The Girlfriend Recap: Losing Grip

By
Rafaela Bassili,
a freelance writer who covers movies, books, and culture.

Episode 3

Season 1

Episode 3

Editor’s Rating

3 stars

After Cherry’s massive misstep, Laura finally has the advantage.
Photo: Prime

We’ve arrived at The Girlfriend’s midpoint, where Laura finally gets a leg up on Cherry. She hoists herself up and over Daniel’s helpless body. Seeing her unconscious son in a hospital bed is Laura’s worst nightmare, and also, perversely, her wildest dream. Daniel needs her now, and he’s too incapacitated to make his own judgments about Cherry. He has, essentially, returned to his child self, the version of him over which Laura can exert absolute control. This is the twisted game at the heart of Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2017 masterpiece, Phantom Thread. Laura might as well tell Daniel that she wants him on his back.

This third episode makes great strides compared to the rest of the season because it finally kicks into a propulsive gear: After Daniel lands in the hospital, the show switches between Laura and Cherry’s perspectives without feeling the need to announce it in big red letters. Besides, the escalating tension between Laura and Cherry shifts into a much more compelling register. Daniel finally gets the full scope of their antagonism, which means their burden is now to convince him of their righteousness. They have to think ahead in order to get ahead. Up until this point, their private war had mostly been reactive. Cherry, especially, was relegated to damage control. Every time Laura found something damning, Cherry simply came up with an excuse for it. Now, Cherry has to make up lies in anticipation of Laura’s moves. They engage in open, honest, true psychological warfare. And I don’t know about you, but that is what I come to television for.

As we go through this episode’s events, let us consider Daniel, the man, the problem, the last cookie in the tin, as we’d say in Brazilian Portuguese. He is 27 years old but still treated by his mother as if he had just graduated from high school. In fact, when he buys the apartment that Cherry showed him in lieu of the penthouse, Laura gets all emotional about her baby finally fleeing the nest. Those are her actual words, even though this is supposed to be a doctor. Can you imagine your doctor — excuse me, your surgeon — being spoken about like that? To be fair to Daniel, at that moment, he’s trying to appease Laura by playing the doting son. She’s irritated after catching Daniel and Cherry skinny-dipping in her pool in broad daylight. That’s three times in three episodes that Laura has been faced with her son’s sexual activity. It makes you empathize with her: They obviously want to get caught. But Laura would probably prefer seeing Daniel and Cherry in the act once a day in her own home rather than accept that he is moving in with Cherry.

The apartment itself she loves, up until the moment Cherry arrives, at which point she decides maybe it’s not so great after all. It hardly matters, since Daniel has already bought it, albeit, Laura reminds him with a smile, with Howard’s 1.5 million pounds, not his own. But Mom, you can almost hear him protest, I saved up all my allowance! Left alone for a moment, Laura reminds Cherry that she is supposed to stay away from Daniel. But an adult can’t have sway over another adult when they’re not bankrolling their life; Laura can’t tell her what to do. Here’s what she can do: make sure Cherry’s lies will ultimately catch up to her.

The threat is enough to make Cherry paranoid. She asks her mother to meet her at a coffee shop near her office, to ask if anyone has been in touch, sticking their nose in her business. Cherry’s mother still hasn’t been formally introduced to us — we don’t know her name, so for now I’ll call her Mrs. Cherry. She is my favorite character, and she is unjustly treated by her ungrateful daughter. Mrs. Cherry is so neglected that she thinks there must be something very wrong for Cherry to ask her out for a coffee. Surely, in between a borderline incestuous relationship and a cold, indifferent one, there must be some normal way of relating to your mother. In any case, it just so happens that Daniel swings by the coffee shop at the same time, so he meets Mrs. Cherry. He is great with her, of course. Afterward, Daniel asks why Cherry was so nervous about the two of them meeting. “You met my mom,” he reasons, “Did that put you off me?” Sweet fool, indeed!

In the meantime, Laura conducts some investigations. She calls Nicholas to ask about Cherry, but he is so allergic to the sound of her name that he hangs up on her. He gets Cherry on the phone instead, to tell her to keep herself and her “American friend Lauren Sanderson” away from him and Millie. He knows that she was behind his wedding-day catastrophe, and he will go to the police if necessary. Worried, Cherry — who only ever approaches her to demand things — begs Mrs. Cherry to tell anyone who asks that they were together on the evening of the 26th. Mrs. Cherry wears the tired look of a mother who has been through this before. She agrees to cover for her, but is not happy about it. “I hope you haven’t returned to the old Cherry,” she laments. “She scared me.” Scared, past tense?!

Having struck out with Nicholas, Laura is forced to return to her old tactics: impeding fornication. She plops herself on Daniel’s bed just as Cherry comes out of the bathroom in a transparent little nightgown. Laura wants to discuss Daniel’s upcoming birthday, which they celebrate every year by going to a musical and having dumplings in Chinatown. Obviously, for Cherry, this will not do, so she has to think on her feet. She says it’s a shame she booked them a surprise weekend climbing trip to Wintour’s Leap. Daniel is so excited that Cherry retained information about his boy interest that, looking between them, he tells Laura that maybe they can rain-check their tradition. I have to give it to Robin Wright here: She looks like she’s about to implode. Cherry looks similarly distraught when she has to spend 500 pounds on her already-overdrawn account to pay for the damn trip. In Laura’s memory, Cherry takes Daniel’s face in her hands and sticks her tongue in his mouth while looking her dead in the eye.

