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Positive:
70
Mixed:
4
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews
IndieWireAug 9, 2019
Season 3 Review:
“GLOW” is worth breaking down as thoroughly as time allows, but through one viewing, it’s also evident how much this season accomplished, because it so evidently tried to do a lot. By the end of the first episode, “GLOW” clears the high bar set for itself, and by the end of Season 3, having repeated the same courageous approach to its storytelling nonstop, it soars.
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IndieWireJun 29, 2018
Season 2 Review:
It’s the rare series that tries to have it all and succeeds. It’s topical and fun; it’s exciting and poignant; it’s got long episodes and a short episode total; it’s got a standalone episode told from one viewer’s perspective and fully drawn supporting arcs; it’s inclusive from every angle, addresses issues of inclusivity, but doesn’t define its minority characters by those issues.
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Jun 15, 2018
Season 2 Review:
Showrunners Carly Mensch and Liz Flahive again manage to zigzag between the lowbrow silliness of the show-within-the-show and the higher-brow hijinks behind the scenes without giving the impression that the series has a split personality. ... Perhaps best of all, since Season 2 is so emotionally brutal, when we get a break that’s not of the heart variety, it doesn’t feel like a present, it feels earned.
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Jun 21, 2017
Season 1 Review:
There’s an infectious sense of joy embedded deep into GLOW’s DNA. Despite its high-minded moral core (women asserting the power of their own bodies and carving out a place of strength), GLOW never feels remotely preachy. ... On top of all that, GLOW is funny. Really goddamn funny.
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RogerEbert.comJun 28, 2018
Season 2 Review:
A trio of performances that I thought were good enough in season one to warrant Emmy nominations from Alison Brie, Betty Gilpin and Marc Maron are even better in season two. Looking at the season as a whole, it’s easy to pick out a few subplots that don’t work, but they're easy to ignore on a good show that's only gotten better. ... It’s one of TV’s best comedies.
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Jun 28, 2018
Season 2 Review:
Fortunately GLOW remains as lithe and fleet-footed in its second season as in its first. ... Young has more emotional notes to capitalize upon than before. Seeing her and everyone else in this series go all in, heart forward, makes their various tales of this ragtag dream worthy of our emotional investment and GLOW itself well worth of the five-plus hours of attention it asks of the audience.
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TV Guide MagazineJun 27, 2018
Season 2 Review:
Glow gleams in its fabulously entertaining second season with a buoyant celebration of rowdy sisterhood. [25 Jun - 8 Jul 2018, p.10]
Jun 23, 2017
Season 1 Review:
It’s smartly plotted, with characters that deepen in the course of the show. But, refreshingly, in our era of homework TV, it’s also a joyride, all roller skates and mousse-claw bangs, synthesizer jams and leopard-print leotards, home pregnancy tests and cocaine-serving robots. By the final episodes, I was whooping at my computer screen, fists in the air, like a superfan.
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Jun 22, 2017
Season 1 Review:
GLOW is blessedly its own thing. It’s nostalgic, but it’s more than the sum of its soundtrack and hair spray. Its ratty mid-80s Los Angeles of motels and skate punks feels specific and lived in. Like last summer’s Netflix breakout, “Stranger Things,” GLOW is a hulking creature sewn together from pop-cultural scraps, but when it steps into the ring, it reveals itself as a true original.
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Jul 19, 2019
Season 3 Review:
GLOW Season Three isn’t as joyous, overall, as its second. There’s more internal strife, more general tension and less narrative cohesion. But there’s still plenty to enjoy and revel in. ... GLOW will always be a show that understands femininity in a way few others do, and is often a pop-filled good time. But Season Three seems like it also wants to dive into some deeper issues in order to stand up and fight for the rights of all women.
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Uncle BarkyJun 22, 2017
Season 1 Review:
An entertaining, amusing and at times poignant first season that also has some wretched excesses and predictable turns. But there are more than a few little unexpected delights, ranging from Ruth’s impression of Audrey Hepburn winning an Oscar for Roman Holiday to Sam’s learning that a just released real-life movie has upstaged his plans to direct a surefire crowning masterpiece titled Mothers and Lovers.
