GLOW Season 2 Recap
Credit: GLOW season 2 – Erica Parise – Netflix
Episode 6: Work the Leg
“Work the Leg” speaks to the very last scene of this episode, which we’ll get to in a little bit.
It’s driving Sam and Bash nuts not knowing why GLOW is getting the shaft by the network. They storm the office to try to get answers and find out that a men’s wrestling show is replacing them.
Their answer is to intensify their moves to be more competitive with the men’s show. Carmen and Cherry study men’s wrestling and teach the girls how to execute them. The result is nothing short of ‘80s magic. They even accompany the training montage with Frank Stallone’s “Far from Over,” first featured in Saturday Night Fever’s less-epic sequel, Staying Alive.
One thing standing in the girls’ ways is their own issues with each other. Everyone is fighting; Debbie and Ruth for obvious reasons, Melanie and Jenny over a man, and Stacey and Dawn with Arthie over stealing ideas. Carmen snaps everyone out of their pettiness and reminds them that men don’t have issues like this because they shut up and do their jobs. They don’t talk about their feelings. I love Carmen!
In other news, Sam and Ruth finally made up.
Justine invites Ruth to a showing of Sam’s early work Gina the Mechina. When Ruth shows up, it seems as if Sam is annoyed, mainly because Ruth is hesitant about sitting with him. But he finally “apologizes” by admitting that he’s an insecure old man and gets defensive.
He wants whatever is attached to his name to be amazing. That’s why he’s so mad about the network canning GLOW. He saw it as perfect and can’t understand what happened.
Ruth tells Sam what happened with Tom, and his reaction is the exact opposite of Debbie’s. He’s relieved he didn’t do anything wrong, but pissed – so much so, he breaks Tom’s windshield.
Just when the girls are making leaps forward in the ring, Debbie takes setbacks in her personal life.
She finds out Mark is sleeping with his secretary, Susan, the one who called asking about their mattress, by running into them while they have the baby. She walks away from the conversation, clearly crushed.
Sam is supportive and gives her a drink and a cigarette when she arrives anguished.
She finds his cocaine and takes a snort. Debbie’s downward spiral ends with her breaking Ruth’s leg in the ring. I can still hear the crunch!