Introducing your parents to your significant other is a time-honored tradition, and one of Hollywood’s favorite romance stories to tell.
While that meeting does take place in The Girlfriend, this psychological thriller carries things even further as two women’s instant dislike for each other constantly escalates.
House of the Dragon star Olivia Cooke headlines this series as the title character, Cherry. Robin Wright also stars as Laura, the mother of Cherry’s new boyfriend, Daniel (Laurie Davidson).
The emotional fireworks ahead are astonishing, but that’s only one of the reasons why The Girlfriend is our pick for the one Amazon Prime Video show that you have to stream in September.
Olivia Cooke and Robin Wright Give Dynamic Performances
Wright gets top billing in The Girlfriend, and she deserves it for executive producing the series and directing a handful of episodes as well. Her take on Laura is endlessly fascinating because she might be considered the heroine of the story in some other show. Yet in this show, Laura seems increasingly unhinged and unsafe around Cherry, whom she instantly distrusts. Wright is very convincing as Laura’s obsession with Cherry gets ugly.
Wright is very good in her role, but Cooke is outstanding as Cherry. She has an unexpectedly deep character with needs and desires that extend beyond the rigid world of Laura and her husband, Howard (Waleed Zuaiter). In the first episode alone, Cherry comes off as a young woman who is determined and emotionally vulnerable. She may also be more than a little crazy.
The Perspective Shifts Offer New Insight Into the Characters
One of the most interesting aspects of this series is the way it switches from Laura’s perspective to Cherry’s. In the former, Laura feels justifiably paranoid about Cherry’s intentions towards her son. Laura goes to some pretty big extremes to spy on Cherry to prove that point, but it comes out of her warped love for her son.
Without the shifting perspective, we wouldn’t see the other sides of Cherry’s personality or understand why she behaves the way that she does. She isn’t purely innocent in the conflict with Laura, but she’s not some cartoonish villain either. Cherry has her own struggles outside of Daniel and his family, and she’s willing to do almost anything to get what she wants.
The Twists Are Largely Unpredictable
If there’s one thing you can count on about this series, it’s that the conflict between Cherry and Laura will only escalate. The opening moments of this series even suggest that it might turn into a fatal conflict. But before the show catches up with that flash-forward moment, it shows us just how far Cherry and Laura are willing to go to push the other out of Daniel’s life.
The clip posted above serves as a great example of this, as Laura’s attempt to intimidate Cherry spectacularly backfires in a shocking way. That’s the level of animosity that Cherry and Laura have for each other, and there’s only room for one woman in Daniel’s heart. Cherry is going to keep on fighting until she’s the one left standing, and so is Laura.
The Girlfriend is streaming on Prime Video.
