Prime Video's 'The Girlfriend' Finally Treats a Man as a Plot Device

The end credits of Prime Video’s revenge thriller The Girlfriend (premiering Wednesday, September 10) feature Ava Max’s “Sweet but Psycho,” which feels almost appropriate—except there’s nothing sweet about the characters played by Robin Wright and Olivia Cooke. They’re old-school ’80s evil in The Girlfriend. It’s basically War of the Roses, only Laura and Cherry (Wright and Cooke, respectively) aren’t a married couple divorcing — they’re the mother and girlfriend of Daniel (Laurie Davidson), and at the end of the day, only one can win the prize.

Daniel is the prize, and it’s oddly refreshing to see the male lead treated as nothing more than a plot device. He doesn’t matter, except as a trophy for whichever woman can out-psycho the other. They’re vicious — two villains locked in a six-episode war of attrition. It’s gloriously messy television.

Cooke plays Cherry, Daniel’s new girlfriend. He’s from a wealthy family with an obscenely overprotective mom, Laura. Cherry isn’t wealthy and has a dark past she wants to keep hidden. In the first episode, Laura catches her in a couple of mostly harmless lies and immediately loses trust. She’s not exactly wrong to do so — Cherry once sabotaged her ex-boyfriend’s wedding by hiding a balloon full of blood in the cake, which exploded over the bride and groom when cut.

Still, Cherry clearly loves Daniel, and she’s not about to lose him to a mom who still kisses the boo-boos of her twenty-something son and insists she only wants what’s best. Laura’s overprotectiveness comes from the loss of a daughter, while Cherry’s trust issues stem from an abusive father. It’s a volatile mix, pitting them against each other in a near-constant cycle of revenge and gaslighting.

It’s fun, infuriating at times, and not exactly a flattering portrait of women, except that both are so sharp and cunning in their schemes, and the whole thing plays as a pointed counter to the usual tales of toxic masculinity. It’s hard to know who to root for from episode to episode, though the balance tips slightly toward Cherry, if only because a mother should let her son make his own mistakes.

The Girlfriend recalls Netflix’s teen drama Do Revenge, which itself channeled ’80s classics like War of the Roses, Fatal Attraction, Dangerous Liaisons, and The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover. It’s a hardcore drama spiced with camp and Real Housewives-style mess. Laura and Cherry don’t just want Daniel on their side; they want to destroy each other completely and burn each other to the ground. Cooke is fantastic, but Robin Wright is pure Mommy Dearest meets Cruella de Vil: deliciously petty, magnificently spiteful. She’s clearly having a blast.

There are countless shows and movies about toxic men seeking revenge with deadly weapons; it’s a refreshing twist to see two women try to annihilate each other through pure psychological warfare. Sure, men can beat each other to death —- but can they manipulate the other into hanging himself? It’s knowingly camp, leaning into the kind of deliciously over-the-top trash that makes it impossible to take too seriously, and that’s exactly what makes it fun. Along the way, there’s plenty of collateral damage, and pity poor Daniel, the dim, naive pretty boy doomed to end up with the winner.