Isabella and Brigitte think it’s all in Laura’s head. She has been sounding more and more paranoid about Cherry, who Brigitte thinks is “quite fun,” even if she has “a bit of psycho” in her. But Laura is determined to continue investigating, and ultimately she gets Nicholas and Millie to come to talk to her at her house. Over six feet tall with a jock build, Nicholas shakes like a traumatized Chihuahua at the sound of Cherry’s name. According to him, Cherry was always intense, but she went crazy when they broke up. She stalked him, made up lies about him, and showed up at their house so many times that they took out a restraining order against her. Inexplicably, Laura looks surprised when Nicholas says they are “sure” that Cherry is behind their wedding-day disaster. Isn’t the same belief what drove Laura to speak to them? Isn’t that why she immediately went to confront Cherry after seeing the post on Brigitte’s Instagram?

Later that night, Cherry has genuine tears in her eyes when she asks Daniel whether she’s a bad person. This is an ingenious moment in the script, because although Cherry proceeds to continue lying through her teeth, there is a part of her that actually means that question. Having to ask her mother to cover for her and seeing Mrs. Cherry’s disappointment at the return of her bad habits stirs up an unfamiliar emotion: remorse. But our girl has a goal, and it is to get ahead of Laura’s machinations. So, she tells Daniel that Nicholas was a mean and controlling boyfriend who never fully got over her and is now telling everyone that she is crazy and sabotaged his wedding. Daniel, defenseless, falls for it completely.

And he continues to fall for it when he walks into Cherry and Laura going head-to-head. Cherry confronts Laura about speaking with Nicholas; she uses a harsh tone until the moment Daniel appears in her peripheral vision, at which point she begins to cry and beg. Laura, unaware of Daniel’s presence, states simply that she doesn’t like or trust Cherry. That’s when Daniel intervenes. Laura tries to explain to him about Nicholas, but he is already convinced that Nicholas is the one who’s lying. This is when The Girlfriend picks up emotional momentum: Daniel is forced to take a hard line with his mom, accusing her of smothering him. The fight is as hurtful to Daniel as it is to Laura. But it’s awesome for Cherry.

I did feel bad for Daniel as he and Cherry drove out to the country. Lest we forget, he is a teenager in the body of a man. Cherry cheers him up by tickling him in the armpits. Back in London, Howard airs out his own frustrations with Laura. He comes out with it: Her relationship with Daniel is “kind of weird.” He speculates that her possessiveness has something to do with Rose and grief, but either way, he’s had enough of it. “It has to stop,” he demands wearily.

At Wintour’s Leap, Cherry and Daniel walk through an old church before rock climbing. Daniel jokes about proposing, but then says that he really does want to marry Cherry. He puts a key ring on her finger “until [he] can find something with a higher karat count.” (Let me just say, in no world is this a proposal that counts.) Having breathed in the fresh air of the mountains, affirmed his love for his girlfriend, and taken in the beautiful view, Daniel all but forgets about his fight with his mother. In fact, he’s feeling so confident and great while climbing that, reaching a “tricky passage,” he decides to impress Cherry. He jumps for a grab and misses, falling several feet off a cliff. We return to the shaky-handheld-camera-through-the-hospital sequence that opened the episode.

When Laura gets the call from Cherry that Daniel had an accident, she’s with Lilith, her old flame, whom she’d been texting while Howard went on a romantic date to the ballet with Marianne. Lilith is a movie artist. She lives in a beautifully messy loft among her canvases and wears an oversize button-down shirt, a statement necklace, and her hair in a loose clip. Though they haven’t seen each other for years, Lilith can immediately tell that there’s something wrong with Laura, who promptly begins to sob. Lilith, who has all her wits about her, lays out a plan for Laura: She should apologize to everyone, including Cherry, and wait for all the lies to come out into the open on their own, so that when Daniel finally gets smart to them, he won’t resent Laura for it. Who knows what other life-saving advice Laura could’ve gotten from Lilith if it weren’t for Daniel being in the hospital?

His condition is bad. The doctors have to remove a small piece of his skull to release the pressure in his brain. Remember how agitated Laura got when Daniel scraped his knee mountain biking? She’s fully lost it now, and she wants Cherry completely out of her way. Howard is delegated the function of sending her home. He approaches her as if she were his teenage kid’s fling. “He needs to be with his family now,” he explains, condescendingly. For once, Cherry abides and goes home. She waits days for Laura to call her with updates and leaves probably hundreds of voice-mails on her phone. Laura ignores all of the calls until they get bad news. The doctor tells them that due to complications, they were unable to stop the bleeding in Daniel’s brain, so he is unlikely to survive the next few hours. Howard and Laura are in shambles. But she’s alert enough to finally pick up Cherry’s call, and tell her Daniel has already died.

Of course, as soon as she says that, Daniel wakes up. Will he remember what happened? If so, what will Laura do to prevent him from reaching out to Cherry? I’m suspecting a situation where Laura makes up something about how Cherry willingly caused the accident, or lies that Cherry fled when Daniel was committed to the ICU. May the plot thicken!

• I’m losing my patience with the opening sequences that tease the dramatic climax of each episode. In the binge format, not only do they lose appeal when repeated episode after episode, but they also rob the climax of momentum. The minute Daniel and Cherry started climbing, I knew why we opened in a hospital. Which, by the way, here’s a nitpicky thing: A cursory Google search tells me that Wintour’s Leap is an advanced route for skilled climbers. I find it hard to believe that a serious climber with the gravitas of a doctor would agree to take his girlfriend, who has never gone climbing in her life before, on an advanced route. But, okay, I’m splitting hairs.

• I thought Olivia Cooke’s reaction to the news of Daniel’s death was too camp. Falling along the wall with glazed-over eyes feels kind of Acting 101. She can do so much more complexity, even with an underbaked script.

• It made me laugh that Lilith doesn’t want her work to be represented by Laura’s gallery because she shows too much Instagram art.

The Girlfriend Recap: Losing Grip