I’ll admit, I haven’t properly watched The Girlfriend, but I watched enough with my skimming, most especially the second half. My thoughts? (Not that anyone has asked)
(please note that terms like crazy, sociopath, and psychopath are used below, but please note I am in no way qualified to use them in any professional capacity. They are either echos of the show’s phrasing/sentiments or the only thing I could think of to say regarding the events.)
MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD
1 - Cherry is most definitely more the victim of the two. Even the part where she broke the glass on her own head, she had basically just experienced not only the realization that the man who claimed he loved her and wanted her wasn’t going to prioritize her over appearances AND that his mother was never going to stop herself. Laura was all “I’m not like you I’m not a violent person” when she literally had just pushed Cherry up against a pillar with a hand at her throat. What I find really interesting is the immediate aftermath. Cherry tries to leave Daniel. She’s speaking quietly to herself, not loud enough for him to hear, that she can’t do this. She checks her injury, not her appearance in the mirror. She realizes the darkness of the path she had strayed onto and that her mother may have been right that Cherry should try to stay away from “rich people.” Cherry has to be convinced to stay with Daniel. She really does try to do the healthy thing and remove Laura from her life, even though she loves Daniel. Is she fully upfront with Daniel about her part in Laura’s downfall? No but he also isn’t appreciating the amount of he’ll Cherry had to live through after Laura ruined her professional life so I’m not sure that really matters.
Cherry also clearly had a traumatic childhood in relation to her father and her mom is not any help in either direction. Cherry’s mom was functionally the reason Laura went off the deep end, by either trying to scare Laura off or vent her perspective of the truth.
Honestly? Idk what happened when kids took her toys in school but it sounds like the teachers/other adults didn’t do anything about it so Cherry did. A guy stood her up at a dance and she got revenge on him? Again idk what happened but doesn’t seem unreasonable to me. Losing about a dead dad? I mean, he’s basically dead to her so how much of a lie was that? Him being an architect was more of a fib but with her need to have her boyfriend’s parents like her I think it still makes sense. The ex? He went at her, she punched him (because yeah, man getting in your face, issuing threats, seems like a reasonable response to me - also wooooow self involved to think that she’s stalking you. That whole “the real Cherry”? Boiled my blood) and Laura never thought that a woman being verbally assaulted and physically manhandled maaaaaybe is not entirely the villain? Do I think the wedding business was too much? Kinda, that was a lot. Was it cathartic and hilarious? Kinda, especially with how she was immediately labeled “psycho” while everyone is laughing about it.
Cherry did lie to Daniel and people in general. Yes this was wrong. However her motivations made a lot of sense to me and I think if she had the opportunity to own up to any of them in a non hostile environment it would have been fine. If anything, her moments of (idk what word to use but sure) sociopathy seem to be more defensively triggered than offensively if that makes sense? Like she asked for reassurance and questions herself fairly regularly.
Her mother drove me a bit nuts. I’ll go into more as I go, but my gods she was classist in her efforts to protect Cherry. Also never managed to let Cherry forget her past for a minute no matter how well she was doing.
2 - Laura… is a mess. She’s simultaneously correct in concern regarding Cherry’s lies and past habits, but goes about things in the WORST ways possible. Likewise incredibly traumatized with the death of a child and thus swinging into an over protective controlling figure in her son’s life, Laura needs therapy the most out of everyone. Cherry may have impulse control issues when feeling angry/cornered, Laura appears to be delusional and without the ability to recognize the larger effects of things outside her son.
She also is less of a reliable narrator/perspective than Cherry. While Cherry’s view points generally seem to make sense to me, Laura’s seem to be fixated on Cherry as a sociopathic siren without possibility for other perspectives. There are things that Cherry says or does in Laura’s version that not only don’t make sense unless Cherry is obsessed with Laura or that have been witnessed by other people who would likely take issue if they were actually said/done. Laura so often seems to ready to believe every other narrative or story about Cherry than trying to connect with her.
Honestly I feel bad for Millie (the ex boyfriends new wife) who so clearly believes Nicolas’ version of events (potentially because it’s convenient) but I’m pretty sure there is a combo of toxic between him and Cherry. Plus, we know he threatens Cherry multiple times. Even then, Laura’s logic rarely makes consistent sense.
The thing that most clearly triggers Laura into craziness is Daniel’s near death. I mean he kinda does die for a minute there, but it seems to be the thing that sent her way off the edge. She steals Cherry’s mail, breaks into her socials, lies to everyone, basically kidnaps Daniel to Spain for his recovery, it’s all in extremes. I’ll touch on the main thing further down, but in the efforts of fairness, Laura doesn’t start quite as far in the extremes as she pivots into, but when she turned it was big and it was fast.
Laura is pretty much a stereotypical “boy mom” but one of the most frustrating things about her story is how there would be little confirmations of her paranoia so she felt justified continuing. The lies that Cherry told (where she went to school, misleading about art) were fairly innocuous when considering the economic class differences that so quickly influence people for or against each other, and Cherry wanted to make a good impression. That this could be Cherry’s only motivation was just never an option for Laura. Ironically, Cherry learned a lot from Laura - echoing back to Daniel’s early impressions of Laura and Cherry reminded him of each other - and if Laura had at any point been able to make room for Cherry to be part of her family life and plans, they would have been a terrifying pair together.
