Review of Mother of All Matches

Unlike the real life story of the 1980's female wrestling league known as "GLOW", this television series of the same name produced by Netflix, mostly focus on the fictional story of Ruth Wilder (Alison Brie) a struggling actress trying to capture fame by performing in a weekly series about female wrestlers. However, in this Season 2, episode 4, entitled 'Mother of All Matches', Ruth's singlehood career story takes a backseat, in order to tell the two of the biggest supporting characters in the show, Tamme Dawson (Kia Stevens) & Debbie Eagan (Betty Gilpin)'s family related stories; which also happen to fall upon, the same day of their big title match is supposed to aired. Without spoiling the episode directed by Mark Burley & John Cameron Mitchell too much, the show faithfully presents the fact that a lot of the gimmicks and characters in wrestling in the '80s were based on stereotypes that would be considered incredibly tacky and racist by modern standards, but were considered acceptable targets at the time, even if it's not true. The show also takes a closer look at how the wrestlers cope with playing these controversial reprehensible villains characters, while showing highly flawed individuals struggling with playing the just heroes without degrading themselves. The writers including Kim Rosenstock, Liz Flahive, Carly Mensch & Marquita Robinson did this, by showing how much good intentions work even if it's exploitation; Tamme honestly is willing to do just to put her son Ernest (Eli Goree) through college. Because of that, you really do feel for her, despite her in-ring heel persona of being a lazy arrogant woman who abuse the welfare system. As for Debbie; her in ring character is supposed to be the all-American humble good housekeeping wife, but outside of the show, her home life is a total wreck due to a recent divorce. That yard sale scene where she goes off on a potential buyer of a picture frame due to the woman pointing out that her son's face resemble her ex-husband Mark (Rich Sommer). You really do see her despair through Betty Gilipin's acting. Debbie really did think that getting rid of the past things would help her child. I like how near the end credits, it reveal that the yard sale crisis really didn't. While, in other Season 2 episodes, you might hate Debbie for her aggressive quest for more power & fame. By the end of this one, you really do feel a lot of pity for her. You see this, during the small chitchat exchange on motherhood between the two characters backstage before their big fight. In the end, both actresses really made this wonderful character study episode so extraordinary with their performance. Especially real life pro wrestler Kia Stevens who is not as well known for her acting. After all, she was best known for only playing silent monster heel characters like Awesome Kong in Total Non-Stop Action/Impact Wrestling. Who knew that she had this amazing acting range!? Her body & facial expressions were spot on, whenever her character has tell the expose the truth, waiting for the so-called disapproval reaction from her son or trying to hold it together in the ring when the crowd is booing her. It's suspenseful and emotional. As for the wrestling action, the in ring clash between their characters live up to the over the top cartoony epic hype from the opening moments of the episode. The seasonal stunt work from Stevens, along with the amateurism other performance from the other actresses were still well choreograph. Much better than any real-life GLOW match up. You can tell that Betty's stunt work really has improve since the first season. I also dig the Meta climax of the match as it calls back to the beginning of the episode when Dawson visit the drive thru window. Even the on the call 'save face time' daughter kidnapping storyline was somewhat interesting to watch, even if it's highly borderline insane and unrealistic. Nevertheless, one thing that I really didn't found this episode good at, was making me laugh. None of the jokes throughout it, were not that funny. Honestly to tell you the truth. Most of them like the joke about everybody in the college mistaking Ernest for another black student and the whole yard sale happy montage felt somewhat jarring upsetting to view. Overall: Even with the lack of comedy and absence of the majority of the cast, this episode is decent enough to take home to your mother. It's worth watching.