"GLOW," Year Three

Spoilers ahead for the first two seasons.

"GLOW" goes to Las Vegas in season three, which is not as exciting as it sounds, especially as they're stuck there for several months and quickly get bored with the routine of performing the same stage show for the Fan-Tan hotel/casino night after night. There are several new relationships and storylines that spring up, as well as advancements on existing ones. Ruth is still seeing Russell (Victor Quinaz), but is also getting closer to Sam. Debbie finds the long commute from L.A. intolerable, but starts dating a man named Tex (Toby Huss). Cherry and Keith (Bashir Salahuddin) are trying for a baby. Rhonda and Bash are settling into married life, but run into several unresolved issues.

This is all very watchable, but there's no getting away from the fact that the pace of the show is slowed way, way down, and the atmosphere has changed considerably. This is no longer a story of plucky underdogs struggling for survival, but about what happens when the characters achieve a small measure of success, and are forced to pause their lives for long enough to confront some of the issues that they've left on the back burner. Ruth's real dilemma this season is trying to figure out how to still pursue her dream of being a serious actress. And this is pretty tedious and not handled in the best way. Debbie, Sam, and Bash have better storylines, fortunately, but they're all rather slow-moving and melodramatic. There's a noticeable deficit in the action and humor that made the first two seasons feel so exhilarating. The wrestling has been cut to nearly nothing. There's no more suspense over how the show is going to work, because the show is the same every night - albeit with a few variations for special occasions.

What's worse is that the extended ensemble cast gets neglected. There are a few bright spots, like Sheila taking acting classes and Cherry questioning the prospect of motherhood, but otherwise the little side plots and arcs are mostly a bust. Tamme's situation has a lot of potential, when injuries threaten her ability to keep wrestling, but we spend far too little time with her, and the idea doesn't really get developed well. Carmen's frustrations boil over in the last episode, but her solution doesn't really jive with what she's been doing for the rest of the season. I'm also not a fan of how the show handles some issues like Jenny's background and Arthie embracing an LGBT identity. I'm glad the show is promoting more diverse stories, but they push a little too hard on the messaging this year. One episode features an actual hate crime, which has little to no impact on anyone except Arthie.

There's one new major character, Sandy (Geena Davis), the entertainment director of the Fan-Tan. She's not very interesting and doesn't get much to do that justifies the stunt casting. The Las Vegas setting in general is on the lackluster side. Understandably, the show couldn't afford a full '80s recreation of the Strip, so we're stuck mostly at the Fan-Tan and a few peripheral locations. An awful lot of this season is set in hotel rooms again. I do like seeing the less glamorous side of Vegas as experienced by the workers, and the sense of being trapped in one place for too long. In addition, Vegas has a reputation for being out of the normal flow of things, where it's difficult to keep track of seasons and the passage of time. Attempts to break up the season with hiking trips and holiday specials can only do so much. And there are no formal experiments remotely like the episode-within-an-episode show again.

There's only one season left of "GLOW," and I think that's for the best. Even if the Vegas episodes turn out to be only a detour in the show's quality rather than a real decline, we're clearly getting to the point where some of these characters' stories are reaching some logical endpoints. The third season of "GLOW" was more of a disappointment a than failure - there are still two or three very strong episodes and the Bash and Rhonda storyline is excellent - but it's pretty well stymied my enthusiasm for the show.

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