shevek wrote: ↑4 years ago
Been quite a while since we talked about this series. It now has a comic on IDW, which (according to a review I saw of issue #4) is being drawn terribly (I mean, Steven Universe terribly) and the stories are boring. But let's not talk about the comic then.
An entire second season of GLOW came out last year, and we haven't really looked at it.
So much like I did with the first season, I took a gander mostly at the episodes where there are long complete sequences in tight wrestling costumes.
Here are the three that I found to be of interest:
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Episode 4: "Mother of All Matches". This is a match between the main 'face' of the series, Liberty Belle, and her erstwhile nemesis (but friend off screen) Welfare Queen. In the sense of sociopolitical commentary, it couldn't be more obvious: Liberty is the blonde-haired, shapely paragon of the American Girl, while Welfare Queen is the body-positive, plus-sized stereotype of the African-American woman who supposedly games the welfare system.
Some additional pathos is wrung out of the episode when the Queen performs in the match in front of her son, a savvy student on the affirmative action program at Stanford, and much is made of the analogy between the effort that her son has to go through to make it on campus vs. the effort that Tamme (character's name) endures in the ring (including audience jeers and offensive traits based on stereotype) in order to make it as a wrestler.
The audience persecution of Welfare Queen is so bad, in fact, that even the audience themselves start to feel remorse for doing it, and so Zoya (Alison Brie) has to step in and create a dramatic distraction to get the crowd back on Liberty Belle's side. You'll need to watch the episode to see what that distraction is, because that plot thread continues for a few more episodes in the season.
All of that being said, the actual wrestling match, like many of the bouts in this series, is very well choreographed. Liberty Belle is placed in a considerable amount of peril in the wring by Welfare Queen (I couldn't help thinking of certain Weaponz Tokyo videos during this match) and undergoes
a lot of exertion in her costume. If you're a fan of superheroine wrestling vids, such as those made by Sleeperkid, you'll want to check out this well-made sequence.
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Episode 8: "The Good Twin". This episode is written more like an exciting action-adventure show, with lots of vignettes that move the story arcs along, than just a typical episode. So it's more of a meta-show - a plot about a plot. And there are even a couple subplots within it.
One of the plots involves a rescue from an evil fortress, in relation to the above distraction and endangerment that Zoya created in Episode 4. This involves Liberty Belle as the main heroine (in the tradition of shows like Wonder Woman or Bionic Woman) striving to achieve her goal and defeat the
evil machinations of Zoya the Destroyer. It's probably the element of GLOW which comes closest to a full-on superheroine TV show. Zoya also has a couple of sexy minions from the wrestling roster - the Asian wrestler Fortune Cookie and the Middle Eastern female terrorist Beirut the Mad Bomber - doing her dirty work as guards/henchwomen. They look great in their costumes and holding their spears.
The other plot is a direct gender-flipped rip-off of Weird Science (since the series takes place in the 80s, these kinds of references happen a lot). Britannica is the British-emigrant wrestler (who apparently is an illegal immigrant? making this also a gender-flipped reference to 1990's Green Card movie with Gerard Depardieu?) who is super smart and "loves the science". She is lonely, and tries to bring a male mannequin to life to be her boyfriend. But she is unsuccessful, and makes a deal with the heel wrestler / voodoo priestess Black Magic to bring the statue to life in exchange for giving up her intelligence. Hijinks ensue.
This episode is probably my favorite, not just for the action TV show elements, but because there are TWO entire wrestling sequences in the ring.
The first one is Britannica vs Black Magic. Unlike Welfare Queen, Black Magic is a fit, gorgeous Xena-level Amazon of a black woman, and her costume is great, too - shows her powerful legs and her rippling abs. Unfortunately, despite her regal name, they never give Britannica the costume of the sexy warrior her name deserves...instead she fights in her tartan-like minidress, looking like a nerd the whole time. It's still a good fight, but it would have been cooler if she had been able to use her science to somehow "transform" herself into a beautiful Captain Britain-type warrior. Fun match, though.
