Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling mastermind and financier Bash (Chris Lowell) has had his allowance cut by his rich mother Birdie (Elizabeth Perkins) who is alarmed by how much money he has spent in but a few short months. She becomes outraged when she finds out that it has been bankrolling a women's wrestling promotion. She'd be considerably more outraged if she knew how much out of that he was spending on hard drugs.
Bash, his director Sam Sylvia (Marc Maron), and the women of GLOW are left with a $9,000 shortfall in booking the venue for the next event. They hatch various schemes including a bikini car-wash to finance and keep the show going.
One scheme involves them gatecrashing Birdie's fundraiser against crack use, and pretending to be former crack addicts who took up wrestling as a way out of the drug scene. Each gives a laughable but nevertheless convincing testimonial before they ask for donations.
Ruth Wilder (Alison Brie) who wrestles as "Zoya the Destroya" uses the moment to make apology for her affair with her best friend's husband via an ambiguously worded pitch of contrition for an event which she says happened because she was under the influence. The best friend whose husband she jumped is of course Debbie Eagen (Betty Gilpin) - a fellow out-of-work actress who became a pro wrestler for GLOW. Debbie watches the semi-apology from across the room.
Sam brought cocaine. Sam thought he would have a good time. Sam did not have a good time. Sam found out that someone already made a movie out of an idea he thought was uniquely his. Then Sam tried to seduce wrestler Justine (Britt Baron) a woman young enough to be his daughter. The resultant surprise has lingering effects on him and consequently upon the production.
We see these characters try to scam money out of philanthropists which should be appalling. But after having seen them attempt to make money off a bikini car-wash their desperation to do go on with the show is readily apparent. Because of that it somehow seems less bad particularly when they have each shown how much they really are in need of a break if only so they can see what that is like.
Every one of the quirky characters on this extremely well-written comedy is likable. But the breakout stars are sure to be Jackie Tohn who plays party-girl Melrose, and Marc Maron as the lovably skeevy show director Sam.
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