GLOW Episode 6 "This is One of Those Moments"

Chris: Debbie is still coming to grips that she needs to work with Ruth sooner than later which is finally somewhat accepted by the end of the episode. At the beginning, when Ruth is going over her ideas, I honestly thought it was just gonna be another silly awkward Ruth moment but by the end, I was actually impressed the performance along with the self-bumps. Honestly, it looks like Debbie is still struggling to fully commit to this whole silly wrestling thing and yet is intimidated by Ruth’s willingness to go all-in but uses the “sleeping with her husband” thing as an excuse to get out of the room. And then whatever good heel character work Ruth had at the beginning of the episode, it feels almost undone by the time she gets back from the Russian brisk. And you can always tell when a wrestler is in their comfort zone, case in point, Kia Stevens. She’s been wrestling her whole adult life and she’s been holding her own in this show but there’s times where you lines don’t feel quite right but when she’s portraying the Welfare Queen inside the ring, the lines are delivered so much better right before she’s about to destroy whoever she’s in the ring with. And to think WWE was about to use her as an almost silent monster, how could you not try to capitalize on that much personality?

Joel: There is not as much wrestling that takes place in this episode. A large chunk of it is spent with Ruth, away from the other wrestlers as she tries to do some character work on her Russian villain. Ruth spends the episode with the only Russian person she knows, Gregory who works at the hotel, and this does give us a nice little bit of contrasting real life with Ruth’s broad, stereotype character, though it’s not anything where “lessons are learned.”

Meanwhile back in the ring, Sam and Debbie are trying to find a main heel to compete against Debbie’s all American American character. The obvious choice would be Ruth’s Russian character, but Debbie won’t work with her for previously stated reasons, so we have a sequence of Debbie trying to mesh with another one of the characters. We get a great bit here where Debbie tries out Liberty Bell against The Welfare Queen who ends up being far more charismatic, far more comfortable in her character and ends up getting the cheers over Liberty Bell. Some of the most well loved heroes in wrestling were characters that were meant to be heels, but charisma and charm can take you a long way. (The Rock is a perfect example of this.) It doesn’t always work to try and force the audience to cheer who you want them to cheer and boo who you want them to boo. If the audience cheers for you, then for that match at least, you’re the face.

Debbie’s attempts to find a main heel reveals something you see time and again throughout wrestling history. There are some instances where a feud between two certain wrestlers just won’t work. It might be because their characters are natural opponents, or their ring styles don’t mesh or a hundred other different reasons. And it doesn’t mean anything negative about the wrestlers. You can have two fantastically talented wrestlers who for whatever reason, can’t seem to pull off a good match with each other.  They could both be great when facing anyone else on the roster, but when it comes to facing each other, for whatever reason it comes off as stale. But on the flip side of that, you can have two wrestlers who work so well together that they’re able to create magic in the ring. Wrestlers whose chemistry works, wrestlers with characters with conflicting ideologies, wrestlers who just work well together. When Debbie and Ruth finally lock up, you can see that almost immediately. Skill wise, they may still have a long way to go, but in just a few seconds, you can see that these two will work well together. They will each be able to make the other look great, and when you find that in wrestling you hang on to it tight.

Alexa: Now that Ruth has finally established a wrestling persona, she sets out to develop her Zoya the Destroya character. Naturally she turns to the only actual Russian person she knows - Gregory the hotel manager - and invites herself to his cousin’s bris for research. Many of the GLOW in-ring characters toe a fine line between offensive and satirical (see Welfare Queen, Beirut the Mad Bomber, etc.), often leaning into them as much as lampooning them. Ruth falls into the same trap when crafting Zoya. Gregory offers an alternate perspective to some Americans’ Cold War-tinged view of Russians, sharing the hardships his family experienced back home because of their Jewish faith. Ruth’s impersonations initially rely heavily on generalizations, and even after her day with Gregory she still crafts Zoya in broad strokes, but she gleans enough from the experience to create the perfect heel for Debbie. Some of the other ladies find a few minutes in the spotlight during this episode as each tries out to be Debbie’s opponent. And something is definitely off about Justine and her mounting obsession with Sam, which I’m sure we’ll dive into more thoroughly in the coming episodes.