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Jun 22, 2017
Season 1 Review:
GLOW needs no persuading to take wrestling seriously. And if it struggles to get some of its larger points across, well, so did the original Gorgeous Ladies Of Wrestling. But it’s a totally winning, totally unique series, a battle royale of styles and tones that deliveries victories to characters who can really use them.
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Mar 4, 2020
Season 3 Review:
GLOW is still blessed and cursed with a sprawling cast of interesting characters, and Season 3 finds more for a few of them to do, but only in snippets. ... GLOW has a gift for not feeling uninspiring when it digs into the ways women inflict pain. It's so straightforward about women's complexity that it's thrilling.
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The GuardianDec 3, 2019
Season 3 Review:
Overall, GLOW is now an issues-led ensemble piece. Relationships, race, the private calamity of being closeted, eating disorders, immigrant trauma, trying to conceive, working mothers’ guilt, and, always, sexism and misogyny, have become the focus instead of the backdrop. This means there is less wrestling, which might bother some fans, but I prefer the off-stage drama.
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Jul 30, 2018
Season 2 Review:
Because there are so many supporting characters just waiting to break out (keep an eye on Kia Stevens’ Welfare Queen), GLOW has an urgency it may have lacked in the first season. ... Still, it’s the women in the ring who prove irresistible. GLOW isn’t the laugh-a-minute comedy you might expect, but a stealthy character study just waiting to pounce.
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Jun 29, 2018
Season 2 Review:
As a bonus, the finale closes this latest run in a manner that nicely sets the stage for season three. For a show that occasionally felt as if it was precariously perched on the top rope in its first season -- leaving doubt as to how long "GLOW's" light could stay flickering -- this second match pretty impressively outshines its debut.
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Jun 29, 2018
Season 2 Review:
The episodic focus also allows the show to skip over big swaths of time when nothing interesting is happening, the better to get to the good stuff. That leaves GLOW slightly less than the sum of its parts. But at the same time, the parts are so inventive, so stylish, and so fun that I feel churlish pointing out how they don’t quite cohere into anything more in the end. Maybe the best advice I can give is: Watch this show. Watch it several times. It’s a good one
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Jun 28, 2018
Season 2 Review:
Their in-ring roles reduce complicated women to simplified cartoons. In this way the wrestling personas are the exact opposite of the roles on Netflix’s GLOW, which are the kind of rich, meaty, more-than-just-likeable parts that actresses always wish they could find.
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Jun 26, 2018
Season 2 Review:
Luckily for GLOW, there's just something about the series that made it immensely enjoyable even when it wasn't firing on all cylinders or reaching its fullest potential. That's a real achievement and a testament to how engaging the cast was even in limited minutes. ... It's a testament to them [the cast] that what viewers do get is more than enough to keep watching and not giving up.
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Jun 15, 2018
Season 2 Review:
While all these characters had their moments in Season 1, many of them good and fun, getting to know them in Season 2 is far more rewarding with the clichés of their origin stories firmly behind them. Like the rapidly improving show within the show, this sophomore season of GLOW finds its footing, throws in more jaw-dropping stunts and mines its potential to become just as spunky, tenacious and determined as its heroines.
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Jun 23, 2017
Season 1 Review:
Each episode runs around 30 minutes, which allows the show to both delve into individual stories and spin a larger arc, with few of the pacing issues of Netflix’s longer shows. Mostly, though, it’s just a blast to watch women having so much fun. GLOW fully owns its campiness and its showy aesthetics, but it’s smart and subversive underneath the glitter.
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Jun 22, 2017
Season 1 Review:
GLOW is packed with an excellent ensemble cast that includes Alison Brie and Marc Maron, sharp commentary on gender and racial stereotypes, and an awesomely ’80s soundtrack. It’s also just plain fun, aware of (and sometimes shamelessly indulgent in) the inherent silliness of wrestling, while never looking down on it.
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TV Guide MagazineJun 22, 2017
Season 1 Review:
This affectionate, bawdy fable about the formation of the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling phenom is so much fun it hurts. [26 Jun - 9 Jul 2017, p.13]
RogerEbert.comJun 22, 2017
Season 1 Review:
Brie and Maron are great, but what’s increasingly rewarding about the show is how much they cede to the rest of the ensemble. ... GLOW takes a bit of time to find its footing, but it becomes incredibly easy to watch as it develops its rhythm around episode four and one really gets to know the characters.
