Follow TV Tropes

Following

YMMV / GLOW (2017)

Go To


  • Awesome Music: Just like fellow '80s-set Netflix series Stranger Things, the show is jam-packed with great songs from the era with standouts like "Separate Ways", "Head Over Heels", "Dare", and "Invincible".
  • Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: An episode ends with the shocking reveal that Debbie has become bulimic. This never comes up again. Nor is the time she tried cocaine, despite it having an effect on the story.
  • Crosses the Line Twice:
    • The tag-team match from "Live Studio Audience", with Dawn and Stacey in KKK outfits.
    • Sam snorting coke off a framed portrait of Ronald and Nancy Reagan.
    • The way Sam tries pitching the show may be the most funny-terrible line of the first season.
      Sam: Porn you can watch with your kids — finally!
    • All the characters they play, particularly the more outlandishly offensive ones, with the exception of Carmen and Melrose since they mostly just play themselves.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse:
    • Sam is very popular, thanks to being a great Deadpan Snarker and Jerk with a Heart of Gold.
    • Carmen, due to being a non-stereotypical plus size woman who is neither just the best friend, a grotesque, a one-dimensional fat joke, or stupid.
    • Bash, especially in Season 2, due to his many hilarious lines and the fact that he's very supportive and open to the girls' suggestions.
    • Gregory, the Russian manager of the motel the girls stay at. He has a number of hilarious one-liners and the scene where he brings Ruth to his nephew's bris is wall to wall hilarious.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: Annabella Sciorra's performance as Justine's mother in Season 2 marked the second consecutive week a Netflix series was released in which she plays a character named Rosalie, the first being Rosalie Carbone in Luke Cage.
  • Never Live It Down:
    • Ruth sleeping with Mark, for good reason.
    • Debbie more or less telling Ruth she should have let the network head rape her to keep the show going.
    • Sam trying to kiss his own daughter - although he didn't know at the time that she was his daughter, he did suspect she was underage and didn't seem to have much problem with that, so it was gross on multiple levels.
  • One-Scene Wonder:
    • Steel Horse (played by real-life wrestler Kevin "Alex Riley" Kiley), who rocks Debbie's world and gives her some much-needed advice about how every face needs a great heel, and how wrestlers don't have to like each other to be great ring partners.
    • Real-life wrestler and GLOW trainer Chavo Guerrero Jr. playing "El Chico Guapo", tag-team partner and manager to Kurt Jackson. He manages to be hammy, serious, get a great costume, and show off his legendary ring skills (including his signature backflip and a very Eddie-esque splash) in an impromptu intergender match with Debbie.
  • Squick:
    • Jenny assisting Melrose with her enema.
    • We get a quite nauseating close-up shot of Ruth's broken ankle in Season 2.
  • Strangled by the Red String: Sam's declaration of love to Ruth, and especially her later declaration to him, drops in from pretty much out of nowhere. While it's always suggested that Sam was oddly fond of Ruth and cut her far more slack than the others, even while criticising her, for most of seasons 1 and 2 their relationship shows little personal spark beyond friendship. When he finally makes a move on her at the end of season 2, she recoils in horror and flees right into Russell's arms, reigniting their stumbling romance. But the next season when Sam confesses love, suddenly Ruth is excited and shares his feelings? The show does heavily imply, at least on Ruth's side, that their attraction is mostly based on their mutual loneliness and would not work even short-term.

Top