In the spring of 1998, I was in my room, bored, and channel surfing on a 19-inch CRT I’d inherited from my sister. When whatever was on Cartoon Network or Nickelodeon didn’t hold my attention, I gave a few other channels a try. I landed on TNT and saw a man dressed in a skeleton outfit. He was far too broad to be compared to a real skeleton, even before you dismissed the long brown locks that snuck out from beneath his hood. He carried a red folding chair that he played like a guitar, strutted, then knocked his knees together. I thought he was funny as he strode to a wrestling ring, gesturing at the crowd and simply couldn’t look away. I’d discovered WCW Monday Nitro (a then-rival to the WWF), and for the next four years or so, it would become appointment viewing for me. I’d known names like Hulk Hogan and “Macho Man” Randy Savage, sure, and knew wrestling was “fake.” But the costumes, the acrobatics, and the way the commentators discussed the technicalities of the matches…well, my young mind was not immune to getting excited.
Let’s flash forward some 30 years.
I was looking up Allison Brie, because I had finished a rewatch of Mad Men a few months ago. As Trudy Campbell, she steals every scene she’s in, and I absolutely adore her as Annie Edison in Community. “I love her,” I said to my dogs, “I wonder what she’s been up to in the last 10 years or so?”
And this is how I found out about GLOW. The blurb reads “A look at the personal and professional lives of a group of women who perform for a wrestling organization in Los Angeles during the 1980s.”
It had been out since 2017, how had I missed it? I immediately opened the chat server I share with a bunch of college buddies and linked to it. “Why didn’t you guys tell me about this? A wrestling drama starring Allison Brie? It’s an intersection of like three of my favorite things.” I still don’t know how, in all of my online travels, this show had completely stayed off my radar.
“Why didn’t you know about it yourself?” one friend replied, deftly putting me in my place as a fake fan. Well, played Michael. Regardless, I cleared my media slate and started watching. To wit, it’s great.
The show opens with Brie as Ruth Wilder reading a dramatic monologue. Two casting agents look on, nonplussed, perhaps, by her moving performance. Ruth finishes and grins, gushing about how great the part would be should she secure it. “You read the man’s part,” the casting director grumbles. “Wanna try again?”
Ruth’s a Nebraskan transplant. She’s come to L.A. like so many others, hoping to break into showbiz. But it’s tough, generally speaking, but doubly so for women like Ruth who don’t want to settle for side bits or eye candy. So she struggles to make rent and to eat, let alone date, scraping by with waitressing and other demeaning jobs. So she corners the casting director by waiting (for an hour) in the bathroom and begs to know what she needs to do better.
“The studios tell me they want someone fresh, something they haven’t seen before. So I bring you in to show ‘em, that they don’t really want that after all.” She peers over her glasses, realizing perhaps she’s been a little too harsh. “I do have some…alternative productions you could try for.”
Ruth’s eyes widen knowingly. “What, like porn?” It’s work…but she goes home to ask her parents to wire her some cash “for the last time,” because she’s almost found her break. For a change, she actually has. The casting director has left her information for a non-porn audition!
The next day, Ruth joins about three dozen other women in a ramshackle auditorium. Sam Sylvia (Marc Maron) slithers in, looking if not like the stereotypical porn director, then like the sleazy used car salesmen you see on TV. He seems about as excited as one about to get a root canal. He introduces “The Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling (GLOW)” to them with all the enthusiasm of a director doing something to earn money for the projects he really wants to work on. “Let’s get this over with,” he sighs before whittling the field of hopeful actresses (who barely know what wrestling is, let alone how to do it) down to about a dozen or so. Our heroine is eliminated when the director finds out Ruth’s opponent is the daughter of a pro wrestling legend—nepotism wins again.
Ruth, however, is plucky and optimistic (Brie is infectious in these kinds of roles, I tell you) and she shows up the next day, having studied up on Hulk Hogan and other WWF greats, determined to earn her place. Some real life drama (that I won’t spoil) follows Ruth into the ring, she gets into a very real fight, and Sam sees the vision of the perfect wrestling show.
GLOW has all the right tensions: the women must get up to speed quickly and literally learn the ropes. Their enthusiastic promoter Bash (Christopher Lowell) loves pro wrestling and means well, but encourages the ladies to play on stereotypes that make them uncomfortable: a black woman is given the name Welfare Queen, another wrestler is pressured into playing a nationalistic Chinese character wielding a plastic katana despite her repeated insistence that she’s Cambodian. Someone grapple with their sexuality, others with motherhood. You see them working out the math women are so often forced to calculate: how many of my principles, my self, must I compromise in order to keep this scrap of a chance? How much is it worth? Maybe I can force the system to be different, once I prove myself…. Watching them literally wrestle with these questions adds depth to the fun you’ll have watching the wrestlers bond with each other and carve out their own personalities.
In time we learn more about the men in the picture too. Bash is a screw up in his mother’s eyes and is desperate for her approval as he does something with his life. Sam, while appearing to be an exploitation film director on the surface, haughtily corrects someone who tells him his movies are hilarious “What are you talking about? They aren’t comedies!” We realize that he’s actually disgruntled with the systems in show business just like the women are; while he might still be a chauvinist, he’s much more of an ally to the women than not.
Even if you don’t like wrestling, I think you’ll still enjoy the show. Just as shows like Heated Rivalry and Friday Night Lights use their respective sports as a framework for their drama, GLOW isn’t so much about the sport as it is the characters and their relationships. It is, however, obvious the creators and writers (mostly women, by the by) have real affection for wrestling. Bonus points from me, by the way, for being set in the 80s and resisting the urge to nostalgia-bait1 like a lesser show would; the show needs to exist during pro wrestling’s Golden Age just as Mad Men needed to exist in the middle class boom of the 60s.
A final warning: GLOW was unceremoniously cancelled during the outbreak of Covid-19. It was by all accounts doing well, but Netflix decided to discontinue production and not revisit it. It’s still worth your time, just manage your expectations. There’s a bit near the end of season 2 where you get to watch the girls put on their campy, ridiculous production and it’s so, SO good. I’d almost say you can stop at the season 2 finale, but there’s a storyline with a drag queen in season 3 that produces some really tenderly beautiful moments that I think you really ought to see.
Recommendations
The Wrestlers - This is a VICE documentary series (10 45-minute episodes) about the vibrant subcultures in international wrestling. I think it’s a fascinating look at how professional wrestling is human; at the core, its another way to tell stories.
The Dark Side of the Ring - Another VICE documentary series that’s tonally different; this one focuses on the history and personalities of the American professional wrestling business. The real stories are every bit as dramatic as the produced ones
Finding Her Edge - Yet ANOTHER VICE…just kidding. This is actually a Netflix show about a prestigious figure skating team and the drama between its members. Figure skating, with its mix of choreographed acrobatics, danger, and artistry has a lot more in common with pro wrestling than fans of either camp might care to admit. This show is definitely way more soapy and not as well-acted as GLOW, but I think if you found yourself enjoying the story beats of the wrestling show, you’ll probably enjoy this as well
There are some references here and there, but I don’t think I’d classify them as memberberries. Season 3 gets a little more excited about being in the 80s
This show fuckin’ RIPS! I miss it every day.
I loved GLOW!