The other match is even better, filled to the brim with emotion, as Liberty Belle is trying to achieve her rescue goal, and the viewing audience is
supposed to identify with her struggle while she's doing it. She has to fight through three women - Vicky the Viking (the bulky Nordic type), Fortune Cookie and Beirut the Mad Bomber - to get to her goal of defeating Zoya's plans. Alison Brie is also brilliant in this as she plays a *second* character - Olga, the 'good twin' of Zoya, who is a poor Russian peasant who rides around on a goat - who travels from Russia to join the plot. Olga strikes me as being a lot like a female Borat, so maybe there is a sly allusion there.
The other thing I noticed in the episode was the development of GLOW's first lesbian relationship. Apparently in the first season, the progressives of outrage culture were aghast that there was a series entirely about female wrestlers that didn't even contain one identifiable lesbian. And one could see their point. Certainly if this was about roller derby it'd be highly doubtful if there were no lesbians involved, especially butch ones. But the show had already locked itself into the cast it had.
So (in true Marvel Comics' fashion of statistical improbability..and yes I realize we also did this with Hburgh, putting 4 LGBT characters in a cast of 20 heroines) the show created two lesbians: Yo-Yo / Yolanda, the Hispanic wrestler a proud out lesbian (and a sex-positive one to boot, who has no problem dancing in strip clubs) and Beirut, the Arab terrorist, a gay-curious girl who eventually comes out of her shell. This situation is introduced with a dream sequence where Yo-Yo and Beirut dance together in some Fred-and-Ginger style choreography. But it isn't represented as two women simply dancing together: Yo-Yo is wearing a tux and tails and a masculine haircut, clearly signifying that she is the aggressive leading "man" in the relationship, while Beirut is shown as the questing, hesitant woman who eventually gives in to her desire. I won't get into any politics, but this ballroom sequence is boring and out of place and a chore to sit through, because it is pretty much irrelevant to the rest of the show's development. The treatment of Beirut as 'liberated but otherwise totally uninteresting brown woman' is actually rather similar to Zari in Legends of Tomorrow.
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Episode 10: "Every Potato Has a Receipt"
I struggled to figure out where the title of this episode even comes from, unless it's from the fictional Russian town of "Potatograd" where the characters of Zoya and Olga are supposed to originate. Apparently the phrase has a wrestling meaning, where if you deliver a hit in the ring you can expect a hit back in return. Anyway.....
As with the battle finale between Liberty and Zoya last season (where we got to see lots of great shots of their tight costumes in the ring..go back and check it out if you haven't seen it yet)...they had to top things with an even bigger battle. So this finale contains a "battle royale", which in wrestling
terms means that the whole cast fights it out in the ring in a big instant-elimination match to determine who keeps the crown.
The situation begins with an on-screen marriage between Britannica and one of her diehard fans who proposed to her, because she has to get married to stay in the country and get her 'green card'. But there's some wedding drama, and instead she gets married to one of the main male characters in the series (you'll need to watch to find out whom).
The battle royale, however, ensues when she throws the bouquet, and the announcer declares that whichever wrestler retains the bouquet and throws everyone else out of the ring gets to wear the crown. So there are about twelve female wrestlers, all battling in out in the ring in their tight costumes, to determine the winner of this battle. Because of the wedding, though, they are all dressed in the same tight pink or yellow leotards instead of their normal distinct character costumes (I'm guessing maybe the wardrobe people didn't want to risk getting all of those costumes destroyed at the same time?). I don't think you'll mind the uniformity of their spandex wear, though, once the wrestling sequence starts.
Yo-Yo and Beirut also briefly engage in a lesbian kiss during the battle, which is initiated by Beirut to show that she is now assertive and confident about her sexuality. I doubt that would have happened in a 1980s wrestling show (although correct me if I'm wrong) so it's a bit counter-immersive and Current Year.
There is also a brief interlude in the battle, as well, where a couple of professional male wrestlers enter the ring to settle a grudge. Of course, in the true feminist-warrior fashion of the show creators, the female wrestlers defeat the men, and Liberty Belle defeats a male Mexican luchador (possibly another Current Year allusion).
But this season finale was all staged for the benefit of various TV executives who look like they're vying to pick the show for a network. The decision that gets made at the end of the show (watch and find out for yourself) is a surprising one, and not what you'd expect, but it gives the show a chance to take a novel turn and also to be filmed in a brand-new glitzy location which will keep the visuals fresh (there's only so long you can film in a musty gym).
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Season Three of GLOW debuts on August 9 in a couple days.
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