We hit the midpoint of the season with Sam Sylvia’s dream match slowly becoming a reality as Debbie (Liberty Belle) now has a perfect foil in Ruth’s Soviet sympathizer. The only problem is that Debbie isn’t particularly fond of the idea of working with the former best friend that boinked her husband.
The affair between Ruth and Mark still doesn’t seem to make much sense, though. Ruth is mousy and sweet, while Debbie – as we saw in her scene with Steel Horse in episode 5 – is bombastic and sexually aggressive. Even with a newborn causing libidos to lag, Mark’s tryst with Ruth and his subsequent unsolicited confession to his bombshell wife is perhaps the most unrealistic aspect of the series.
“You are a bright shining star,” Sylvia says, attempting to sell Debbie on a program with Ruth. “She is a dirty, nasty, stepped in dogshit heel.”
Still, Debbie refuses to work with Ruth and demands that Sam finds her a better opponent. Sam sends Ruth home while he tries pairing the former soap opera actress with other adversaries, with no success. Tamme “The Welfare Queen” (played by “Awesome Kong” Kia Stevens) thoroughly upstages Debbie, accidentally winning over the crowd and causing Debbie to walk out of the ring.
“The Mad Bomber,” “She-Wolf,” and “Vicky the Viking” also prove to be lousy foils for Debbie, who struggles to make her All-American girl click.
“Get over it,” Sylvia says to Debbie, encouraging her to put her bad blood with Ruth aside for the good of the program. “You still have to wake up and be a professional. You can’t just do coke and piss away all your money and screw people named after liquors. What happens then?”
“You end up here?” Debbie asks.
“You end up here,” Sylvia agrees.
Meanwhile, Ruth convinces the Russian manager of the Dusty Spur hotel to bring her to a party so she can interact with his family and further develop her Russian persona. Ruth manages to inadvertently offense the party guests with her hacky accent and stereotypical takes on Russian culture, until she wins them over by performing a song from Yentl.
Ruth returns to the gym, intent on portraying an orthodox Jewish character, but Debbie steps in and calls out “Zoya the Destroya.” The two have a brief lock-up in the ring and the chemistry is obvious. GLOW has its first main event.
Justine, Sam’s starry-eyed fan, has become disgruntled after learning that the director is sleeping with “Brittanica,” accusing him of using GLOW as his “personal casting couch.” As the episode ends, she steals Sam’s video camera out of his locker as the screen goes to black.
