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Jun 27 2017
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TV

Glow – More In-Depth (After Watching Full Season) Review (2017)

Hey 3.5 readers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZqDO6cTYVY&t=8s

So, I ate these episodes up like popcorn over the weekend and I have to say that yes, it’s worth watching.

I especially like the overall theme that this is a bunch of failures who are tired of failing and want a win.

Pretty much all of the women are failed actresses, babes who moved to LA seeking stardom but got crap instead.  GLOW is their last chance for TV notoriety.

Sam Sylvia (Marc Maron) is a B horror movie director, addicted to booze and coke.  GLOW is his last chance to do something that people might like, plus producer Sebastian has promised to fund his next movie, as no one else in Hollywood seems interested in doing so.

Sebastian aka “Bash” is a rich young man who has everything and access to a ton of his wealthy mother’s funds.  He could do anything but he has essentially taken all of the opportunities his mother could give him and squandered them.  He wants to be a big time Hollywood big shot and sees GLOW as his ability to buy his way into the big time.

Most of the girls have their own “I’m trying to make a comeback” story but the two main wrestling gals in particular are Ruth Wilder (Alison Brie) and Debbie Eagan (the amazing big breasted Betty Gilpin.)

SIDENOTE:  You get to see Brie’s boobs but Gilpin’s big ripe casaba melons are never unleashed.  What a ripoff.  Maybe Netflix can offer her some more dough to go topless in season 2.

Anyway, Ruth takes acting very seriously, going to all sorts of acting classes, appearing plays – she treats acting like any other job.  “You should hire me because I have the credentials.”  But no one is hiring her, and GLOW is her last shot at stardom.

And not to give it away, but Debbie’s husband, Mark (Rich Sommer) is a dick cheeseburger with extra buttwipe fries.  Seems lame because if Debbie were my wife, I’d worship her and those magnificent mammaries and do whatever she required of me to maintain her everlasting happiness.

But that’s me.  I feel bad for Sommer.  He’s been typecast as a dick.  He’s a dick in GLOW and he was a dick in “Mad Men.”  Mad Men was in the 1960s.  GLOW is in the 1980s.  Casting agents must be all like, “We need an actor to play a dick in a period piece!  Oh, I know!  Call Rich Sommer!”

Returning to the main point, yes, even Debbie seeks a comeback, becoming a pro-wrestler to get back some of the control she lost at home.

SPOILER ALERT:

I particularly enjoyed the USA vs. Russia i.e. Debbie as Liberty Bell vs. Ruth as Zoya the Destroyer.  People think of the Cold War as a 1950s/1960s thing but it was even happening in the 1980s, though Reagan and Gorbachev did a lot of work to cool it down by 1990.  Ironically, it seems to be heating up again today.

At times, the show also looks at past issues through present eyes.  All of the characters played by the girls are stereotypes.  One wrestler is a black woman called “Welfare Queen” who laughs at the audience about how they all have to work while she stays home and lives off their tax dollars.  She even pulls food stamps out of her bra and throws them at downed opponents.

Meanwhile, an Indian woman plays a Middle Eastern terrorist character, reminding people that terrorism (and related stereotypes) were alive in the 1980s.  9/11 had not happened yet, but as the show points out, terrorist airplane hijackings were constantly in the news.

Interesting to note though you do get to see the dark side of these stereotypes.  At times, the girls object, then they get roped into thinking it’s ok and will help them on the road to stardom, then they see how ugly and obnoxious the crowd gets, hating on the wrestlers because some in the crowd are too dumb to realize that characters like “Welfare Queen” and “Beirut” are real people underneath the costumes and are not the characters they are portraying.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy.  Come for Brie’s cheez-its.  Stay for (we can only hope) the great unleashing Gilpin’s sweater cannons in season two.  Let me know in advance if that’s going to happen, Netflix.  I want to take a day off just to watch.

 

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Jun 24 2017
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TV

TV Review – GLOW

Alison Brie’s boobs!  Alison Brie’s boobs!

“Community” fans rejoice!  “Annie’s boobs” are finally on screen!

BQB here with a review of the new Netflix comedy/drama “GLOW.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZqDO6cTYVY

There was a period of several years where I would watch Alison Brie play it straight as a young, suffering wife to a philandering scoundrel on “Mad Men” only to flip the channel and watch her play perky, nerdy overachiever Annie on “Community.”

Now, it’s like she’s all grown up…and showing her boobs.

“GLOW” is the tale of the “Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling,” the cheap and cheesy 1980s all female wrestling show, where scantily clad women would put on stupid costumes, speak in politically incorrect accents, make jokes that would totally not fly today, body slam the crap out of each other and do their best Hulk Hogan with boobs impression.

It’s the 1980s, so think big hair and yuppies galore as the flower children of the past are gone and money grubbing social climbers have taken their place.

Alison Brie stars as Ruth, a down and out actress who has moved from Omaha to LA.  She’s classically trained and has appeared in a number of plays, but can’t get a paying acting job to save her life and is facing all kinds of financial woes.

Enter GLOW – a new wrestling show directed by B-movie, super crappy horror film director Sam Sylvia (Marc Maron) who revels in showing how little he cares about this project and how deeply below him he deems it.  Maron puts his comic skills on display as he occasionally takes cocaine snorting breaks to ridicule the ladies, tell them how ugly, stupid and useless they are, etc.

When Ruth auditions, she too believes the show is beneath her but faced with either calling it quits on her dreams of fame or getting in the ring and rolling around with the gals, she chooses the latter and a star is born.

I have only watched the first episode thus far, but it caught my interest, so I will keep watching. While I am a fan of Jenji Kohan, this show seems to take a different turn from the snappy one liners of Weeds and Orange is the New Black.  The show features a darker, subtle, understated form of comedy and it’s more of a dramatic period piece than anything else.

I know from Mickey Rourke’s The Wrestler, professional wrestling isn’t all it is cracked out to be.  Sure, it may be “fake” but there’s a lot of physical activity going into those pratfalls and body slams.  It takes a toll on the body and the slightest mistake can leave a person badly injured.  I think that angle will be explored as we delve deeper into the show.

I never really watched “GLOW” as a kid.  I was aware of it but for whatever reason, never checked it out.  I was only a little kid during the 1980s and Hulk Hogan vs. the Iron Shiek captivated me.  I stuck with men’s wrestling all through high school, even in the Hulkster’s evil NWO days.  I was aware of women wrestlers and lady wrestlers would occasionally stop by to duke it out on men’s wrestling but overall, I guess GLOW was one of those things that escaped me.

But as long as it features Annie’s boobs I will keep watching.

What I liked about the first episode the most is it seems like it will be a show about losers who are tired of losing and fighting desperately to become winners.  We see Ruth living a life of absurdity as a budding actress, waiting in audition rooms filled with candidates all vying to play a secretary on a TV show with a five second line.  We see her paying the little money she has for acting lessons from a teacher who keeps falling asleep during her performance.

We see Sam on the tail end of his directing career, down and out, cast aside from making the movies he loved, directing a bunch of crazy women as they beat the crap out of each other.

Neither Sam or Ruth think GLOW is worthy of them…but they both see this as their last shot to do something worthwhile with their lives, so they are going to fight for it.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy.

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