subtle signs of fear throughout, even as she’s forced to play along. Gilpin and Brie are the two most towering forces on this show, and every moment between them is charged.

During one scene later on in the season, when Ruth and Debbie finally have it out over the turn their friendship has taken, both actresses are playing anger and sadness simultaneously, even as the power subtly shifts between them.

All the cast are great, and no one embodies the spirit of this more than Alison Brie’s Ruth – a talented and passionate performer who often self-sabotages, on a road paved with so-so intentions.

And in the second half of the season though, despite having, on several occasions, alienated various members of the cast and crew over her GLOW tenure, Ruth confesses how this isn’t “just a job” for her. This TV show gives her, for the first time, a sense of belonging. It provides for her a place where people value and care for her. And it appears the other actors too.

Ruth continues to give it her all, despite being iced out by both Betty Gilpin’s Debbie and Marc Maron’s Sam – though Sam’s reasoning for resenting Ruth isn’t as clear cut as Debbie’s. His comes from the fact that he perhaps has, um, complicated feelings about her and how talented she is. So he pushes her away because he doesn’t want to let people get close. At the same time, Sam is trying to form a meaningful parental bond with Britt Baron’s Justine, whom he recently discovered was his daughter.

Marc Maron, who was surprisingly effective as a sleazy but good-hearted producer in the show’s first season, is just as good here, even if he’s given slightly less to do. His connection with Brie works wonderfully, in part because it seems like Ruth and Sam are compatible in ways that don’t make any sense on paper.

And Maron continues to be an absolute delight as Sam seems to find a newfound sense of stability as the reluctant wrangler of GLOW while still maintaining his bitter, curmudgeonly edge. His continued relationships with daughter, Justine, Bash (Chris Lowell), and Debbie don’t soften him, but they do work to humanize him.

Meanwhile, Betty Gilpin shines even more this year as Debbie dives into the deep end of her divorce from Mark (Rich Sommer) and struggles to keep her poise and position as the “face” of the show.

It’s not overlong (10 episodes at around 30 mins each), it doesn’t feel like one long movie (there are actual memorable, themed episodes), and it makes for a dynamite binge. It’s all one story, but it’s framed and presented in a polished, palatable package so that you want to keep watching the next chapter.

The Verdict

GLOW is back and not only does the show have a fresh sheen of confidence but its characters now continually find themselves more at home with one another and in the ring, adding new layers of vital vulnerability.

Like the way these performers begin to use everything at their creative disposal to entertain the crowd, the series itself stretches to provides us fans with new approaches to storytelling.

Culturedemandsgeeks can’t wait for season 3.

Las Vegas baby, here we come!

5/5 stars