3 - Daniel would often be something of a spare part in the drama, but as he and his father make clear, they have their own feelings and baggage that they are dealing with. The picture perfect family life they were presenting was never fully real for any of them, and any serious girlfriend would likely have been some kind of catalyst to a break down. Would it have been this dramatic? Idk.
He is very inconsiderate re what he is and isn’t telling Cherry with family plans, past relationships, and so on which kinda pissed me off. I have to admit that I sympathized more and more with Cherry’s lies and manipulations as she was kept off kilter with Daniel’s lack of emotional maturity (due to his mother and his father not correcting).
I will say, upon further reflection, I don’t think Daniel’s final expression is entirely horror/fear/etc. I think there is also sorrow for Cherry. He listened to (what seems to be fairly obviously edited/cropped) audio of Cherry’s mother - who I would guess continued to refuse to be any part of Cherry’s life past the engagement party fall out - seemingly betraying her. Betraying or blaming Cherry for things in a reversal of what Laura did most of his life. While Laura was trying to fix and control things without Daniels knowledge, Cherry’s mom seemed to only ever be an alibi or tried to cover for Cherry. She didn’t try to understand Cherry so much as she tried to put Cherry into a box for a kind of life that Cherry neither wanted nor would have satisfied her. There’s no way to really know what Daniel really knows by the end of Cherry’s past, but I like to think that, coupled with some levels of horror etc. at the idea of Cherry maybe being a monster, Daniel felt true grief at how much their mothers had messed them up, which led to the death of his.
4 - Laura told Cherry Daniel was dead. Laura broke into Cherry’s socials and destroyed her life. Laura made her homeless. If Laura had arranged for a new job for Cherry abroad that would have worked better, instead she chose to drop a bomb in Cherry’s life. She chose maximum pain for Cherry - knowing little to nothing about her as a human as opposed to a two dimensional character - and Cherry calling her out for it is fully justified. This was the beginning of the final end for Laura, she just couldn’t understand it. I will say this though, Cherry was wrong. I’d say that Laura has the capacity to be both a snob and (potentially some kind of) psychopath.
This is what brings back “old Cherry” who is, to be fair, scary. This is more of who Laura was seeing the whole time, but even then, the vandalism and and self harm is pretty light in comparison to who Laura thinks Cherry is. Laura also starts seemingly hallucinating Cherry very quickly after Cherry basically says quid pro quo, which lessens Laura’s reliability as a perspective window considerably.
To Laura’s credit, I do believe the initial statement of him being dead was impulsive. That she did intend to tell Cherry when Laura went over that Daniel had lived. The problem is that she didn’t. She never did. And she only has a problem with it because she got caught.
5 - Howard is seemingly the only “normal” parent adult in the whole thing. Laura’s friend(s?) seem to enable her the first couple of episodes before exiting most of the drama (or outright encouraging wtf Lilith why?!), but the lack of other adult friends in Laura’s life (if only because we spend so much time with her) only seems to add to the level of obsession she has on Daniel. Cherry is shown to get on with people in general, and while she doesn’t seem to have a lot of her own friends, she does have a level of amiability that Laura just seems to lose as time goes on. Howard is the only one who semi consistently calls Laura out on her craziness and tries to draw reasonable boundaries between parents and children. To be fair, as soon as others hear the level of crazy that Laura got to, they are telling her to stop, that she needs help (again except Lilith who then knowingly slept with a married woman, why girl why you seem so cool but then you did that, and I can’t really excuse it. Even if you like crazy, that was not the time) but Laura at that point needed to go see a psychiatrist or something. If Cherry was doing half of Laura said, then it would continue and there’d be more evidence, but at it stands, Laura was
6 - Random and finishing thoughts
Oopsie, Daniel drowned Laura. I get how it happened, it doesn’t take long for someone to drown. Daniel is also in shock, has been drugged, and likely had some level of disbelief that she could be dead. Like, wow that would be an easy way to make him feel guilty enough to maybe leave his fiancée is she playing dead??? Honestly, her being dead from that and no one doing CPR was not that unbelievable to me.
Daniel is kinda red flag-y. He’s in love so quick, proposes so fast, and seems to latch onto Cherry so hard that it’s most healthy for either of them.
I think one of the trickiest things about the whole series is the lack of surety we have regarding Cherry’s past. Laura just seems to go from controlling and paranoid to obsessed and crazed while Cherry is battling to be a reasonable person having healthy relationships against her more destructive instincts that are triggered by Laura’s aggressions.
If half the things are true from both sides, Laura’s still comes out biggest loser. The reason for that is telling Cherry that Daniel died, then (functionally) ruining her professional career. They are both bad, but Cherry’s actions generally are so much milder than Laura’s that I cannot see Laura as a victim in any perspective except maybe her own.
I may add more thoughts to this but for now I’m done.
Part 2 link here
