- DB
TV Review | GLOW | Season 1, Episode 6 | "This is One of Those Moments"
Episode Summary: Sam searches for the perfect ‘heel’ to fight Debbie, but she’s tough to please. To hone her act, Ruth tags along with Gregory to a family function.
After looking like the show was trending upwards in quality over the last few episodes, it's back down to earth with a bump this time out with a ho-hum episode that isn't good or bad, it's just kind of there - we knew things were going to turn out how this episode ends, so why make us sit through half an hour of filler?
The episode starts with Sam is setting up the camera outside the ring at the training facility as Ruth arrives, still doing a Russian accent, followed soon after by Debbie. Sam tries to sell the latter on the angle with Ruth committing to the role in and out of the ring, but Debbie still refuses to work with her – so Sam gives Ruth the day off and she decides to work on her character. A strange scene with how the previous episode ended by spelling out exactly what's going to happen at the end of this episode anyway.
Regardless, Ruth is determined to improve and goes to see Gregory, the Russian motel manager, convincing him to take her to a family function he is headed to. It turns out to be a bris for his nephew Michael, a chess champion recently arrived from the USSR.
She ends up enjoying herself a little too much, prompting Gregory to tell her she keeps asking stupid questions rather than taking them seriously as a people. Ruth eventually brings up Yentl, which is overheard by Michael - he then demands that she sings as he is a big fan of Barbara Streisand and Ruth is all too happy to oblige.
While I do enjoy watching Alison Brie, this entire section can't help but feel a little purposeless right now unless one of the Russian characters proves to be important later on in the season.
While this was going on, Debbie is getting paired up with a number of the other girls, but there's always some issue stopping her from agreeing to be matched up against them - Tammé is too good as Welfare Queen and gets the others cheering for her over the 'face' Liberty Belle, Sheila is too weird and refuses to do anything, and Debbie is injured by the girl from who she stole the Liberty Belle gimmick. Again, we're back to the injured party being portrayed as the victim - it's a little weird, but it definitely works to keep the central character of Ruth as an audience favourite.
Sam points out she's too picky and that Ruth would be the perfect opponent for her, but Debbie continues to refuse until the former shows up drunk from Gregory's family function now playing a stereotypical Jewish character wanting to fight Arthie's terrorist character.
This finally prompts Debbie to fully embrace the Liberty Belle gimmick and challenge Ruth, who gladly switches back to the Soviet persona and the two actually work well together even though Ruth has to run off and be sick at the end because of the vodka from earlier. It's a fun scene, but - again - there's no reason for it to take an entire episode to get to this point.
The last story thread for the episode involves Justine, who seems to be growing obsessed with Sam's work as a filmmaker. She argues with her boyfriend, seems jealous of Rhonda who thinks that Sam wants her to star in his next film, and possibly envious of those two sleeping together.
Hell, she even calls him out on it and says that he's a sellout for making a wrestling show and sleeping with one of the girls involved rather than continuing to make movies. Justine's final action in the episode is to steal Sam's video camera, although we don't know why just yet - then again, we don't know why she's so bothered about Sam's career either. Hopefully this will get explained in future episodes.
"This is One of Those Moments" is a slip in form for GLOW, with a central story-line that appears to be completely redundant based on how the previous episode ended. Even if the subplots with Gregory and Justine do eventually lead somewhere later on, they're not introduced that well here and I was almost glad the episode was over because so little happened. I can't fault the character work or the acting standard, but unless something happens later on, it feels like you could skip this episode and not even notice.
