{"id":10853,"date":"2017-07-05T14:11:16","date_gmt":"2017-07-05T18:11:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/evetushnet\/?p=10853"},"modified":"2017-07-05T14:11:16","modified_gmt":"2017-07-05T18:11:16","slug":"cat-fight-feeling-watch-glow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/evetushnet\/2017\/07\/cat-fight-feeling-watch-glow.html","title":{"rendered":"Cat Fight This Feeling: I watch GLOW"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

So Netflix made a show about women\u2019s wrestling in the 1980s<\/a> and I am hard-pressed to imagine a concept which would seem, on its face, more custom-made for me. But then I watched the show. So, okay, I watched the whole season (ten episodes, hovering just over thirty minutes each), I was interested enough to want to know what it would do. Let me try to gesture at what really did not work, and also what I enjoyed. Vague spoilers.<\/p>\n

I love the look of the thing. The first episode\u2019s opening credits, with the neon wrestling scenes scored to Patty Smyth\u2019s \u201cThe Warrior\u201d\u2013yes!! yes, I want all of it!!! And whoever did costumes for this thing shares 82% of my taste in \u201980swear. Terrific choices: slouchy pastel sweaters but no baggy dresses, pushed-up jacket sleeves but no shoulder pads (or maybe limited shoulder pads). Just enough cheesiness in the look, but no \u201cwe know better than that now<\/em>\u201d winking. And, I mean, there\u2019s a plot-relevant Howard Jones song. I swoon, I die.<\/p>\n

Several of the side characters are fun. I especially love Britney Young as Carmen Wade, the daughter of a wrestling family. She\u2019s just utterly charming whenever she\u2019s onscreen, and her thing with pretty cokehead rich boy Bash (an also-surprisingly-endearing Chris Lowell) is sweet and delightful. I want them to either get together or end up as gay BFFs. (We\u2019ve had some hints that Carmen may prefer the ladies and, well, Bash has a houseboy.) I also occasionally enjoyed watching Marc Maron as sleazoid, yet also political, yet also artsy indie, yet also shlockmeister director Sam Sylvia. This character made no sense and did a lot of reprehensible things which the show then forgets about, but he is also a reluctantly-repentant sleazoid and I\u2019m always down for that, plus Maron sells him even when he should not be sold.<\/p>\n

Problems include the fact that this show does not really seem to know what\u2019s funny and what isn\u2019t. It drags jokes out way too long, it has characters do cruel things for laughs and then forgets about it instead of finding a way to make the aftermath also<\/em> funny, it expects us to root for characters who think they are charming as they blunder obnoxiously through other people\u2019s lives. Which can work, if the characters get their comeuppance (for this, not for an unrelated sin), or if the show seems to know just how awful they are rather than tee-hee-I\u2019m-so-awkward\u2019ing \u2026or if the characters are actually charming.<\/p>\n

Oh, also, the audience reactions are often blatantly unbelievable. (Since when did \u201980s LA Goths give unprompted patriotic cheers?) In general the end of the season doesn\u2019t earn its sisterly-solidarity notes. I extremely do not believe that Cherry would make the decision she makes, nor do I think it\u2019s actually a good one given her situation and experiences so far.<\/p>\n

Also<\/em>, oy, the disingenuous politics and the main plotline. I should\u2019ve known how this would go when the first episode lectured us about sexism in Hollywood and then immediately had Alison Brie show her boobs. There\u2019s tons of racist caricature because It\u2019s The \u201980s (we know better now!<\/em>) and we get the white director\u2019s justifications for that, his opportunistic deployment of progressive ideology, but we don\u2019t actually delve into what the women think or feel. There are several moments where it\u2019s obvious that we should hear something fairly intense from one of the women: \u201cWelfare Queen\u201d should have lines or scenes about her role, not just a one-liner about how her son goes to Stanford. \u201cBeirut\u201d should get a chance to say more than just, \u201cThey really<\/em> hated me!\u201d, after an audience yells racial slurs at her. (She should especially get more since Sunita Mani is a fun actress who does a lot with a small part.) The white ladies who talk about how afraid they are that [racially-charged spoiler] will happen, should get some kind of reaction moment after it does in fact happen! Instead we get the director explaining his thought process to us, because that\u2019s definitely something we all wanted.<\/p>\n

As for the main plot: In episode one Ruth (Brie) does something hurtful and awful. She then spends the entire season being punished for it, in a wide variety of horrible ways, while she whimpers and cringes and tries to show how hardworking she is. She\u2019s basically really unpleasant in the first episode and then miserable and eager to please for the entire rest of the show. Meanwhile the person she hurt is also a main character, and spends the entire season wrapped in self-righteous victimhood. Oh my God, who thought this would be fun to watch? I loathed both of these characters and they are the stars. Kill me. (Also, guess their race! No, bonus round, guess their weight.)<\/p>\n

I know few among us can be Jaime Hernandez, but remember Queen Rena\u2019s<\/a> feud with Vicki Glori? Remember how great that was, how it made both of them understandable even though Rena\u2019s a queen and Vicki\u2019s a tag-team of ego and rage? How it explored racism, and showed women\u2019s wrestling as simultaneously humiliating and empowering? Remember how these larger-than-life characters cared about other people and tried to figure out how to make amends when they screwed up?<\/p>\n

That\u2019s one kind of story, and not the only kind; I\u2019d extremely be down for a wrestling AbFab<\/em>, where terrible people love each other while doing terrible dramatic messy things. I\u2019d even be down for a wrestling Soapdish<\/em>, a wallowy pleasurefest, a marshmallow dipped in cynicism. There are so many ways this show could have been better.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So Netflix made a show about women\u2019s wrestling in the 1980s and I am hard-pressed to imagine a concept which would seem, on its face, more custom-made for me. But then I watched the show. 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