Even Geena Davis, who is a shining beacon of light and genuinely hilarious whenever she pops up, doesn’t serve much a role here. There’s also a truly horrific confession about a character’s backstory that should be a nuclear-level reveal, but it comes and goes so quickly it feels more like a bad dream. ‘Treadstone’ Teaser Trailer Takes You Further into the World of Jason Bourne, Disney Keeps Fox's Blue Sky Animation Studio in Operation While Shuffling Execs. Overall, GLOW is now an issues-led ensemble piece. Even the sex—which GLOW has a lot, of all kinds, shapes, and colors with a refreshing amount of dong to boot—is something to pass the time. GLOW returns for a third season, ditching the wrestling for a more character-driven crucible in Las Vegas. Similarly soul-crushing is Kia Stevens as Tammé Dawson, GLOW‘s low-key MVP since season 1. This is all down to Ruth’s good-nerd influence, and the sexual tension between them – which has always been believable but never seemed OK – reaches an awkward climax this season, in – where else? 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. It’s still a spandex-clad blast-and-a-half, and although nothing quite reaches the surreal heights of last season’s “The Good Twin”, there is a downright delightful episode where every one of the G.L.O.W. grapplers switches roles for a night. GLOW season 3 is a show about women’s bodies as it’s always been a show about women’s bodies, but here the beauty seems to lie how far they’ll bend before they break. And it is a high-wire act to invite your audience to revel in the gender and racial stereotypes you purport to be interrogating. GLOW does both, usually at the same time, and there is – as the characters know all too well – a cost. Brie remains the best thing about GLOW, with her tenacity, smarts and ability to pull off a topless scene that is radical, sweet and hilarious, and gleefully dispenses with the male gaze. And unfortunately for our easily eclipsed Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling the date of an even more historic event: the live televised launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger, which as we know, Watch the trailer for series three of GLOW. There's a 50-50 Chance We Really Are Living in a Simulation, Scientific Study Determines Sinister Is the Scariest Movie Ever, 5 Truly Twisted Horror Movies Worth Watching (Once), 19 Weird New Facts We Learned About Star Wars, Who Is Kindred? © 2020 Collider Cryptomedia, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This means there is less wrestling, which might bother some fans, but I prefer the off-stage drama. But there’s still plenty to enjoy and revel in. GLOW season 3 is a show about women’s bodies as it’s always been a show about women’s bodies, but here the beauty seems to lie how far they’ll bend before they break. Later, when suggesting how to work the tragedy into the ring – because, you know, the show must go on, and this is Vegas after all – director Sam Sylvia calls out her motive: “So you made fun of national heroes as they plunged to their deaths. Millions watched as the space shuttle exploded 73 seconds after lift-off. It’s a great opener; not so much close to the bone as gnawing on it in a leotard. Surprisingly, this lends an almost locked-house horror vibe to the whole thing; it’s like The Shining but with roughly 1000 times the amount of sequins. Trapped in a neverending Sin City fever dream, they’re forced to either succumb to boredom and vice, deal with each other, or deal with their own shit, each option more terrifying than the last. He’s not even gambling … in Vegas! “This is a show about women’s bodies,” Alison Brie told me in 2017, just prior to GLOW‘s debut on Netflix, back when it was just Liz Flahive and Carly Mensch‘s comedy about a cult pro-wrestling company from the 1980s and before anyone knew it would become the best original series on Netflix. Sometimes I feel ready for the lights to go down. It was described as the “world’s worst space disaster”, as well as an allegory for American hubris in which the most powerful country in the world flexed its technological muscles with catastrophic results. ‘The Mandalorian’: New Season 2 Footage Teases More Bounty Hunter Badassery, How the Original ‘Back to the Future’ Ending Inspired ‘Indiana Jones 4’, ‘The Batman’ Is Using ‘The Mandalorian’ Technology for Select Scenes, Why ‘Back to the Future 4’ Won’t Happen, According to Co-Writer Bob Gale. A review of the third season of GLOW, the Netflix series about the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling starring Alison Brie and Betty Gilpin. But the fun of season 3 is an exhausted fun, the performative fun of a celebrity on a 6 A.M. talk show. Sometimes I salute its slipperiness. So this is the highly metaphorical moment in which season three of the Netflix show GLOW opens – with, naturally, less cold war analysis and more tasteless jokes. Also Sam, who was gloriously awful as the angry, washed-up, sexist cokehead B-movie director