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GLOW

starring: Alison Brie, Betty Gilpin, Sydelle Noel, Jackie Tohn, Kia Stevens, Gayle Rankin, Ellen Wong, Kate Nash, SO MANY OTHER WOMEN I'M SORRY IF I MISSED YOU, Marc Maron

created by: Liz Flahive (Homeland, Nurse Jackie) and Carly Mensch (Orange is the New Black, Nurse Jackie, Weeds)



It's not that it's hard to keep up with every indignity, every denigration of the office of the president, the human he's ostensibly addressing, twitter as a platform and verbal discourse in every single one of its forms. It's just that what I know now, five exhausting months (really, it's only been five fucking months) into the Trump "Administration," is this sharp point of pique this week, this violent eruption of molten revulsion that would have consumed whole any other previous American presidency, when we really pull all the way back, will end up having been an indistinguishable pimple among many, many, many inflamed and exploded others on the orangey buttock of the modern body politick.

Donald J. Trump, 45th president of the United States, has proved himself to be not only a sexist, but a petty, vindictive, hollow creature lacking any of the internal mental or emotional superstructure to withstand the slightest reproach, however distant. What I'm not saying is "hey, no big deal," because it is, objectively, and will continue to be, still objectively, a big fucking deal. It's never going to be "normal." But what it can't be anymore, to anyone really, is a surprise. Flailing, reflex misogynist. These are stipulated facts.

So it's possible to engage, and I begrudge no one their engagement, not at any level or in any particular direction. The likelihood of change resulting from the engagement, or even an evolution to a more thoughtful, multilateral engagement, seems remote the way theoretical trans-Plutonian ice worlds seem remote: a shadow of an echo hinted at by mathematical modeling, but unlikely ever to be observed by any human sense.

A better way to progress, I think, is to not play the game; to not concede that the gravity-sucking gas ball around which this detritus cloud of super-hot garbage swirls is actually at the center of whatever enterprise we all decide we're collectively about, like an anti-Copernican act of pure, concentrated will in defiance of the president-centric orbital model we've been adhering to since arguably 1789 but at the very least 1941. The modern Elagabalus can declare himself the Sun Incarnate if he wants, but that doesn't mean we have to look at him.

The right move is probably to acknowledge that, despite the sharp and painful setback to the progress of women in this country in the specific form of one person and to women in general as a gender in November of 2016, western societies do continue to move forward, if only incrementally, but still forward on the question of gender equality. It seems silly to focus on reflections in the popular culture ephemera when there are real people suffering and who need answers to real questions in desperately short order, but it's not impossible to stop and examine the former while acknowledging and maintaining the social and political primacy of the latter.

While I don't know that it solved much, I tend not to underplay the Wonder Woman phenomenon that is dominating a summer box office thus far dominated only by general indifference from a fickle audience. Arguments can be made about whether it has succeed because it's a female-dominated production or because it, unlike the most recent spate of DC Comics films, is not noisy, self-important, tone-deaf horseshit, but the point is it clearly hasn't failed merely because it's a movie with a female star and a female director.

If we need more evidence, we need to see what's happening in the wake of that particular red-and-gold comet. That brings us to GLOW, the new Netflix series that debuted last week.

To say the cast is female-heavy would be an understatement, and also probably interpreted as some kind of sub rosa weight crack about the women involved. You can see I'm treading into dangerous waters here.

The core creative team behind this show is also female, which is not as new as it sounds these days. People like Amy Sherman-Palladino and Shonda Rhimes are, while certainly not yet the norm, definitely full-fledged industries unto themselves, positions reserved for the Steven Bochco and David E. Kelley types in the past. I haven't seen Orange is the New Black as, after way too many years of HBO's craptacular* Oz, I've had about seventeen lifetimes' fill of prison-themed television.

I don't know how OITNB does it, but Oz was absolutely a show about men and masculinity, exploring what those boundaries were when those men were the most desperate AND had to shower together. So much goddamned shit went down in those showers, dude. Murder, boning, murder, boning, sometimes both at the same time. Every shower scene was potentially another snuff film.

GLOW is obviously not set in a prison, but it's in the 1980s where the imprisonment is more a metaphor and this time, all the inmates are chicks, man. Setting us back (in several meanings) three decades had the three-fold benefit of a) serving the source material, b) bringing a sheen of production value in the period setting and c) giving us a diachronic anchor to show us really how far we've come... and the ways in which we haven't.

There are moments and episodes where the feminist bona fides of the show seem to wobble (it can get a little dude-centric in places, putting Bechdel to the test), but it's carefully and expertly crafted in such a way as to remind you that melodrama is the point of all of it. As one character very pivotally puts it at one point when watching wrestling for the first time: "I get it! This is a soap opera! I know how to do that!" So what seems like a wobble is actually the brief shudder of biceps and pecs straining to complete another pushup. It's just this show building strength.

It also helped that the episodes were closer to 30 minutes than 60. It is technically a comedy, but character-based instead of gag-driven. The shorter time frame helps to crystallize and concentrate on the humor bits, letting them land between the heavier bits of introspection and growth (both of which do genuinely happen along the way, I'm happy to report).

Alison Brie is ostensibly the star, but the ensemble gets its chances to shine. When she's on screen though, it's definitely her awkward charisma that both drives the action and draws the eye. She started out in both Mad Men and Community so I'm convinced there's nothing she can't do. She's either going to be a tremendous multi-threat cross-platform media star or the most entertaining character actor of her generation. I'd be happy to see either.

Betty Gilpin is asked to do a bit more of the melodramatic heavy lifting, with higher highs and lower lows to hit, and it's a credit to her tremendous ability that she doesn't make it look easy. Watching her struggle kind of becomes the point as it's her character's progress that is most blatantly tied to the progress of the overarching plot.

And Marc Maron... I've been a fan for a while. I know as an interviewer and as a comedian he can be polarizing in his neediness, but holy shit, it turns out he can actually act. And I don't just mean "for a comedian," I mean he's legitimately great in this. I saw him get better over four years on his own show, but nothing really indicated that this was in the offing for him and it was great to see a seasoned comedic performer bring the tired pathos that sometimes only weary veteran stand-ups can bring.

The main takeaway is that, in 1985, a show like this doesn't get made, which is a testament to the fact the original GLOW--a show about cartoon versions of women hip-throwing other cartoon versions of women--ever got on the air. Hillary isn't president, but she did get more votes than the one we're stuck with, whom a vast majority of Americans respectfully and rightfully despise. The politics of the moment dominate the consciousness, as they rightfully should in many respects, but in a whole lot of other respects, we have the opportunity to simply drag the rug out from under it all while it stands there stamping its feet, a little more left and a little more left, just a few inches at a time.


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*I mean it was literally both crap and spectacular, all at once, often in the space of a single scene. Or even a line reading.