- DB
TV Review | GLOW | Season 1, Episode 3 | "The Wrath of Kuntar"
Episode Summary: Sam’s flashy young producer drops in and whisks the girls off to Malibu to party. But artistic differences soon threaten to spoil the fun.
GLOW gets back on track this time with a far more entertaining episode than "Slouch. Submit.", even if the story continues to creep forward at a snail's pace. It helps that there’s a new character in the wrestling show’s producer, Bash, and his ‘butler’, Flor, but it also helps that Alison Brie’s Ruth gets more screen time.
The show opens with Sam working at his typewriter when his ex(?)-wife shows up to claim their dog. He claims it was killed after being hit by a car, but the dog barks from behind a door and is taken away, showing us that Sam doesn’t really get on well with women in general.
The next day, he heads to the training centre to discover that GLOW’s producer, Bash, has arrived and is charming the women with stories of his wealthy, high-profile lifestyle. Wanting to just get on with the show, Sam hands out the script he had been writing the night before and gets to work.
He makes Ruth read out stage directions while the other women practice their roles, to Bash’s annoyance at the lack of wrestling and a complex story – with Ruth finally being given the role of Kuntar (pronounced exactly how you think it is).
Bored and irritated at the lack of action, Bash invites the girls to party with him in Malibu, flying off in his helicopter with Debbie, with Ruth only reluctantly going along, and Cherry upset with Sam for not being given a role.
The action moves to Bash’s large house and the girls start to party, with Melrose discovering drugs hidden in the robot that looks and sounds like it came right out of Rocky III and meeting his butler, Flor, who is eager to please Bash, but exasperated by the behaviour of the women.
Sam finally arrives, having enjoyed his trip with Justine (a very funny Britt Baron) apparently a huge fan of his previous writing work – and meets with Bash, who tells Sam that he wants a simpler wrestling show rather than what Sam made.
Bash then hands out costumes for the girls to try on, which they love doing, while Debbie drunkenly chats with Flor, revealing how much she’s struggling to pretend she’s doing okay, so he gets Ruth to help put her in a cab home.
It’ll be interesting to see if Debbie remembers that her ex-best friend happened to be the one to get her sent home from the party - even though she's the injured party, she's definitely proving hard to sympathise with.
The dressed-up girls arrive, with Bash proving to be offensive to all the non-Caucasian women and wanting the girls to be stereotypes – although Ruth insists that she is Kuntar, defending the role Sam wrote for her. Sam and Bash argue, with Sam storming out and Ruth talking him into going back.
The two guys talk, with Sam agreeing to compromise and do the show the way Bash wants if Bash reads his movie script – to Sam’s delighted surprise, Bash instantly agrees to make it without reading the script.
The final sequence involves the ladies taking turns trying out their new, simpler personas on camera – mostly playing stereotypes even if not all of them are happy about it, especially with Debbie stealing the role of athletic champion Liberty Belle from one of the other women.
The scene and episode ends with Ruth’s character as ‘The Homewrecker’ not quite working out, with her unsure how to answer when Sam asks her who she thinks her character is.
"The Wrath of Kuntar" is a much better episode that was helped by more Alison Brie on-screen. Her character has by far and away the most depth of any of the women, and is still sympathetic despite her actions in the past with Debbie being portrayed as the aggressor of the two, and definitely the more selfish and egotistical. Regardless, here’s hoping that GLOW is now on an upwards swing and continues to get better.
