Glow Season 3 Review

August 2, 2019 at 7:05pm
By Jason Stettner

Glow (gorgeous ladies of wrestling) is back for its third season, and things have changed quite a bit. We now find the girls in Las Vegas, growing the show in new ways as they aim to make a mark in this city of events. Things have changed, there’s now a straight forward repetitive play of their show and it’s starting to fatigue the crew in many ways. Ruth (Alison Brie) continues to struggle with various issues, as does Debbie (Betty Glipin) who just wants to be with her kid.

There are other bits of drama going on as well, and this felt like the most segmented season yet. Sam (Marc Maron) was basically absent for half the season with a minimal excuse to hide the character away, and it felt like it just drifted along. There wasn’t a whole lot of a purpose this time around, and the stories felt minimal. It was still entertaining to watch, but at the same time not as interesting. Just like the fatigue of the team, I too wasn’t entirely into this one and getting tired of it.

The change of the scenery was neat, but not entirely used well enough. There are some big changes, but at the same time I’m not sure there was a central goal here for anything. The other seasons felt like they had to prove something, and here it was just the girls doing various side activities outside of their apparently boring wrestling show. It seemed like the wrestling really didn’t matter all that much this time around.

The acting was once again excellent here, they’ve got a great cast. That cast did however seem rather busy. Many keys characters vanished for large stretches of this and they somewhat made it work. You could really get a sense of personalities missing, and them just trying to make it all cohesive.

With even more characters being shuffled, or vanishing, I feel there might be even more issues going forward. There was some nice growth for various characters, and some rather interesting turns. It still didn’t quite deliver on being something that pushes this show too far forward. I’m not sure where they really go from here, it seems like wrestling would continue to be less important. There were some neat theatrics, and the atmosphere of Vegas at the time was fun to see.

The Conclusion

Glow Season 3 stumbles and has a hard time keeping the cast together, which makes this feel stretched too thin. The characters were always off doing their own thing when the original power of this series was the ensemble, and their work on becoming a crew of wrestlers. The wrestling, and the promotion around that really felt entirely minimal here.

It didn’t come across as important and while I get the concept they hammered in about it being repetitive, that still is part of what makes this show interesting. With such a split up cast you get fewer strong moments between key characters, and by the end it seems like they won’t meet each other again. There are some weird side tales that don’t necessarily help the overall tale, and it just didn’t have the same hook as past seasons. It’s still good to watch as the characters are great, but it certainly didn’t carry the same spark it did previously.

Glow Season 3 Review at Home with Streamed Viewing
Screening was Provided by Netflix

Rating Overall: 6.2