What I Learned From Watching GLOW

For the last couple of years I’ve considered Lucha Underground to be the best current wrestling show. Its combination of in-ring action and crazy storylines is very appealing to me, more so than pretty much any current wrestling promotion out there. People debate whether or not Lucha Underground is actually a wrestling promotion or not…I think they’re trying to be, but since they haven’t had a lot of success with it yet I consider it more of a wrestling TV show. Which, frankly, might be a lot better than being a wrestling promotion.

Netflix recently picked up Lucha Underground’s previous seasons for airing, but that isn’t the only new wrestling content on the service. They helped produce a ten-episode season of a new television series titled GLOW, based on the 1980s wrestling promotion of the same name. It’s a behind-the-scenes look into the world of 1980s women’s wrestling, and it has taken LU’s place as the best current wrestling-related show in my eyes.

Some of the stories told during the show are a bit outlandish. In the setting of pro wrestling, that means they’re more realistic. Wrestlers such as Brodus Clay, Carlito, Joey Ryan, Alex Riley, Frankie Kazarian and Christopher Daniels all make appearances in the ring, while Chavo Guerrero Jr. was involved behind the scenes training the women involved and Brooke Hogan had a brief non-wrestler role in an episode. My favorite thing about the show (other than Alison Brie, of course) is how true to life it is about the wrestling business. Fans and non-fans can pick up a lot of useful information while watching the show, as there are a few universal truths about wrestling that still apply today.

Real Conflict = Money

The show starts out in Episode 1 following the life of Ruth Wilder (Brie), a struggling actress who ends up getting invited to an audition for a women’s wrestling TV pilot. We follow her & the other women through the process & early difficulties with the show’s direstor Sam Silvia (Marc Maron). Things get a little fishy when we find out that Ruth is engaging in some funny business concerning her best friend Debbie Eagan (Betty Gilpin), which leads to Debbie attacking Ruth at the gym where the ladies are training. Sam watches all of this unfold and the concept for the show begins to form in his mind. Until this point he didn’t seem to see much in any of these people or the concept, but the real conflict between Ruth & Debbie gets his mind out of the slumber it’d fallen into while watching the women try to train.

If the conflict doesn’t feel real, most people aren’t going to care. Sure, there are always going to be people that will tune in and watch wrestling because they like the artform, but just watching a bunch of people roll around in the ring isn’t most peoples’ cup of tea. You need to be able to feel the disdain between the people involved. Once that happens, people will get interested.

Don’t Make Things Too Complicated

Sam has quite the creative mind. He doesn’t want to write a typical wrestling show, so in Episode 3 he produces a unique script for the ladies to read from. The story is all over the place, mostly focused about space exploration, time travel and the wrath of Kuntar. Sebastian “Bash” Howard (Chris Lowell), the GLOW money man, breaks up the script reading so everyone can go party at his house. Later on, he tells Sam that while his script is great, it’s really not what he’s looking for. He might have wanted a different type of wrestling show…but not that different.

The best wrestling is the simplest to understand. Of course, the real-life GLOW probably got way too simplistic in its presentation and characterization, but as offensive as we might find characters like Palestina, Colonel Ninotchka & other evil foreign menaces that GLOW presented throughout its existence, they were easy for fans to understand and for writers to come up with material for. Part of GLOW’s appeal back in the day was that you didn’t need to think too much while watching it.

I think one of the biggest problems that TNA/Impact Wrestling has faced throughout its existence is their inability to make things simple. Especially when Vince Russo was at the helm, TNA storylines were lengthy, nonsensical, not followed up on and generally confusing to the average viewer. You would tune in one week and see characters doing one thing, then come back a few weeks later and everybody would be acting differently, associating with different people and feuding against different people. It’s tough to get behind inconsistent characters doing confusing things. Bash might be simplistic in his ideas for wrestling characters, and yes, some of those ideas are offensive and wouldn’t fly in 2017, but they’re characters that connect with people. Sometimes, as in the case of Beirut the Mad Bomber (Sunita Mani), a little too well.

A Good Face Needs A Bad Heel

Episode 6 centers around the search for an opponent for top face Liberty Belle, as Debbie is reluctant to work with Ruth, the obvious choice due to talent level & the character she’s developed, for obvious reasons. One of the scenes that stands out is when she works in the ring with Welfare Queen (Kia “Awesome Kong” Stevens), who gets over with the girls watching to the point that Debbie rolls out of the ring and leaves. When Sam asks why she’s leaving, Debbie says “They’re cheering for her!” While Debbie comes across as somewhat whiny by stating that, she’s absolutely right in her reason for not wanting to wrestle Welfare Queen. When the heel is more entertaining than the face, fans are going to side with the heel. It’s human nature to cheer the wise-cracking wrestler that’s kicking butt and taking names, especially if they’re taking on an uptight princess that doesn’t have much personality beyond being the “babyface” that people are supposed to cheer for. While Welfare Queen is fun to watch and good in her role, she isn’t the right choice for that role.

Top faces have had a devil of a time staying over all throughout the 2000s because they generally get booked against cool heels. The most recent example of this is in Ring of Honor. Christopher Daniels finally became ROH Champion after having been with the company off and on since Day One. He should have been hailed by all the fans of Ring of Honor and supported against all comers. He lost the championship last weekend to Cody, member of the Bullet Club. The problem with that: fans love the cool heels in the Bullet Club. They love buying Bullet Club merchandise and going to shows to cheer for them. I can’t really knock guys like Cody, Kenny Omega & the Young Bucks for going that route, as they make a lot of their money off of t-shirt sales and these guys gotta make a living, but it makes things really tough for good guy wrestlers when their opponents are more concerned with merchandise sales & looking good than making their opponents look good. Cody ended up getting all the cheers and Daniels looked like a lame old goof.

The solution isn’t an easy one. You either have to avoid the match altogether or change your entire booking plan to make it work. But when Debbie points out that the top face shouldn’t be made to look bad by wrestling a funny heel, she’s absolutely right.

Always Have A Backup Plan

Ruth & Debbie don’t become friends again, but they figure out that working together will make both of them successful. They take this to the point of working the other girls into believing that Debbie is leaving the show and won’t be part of the big premiere. This leads to a really effective bit of television with Debbie coming out of the audience and defeating Zoya the Destroya to become the GLOW Crown holder. Sam, as the director, didn’t appreciate not being clued in on this, so he came up with another plan to end the show in a way more to his liking that would create more interest going forward.

The fatal flaw in Ruth & Debbie’s worked angle wasn’t keeping everybody in the dark…it was giving the fans what they wanted too soon. They had a great match, especially considering their experience level of zero, but it wasn’t the right time to have the happy ending. You want to build up to America overcoming Soviet Russia, not blow it off on the first show. Because as Sam says when Ruth & Debbie confront him about the double-cross…

There’s Money In the Chase

And there’s money in a Season 2. Hopefully Netflix announces one soon, I haven’t seen nearly enough of Zoya, Liberty, Britannica, Shelia the She-Wolf, Machu Picchu and the rest of the GLOW superstars.