for two seasons is now way too nice. Of course, even that involves a character falling apart in a match against himself. (Sam’s deadpan-as-hell “fuck, I feel like I’m on acid” is a line that pretty much only Marc Maron could make funny.) The very first scene, actually, which sees Brie’s Ruth Wilder and Betty Gilpin‘s Debbie Egan in full Zoya the Destroyer and Liberty Belle regalia on public access TV to promote the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling, an interview that coincides with…the tragic 1986 launch of the U.S. GLOW season three review – gleeful, outrageous and dialling up the camp . All seven astronauts died. GLOW's third season drops its characters in the oasis, and stasis, of Las Vegas lodging and longing. This isn’t to say GLOW season 3 is all a downer. ‘The Trial of the Chicago 7’ Review: Aaron Sorkin Gets into the Messy Politics of Protest, ‘Lupin III: The First’ Review: The Classic Anime Aesthetic Is Transformed For 3D, 'David Byrne's American Utopia' Review: It's Time to Start Making Sense, I Was Not Emotionally Prepared for ‘The West Wing’ Special on HBO Max, 'John Bronco' Review: Walton Goggins' Mockumentary Is More Effective as a Car Commercial. The risk, always, is that you end up perpetuating them. Spider-Man's Newest Nemesis Revealed, Life Finds a Way ... to Keep Turning Various Species Into Crabs, PlayStation Releases Free Black Lives Matter Theme for PS4, The Walking Dead: World Beyond Episode 2 Review, Fear the Walking Dead Season 6 Premiere Review, Things Ghost of Tsushima Doesn't Tell You. The heightened world of pro wrestling vs. the ground-level trials and tribulations of, well, the actual world. You feel guilty. We encourage you to read our updated PRIVACY POLICY and COOKIE POLICY. “It’s probably pretend, like your Ronald Reagan Star Wars,” riffs Zoya the Destroyer, AKA Alison Brie’s Ruth Wilder in a live promo before the show. There’s more internal strife, more general tension and less narrative cohesion. Opening night of the spanking new, still playing-to-the-cheap-seats GLOW live stage show. There, they'll either flourish or flounder. Everyone is falling apart here, physically, mentally, pretty much everywhere but under the ring lights. This season is markedly different in content rather than tone, while dialling up the camp and, more seriously, queer volume to Liberace levels in the move from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. In scenes like this, GLOW can still light up the room, and the heart, like no other series of its kind. This has never been truer—both the thing about the bodies and the thing about it being the best—than in the series’ fantastic third season, which serves as the literal and metaphorical breakdown that comes with throwing your body at a mat for two seasons straight. Arthie Premkumar (Sunita Mani) has to close-quarters navigate her first romantic relationship with another woman, Yolanda Rives (Shakira Barrera), a beautiful little subplot about the contradiction of a person who gets grappled around a ring for a living but is tentative to be touched outside of it. There’s more off-mat drama and Geena Davis as an ex-showgirl to prove that the ladies of wrestling still light up a room – and our hearts, Last modified on Fri 9 Aug 2019 13.44 BST. A B-plot involving gambling debt that feels like it’s about to go full Joe Pesci in Casino is revolved over roughly two scenes. Gilpin was nominated for an Emmy with GLOW‘s first two seasons and here’s to hoping third time’s the charm. Las Vegas, 28 January 1986. “He’ll leave when he’s hungry,” she says. COLLIDER participates in various affiliate marketing programs, which means COLLIDER gets paid commissions on purchases made through our links to retailer sites. One of the funniest bits of the season sees Debbie bring a juggler from the casino up to her room then forget he’s there. GLOW Season Three isn’t as joyous, overall, as its second. ... GLOW will always be a show that understands femininity in a way few others do, and is often a pop-filled good time. If the season does have a downside, it’s that the writing team tries valiantly to give everyone in the cast a story, which means a good number of important beats fall flat for lack of time. And unfortunately for our easily eclipsed Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling the date of an even more historic event: the live televised launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger, which as we know ended in disaster. Its gleeful, outrageous, and Bechdel-test smashing tone may be perfectly suited to our times but – and I say this as a brown girl who grew up in the 1980s – we simply did not talk like that about racism, sexism, homophobia and, well, our feelings back then. – a hot tub. What more toxic place to try and live artificial lives than Las Vegas, probably the most artificial place on Earth? Opening night of the spanking new, still playing-to-the-cheap-seats GLOW live stage show. Which in GLOW, beneath the legwarmers, they usually are.