So we open in Sam’s apartment as he’s working at his typewriter, when his ex-wife arrives demanding their dog. After a dog whimper derails his sad story about how he can’t give her the dog because it supposedly got run over, she takes the dog and leaves, and Sam writes his emasculated rage into the script. Later he shows up at the gym to find everyone but Ruth, (who is actually up in the ring doing rope drills), gathered around a young handsome guy telling them stories about his life of wealth who turns out to be Sebastian Howard, producer, financer and creator of GLOW.
Mildly annoyed, Sam hands out his script and has the ladies act out this ridiculous Hell Comes to Frogtown level of shite post-apocalyptic story that he envisions happening between actual matches. Kinda like Lucha Underground’s weirdass presentation. The villain in this script, and the reason I couldn’t name the episode in the header bar, is… oh goddess Babos do I really have to actually type this?
*sighs*
Kuntar.
Clearly Sam is projecting his ex issues, and of course he has Ruth playing Kuntula. Sebastian is at a loss for words and decides everyone needs a break. He takes Debbie in his chopper and everyone else drives to his mansion, where he has a drug serving robot, tables full of candy and snacks, Centipede in the master bathroom, and a cool butler who looks like he escaped from a Tears for Fears video. The girls are mostly having fun, except Ruth, who feels massively out of place, and Cherry who’s angry about seemingly not having an on-camera role.
Ruth tries to make nice with Debbie but gets blown off. So she goes off with Sebastian to look at art. Sam finds them and asks Ruth to give them space. Sebastian tells Sam his whole angry lesbian post apocalyptic porn fest thing is brilliant but it isn’t what he wants. He explains that when he said he wanted to make a different kind of wrestling show he only meant different in “the way Ms Pac Man is different than Pac Man” way. In other words, wrestling but with women. Sam flips out and calls him a kid who doesn’t know shit and storms off.
Meanwhile, Debbie has gotten piss drunk and is talking the cool butler’s ear off about her now crumbling marriage and feeling trapped, and he enlists Ruth’s help to get her in a cab. Though drunk off her ass Debbie seems aware of Ruth helping and they exchange an awjkward soundless moment as the cab drives Debbie home.
Sebastian finds Melrose and the Aussie girl whose name I haven’t caught yet trying to get more drugs out of his waiter robot, and he hands them some Bob Mackie dresses. He then leads them and everyone except Ruth to his walk-in costuime closet and invites them all to try on whatever feels right.
The main problem between Sebastian and Sam is that neither of them actually understand how wrestling works, though Sebastian as a fan is a lot closer. Sebastian believes all you need to entertain a crowd is a stereotype for character and a wrestling match. He doesn’t believe there needs to be ANY kind of backstory. He thinks if you have the girl next door and the racial stereotype bad guys and they punch and kick each other you’re golden. Sam, being kind of pretentious with a far too generous assessment of his own creativity and wants to bog down the show with way too much backstory and the wrestling as an afterthought. So basically it’s late 80’s post first boom Vince versus late aughties pg era Vince.
A few of the non-white girls aren’t amused by Sebastian’s stereotype ideas, (and for the first time I’m actually with Sam as he tells the middle eastern woman NOT to hold onto the gun Sebastian is offering her as a prop. They blow up at each other and Sam storms off.
Ruth of all people is the one to talk Sam down, and Sam finds Sebastian at his outdoor firepit lounge. They talk, and Sam realizes Sebastian thinks his heady cerebral dramas are brilliant comedies. He finally caves and says he’ll do GLOW Sebastian’s way if he’ll read Sam’s time travel script. I may need to go do some googling after this, as the scene is very heavily dropping hints that the script in question is Back To The Future.
So now that they’re all patched up, we go back to the gym the next day and they’re doing test runs for character introduction promos, which include the plucky Cambodian girl now acting like a Japanese chibi ninja complete with engrish, the middle Eastern girl in terrorist garb, the actual Olympian having her identity given to Debbie while she herself is made into a bad viking, and Sam finally realizing Sebastian is right about Ruth; despite her very real character failings, no one is going to buy her wrestling character as The Homewrecker when she just seems so girl next door. So Sam asks her to tell them who SHE thinks she is, and the episode ends with her looking confused as she tries to answer that.
A definite improvement. We’re finally seeing the barest hins of character development here, with Sam finally showing some redeeming qualities and Ruth beginning to see that it isn’t the Ruth Show and that there are other perspectives.
See you tomorrow for episode 4.
