GLOW

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.

A thoroughly entertaining early summer revelation.

[GLOW] takes everything over-the-top about professional wrestling, pushes it to higher levels of absurdity and melodrama, and finds something deeply personal, explicitly political, and wonderfully brute-force awesome.

To call it a feel-good hit would be a bit reductive and presumptive, but GLOW deserves all the love and respect thrust upon it. Sit back, turn it up, and enjoy.

GLOW is terrific. ... GLOW is about female empowerment, and couldn’t be otherwise, but there’s a little more going on--female relationships, and the unique ties that bind, even when frayed by a patriarchy that profits from fraying them.

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.

As the title implies, GLOW wins top ranking by serving up a sensational story that’s brilliant for summer, but timeless as well. Wrestling may be fake, but the relationships these characters forge throughout the story ring true.

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.

GLOW is both blessedly original and delightfully nostalgic. ... It's a superb showcase for an ensemble cast that couldn't be better. Brie, in particular, is a revelation.

GLOW takes this arena of artifice and turns it into a story of feminine coming-of-age with a bright, engaging energy that balances tones with masterful skill.

GLOW is often very funny, but it also plays (and works) as drama, a balance that would more often be found in an hour-long show. The half-hour format, though, is just right, leaving a viewer eager to bounce and roll through the 10-episode first season.

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.

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.

GLOW is the behind-the-scenes look that’ll suck you in faster than a Friday cliffhanger.

GLOW is not a laugh-out-loud comedy, but it is often funny, from its pitch-perfect opening scene to the potential for back stories on all the women who make the cut for GLOW and the relationships among them that are sure to develop.

The show manages to be fun and wacky, funny, emotional with something to say.

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.

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.

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]

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.

The show captures both of these angles [exploitative and empowerment] sharply, but without pushing them so hard that the show feels too pointed. It’s light entertainment with some muscle at its core.

Some characters get more screen time than others, but none are shallow; all get to tell you at least a little bit about who they are, without making too obvious a point of it (The exposition creeps in on little cat feet.)

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.

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.

GLOW is sometimes funny, sometimes emotional and anchored by a strong, ego-free performance by Alison Brie, improving across the full 10-episode first season sent to critics.

Their characters--Welfare Queen, Fortune Cookie and the Old Biddies, to name a few--are wildly over the top, borderline offensive and true to the era. The crowd has no choice and falls in love. It’s no tilt-a-whirl crossbody, but GLOW gets close.

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.

GLOW succeeds almost entirely because of the affinity the writers clearly have for wrestling as a form of entertainment. The show revels in every move, every over-the-top costume, every fake shriek of pain.

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.

GLOW, both the show and the show within the show, lives and dies by its ferocious women.

After going a bit overboard on the ’80s signifiers in the first episode, the show dials things back in subsequent episodes, but it’s still full of gloriously terrible fashions and endearingly trashy pop culture.

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.

What makes GLOW enjoyable (if sometimes imprecise and irksome) is its willingness to mine the same bad and/or stereotypical situations that it’s critiquing for belly laughs.

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.

At a time characterized by the high level of ambition among premium comedies, GLOW has admirable qualities but emits a relatively dim light.