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UPROXXJun 21, 2017
Season 1 Review:
GLOW takes its time teaching its characters, and its audience, the tricks of the wrestling trade. ... But that’s okay, because it gets the far more entertaining part of the field--the soap opera, and the over-the-top commitment everyone makes to it--right. It’s an absolute pleasure.
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Jun 15, 2017
Season 1 Review:
GLOW pulses with all sorts of potential talking points about gender, friendships between women and public perception of stereotypes, but rather than bogging itself down in prolonged messaging, it is consistently committed to a brisk pace and a lightness that reflects its subject matter.
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Jul 22, 2019
Season 3 Review:
Where many Netflix series either lose steam or snap into place in their back half; here, it’s much more difficult to declare the first five episodes stronger, as there standout episodes in the both halves, as well as more standard entries sprinkled throughout. ... Despite that unevenness, GLOW continues to be one of the best shows about show business.
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Jul 19, 2019
Season 3 Review:
[These episodes] explores varying aspects of these women’s lives with each relatively self-contained episode. Even if a couple of these stories end up a tad undercooked, this approach to serial television gives GLOW an admirably democratic vibe, as it eschews the notion that there’s a single experience of the ‘80s that should dominate above the others.
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Jun 18, 2018
Season 2 Review:
Season two mostly focuses on Ruth, Sam, and Debbie. In doing so, GLOW avoids the bloat of other ensemble shows--including that of producer Jenji Kohan’s other Netflix dramedy, Orange Is the New Black. The storylines involving the secondary characters never feel out of place and are typically played for laughs. ... At the same time, you may wish that some of these subplots were less hastily assembled. ... Luckily, we’re also afforded a few richly intimate close-ups with some of GLOW's side players.
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Jun 20, 2017
Season 1 Review:
The performances are superb, especially those of Maron, Young, Brie and Gilpin, all of whom do justice to mostly exceptional scripts. That said, the show doesn’t really find its footing until the third episode. It also falls back on a number of threadbare cliches to wrap things up in the last episode.
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RogerEbert.comAug 5, 2019
Season 3 Review:
It’s still very entertaining, thanks to the perfect timing of its excellent cast, but it feels more disposable than ever. ... It never comes together to form something great overall. It feels more episodic than previous, and woefully wastes Geena Davis as its season guest star, playing their boss in Vegas, and given almost nothing memorable to do.
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Jul 6, 2017
Season 1 Review:
GLOW is not to be confused with a lecture on sociology and female empowerment in the workplace. It’s sprinkled with soap and isn’t above focusing on some of those body parts itself. But even if professional wrestling bores you to tears, GLOW spins some stories that ring true.
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Jun 22, 2017
Season 1 Review:
The GLOW team--that are walking clichés who gradually become somewhat filled-in creations. The weakest parts of GLOW occur when the action stops to trace the backstory of this fighter or that one--in other words, when GLOW is most like OITNB. It’s best when the show is exploring the complex friendship between Ruth and Debbie, or whenever anyone is bouncing off of Maron’s director Sam Sylvia.
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Jun 15, 2017
Season 1 Review:
GLOW struggles with its sheer number of characters; in having to introduce so many wrestlers in only 10 episodes, some of them feel underdeveloped. ... Still, GLOW remains an entertaining watch because of its earnest adherence to the conventions of the underdog sports drama.
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The TelegraphJan 3, 2020
Season 3 Review:
Overall, GLOW has still got just enough shine to hold our interest on one of those “we’ve watched all of Netflix, now what?” evenings, but since the change of scene card has already been played just three seasons in, we’re not sure if the fun and drama can be sustained for another run.
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ColliderJun 20, 2017
Season 1 Review:
GLOW works (or doesn’t work) in a 1:1 ratio with how things are working out in its story. When the characters are disorganized and the cable show is a mess, so is GLOW. Once the characters find their personas as wrestlers, they start to have them for viewers. And once the performances begin, GLOW starts to get very good.
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