Buddy road trip comedies have been around for a while. Friends taking a road trip to ‘rediscover’ themselves isn’t a new premise, but the treatment is what matters. The Girls At The Back starts off as a buddy comedy-drama about five friends taking a trip from Madrid to Cadiz (Spain) in order to help a friend overcome her recent cancer diagnosis. Till the final episode, it isn’t revealed which friend is the one who has been struck by the deadly disease.
THE GIRLS AT THE BACK (2022) NETFLIX MINISERIES RECAP:
The series opens with five friends – Leo (Mariona Terés), Olga (Godeliv Van den Brandt), Alman (Hayden Bishop), Sara (Itsaso Arana), and Carol (Maria Rodríguez Soto) who are shaving off their heads in solidarity with a sick friend. These women have been friends since childhood and are about to embark upon a road trip where they have made a vow to never let slip as to who’s suffering from cancer amongst them. While the group has had travels and outings previously, this trip is memorable for them as the friend who has cancer would be starting her chemotherapy after they return from the trip.
The five friends who are thick as thieves all have starkly different personalities. The five make a bucket list for the trip. They each have to write down a thing that they want everyone else to do, but it has to be done anonymously on a chit of paper. The first thing on the agenda is for all of them to have a lesbian experience, even though Alma, who’s a popular social media face is a lesbian.
Carol, who’s the voice of reason in the group opposes this decision as she believes it to be frivolous. Leo, who has always faced body image issues is also against it but soon joins in the fun. They hit a bar, where surprisingly it is Carol who finds a girl and goes back home with her, even though her controlling husband is chatting with her online.
Carol, who has never been with any other person apart from her husband, finds this lesbian liaison to be an out-of-body experience but expresses her displeasure when she finds out that her drinks were spiked with drugs by the girl, Piloo, the one she got into bed with. Leo also ends up making out with a woman after much reluctance and hesitation. Olga, who has had an on-and-off relationship with David engages in a threesome with him. Sara and Alma, also end up making out and it is revealed that the two always carried a torch for each other in their hearts.
Their next challenge which is to do drugs doesn’t end up too well for the gang. Leo and Olga who get affected the most by the drugs end up in the hospital. The third challenge on their list was to commit a crime and this time it is Sara who opposes it. Sara, who is clearly not over her feelings about Alma is having a hard time accepting it. Sara also has an estranged daughter and even though she opposes the group robbing local artisans she robs a guitar for the sake of her daughter. She even video calls her daughter and shows it to her, but ends up returning it as she couldn’t live with committing robbery. The group appreciates her feelings and they go along with it.
A lot of backstories are revealed when the group decides to do the fourth dare. We learn Leo has broken off ties with her mother for abandoning her and her father. At the start of the episode, we see Leo visiting her father who has Alzheimer’s and is confined to a nursing home. The fourth dare is to make amends with their past. Olga gets in touch with an old toxic lover of hers and forgives him even though their relationship had not ended on a good note.
Carol, who has always been prim and proper had wronged a lot of people. She gets in touch with a lot of people who she had blocked on social media and even with her ex-boyfriend and we see that the two end up having a risqué conversation. Meanwhile, Leo makes amends with her mother by asking her to share an old recipe for her famous French toast. We see that the duo bond over cooking.
Sara and Alma, finally come clean about their feelings for each other. They both realize that they have always avoided and run away from each other because they didn’t want to deal with the heartbreak. We are also introduced to another member of the group namely, Palo, a sixth friend who had broken off ties with the rest of them. The group tries to make amends with her and Palo tells them how she always felt like a misfit in their group. She felt that the others were too controlling and judgemental and that she felt she would do better if she could move away from them.
The final challenge was dealing with the truth. Alma breaks up with her girlfriend Rege, after confessing her love to Sara. Carol, who has been in an abusive and toxic marriage finds out that her husband cheated on her. The five friends confront her and tell her that they knew from the start that her husband was abusive and that she was stuck in the marriage. Olga, who has been in love with David ends the relationship because they both are tired of going back and forth and they want to part on a good note before things got ugly because of their recent romp. So Olga and David end their relationship.
THE GIRLS AT THE BACK (2022) NETFLIX MINISERIES ENDING, EXPLAINED:
Which of them has Cancer?
The weeklong trip that these women undertake finally comes to an end and each of them has to return back to their grim realities. We find that it was Leo who has cancer and that this trip was planned in order to ease her pain and her apparent doom. We see that her relationship with her mother has been mended and that her friends are supporting her as she begins her chemotherapy, even though she is worried about her father. However, her mother assures her that she will look after her father and would visit him in his nursing home when she is taking her treatment.
Olga, who is pretty heartbroken and shaken after her breakup with David returns to her house full of cats and realizes that she still misses David. Alma and Sara realize that they are living a fairytale and that they can’t pursue a relationship because Sara has a daughter and that she must fulfill her duties as a mother. Alma and Sara also agree to end the fling and that they must both live the lives they are intended to live. Carol returns to her husband but is shown contemplating leaving him.
THE GIRLS AT THE BACK (2022) NETFLIX MINISERIES REVIEW:
The Girls At The Back is a bittersweet buddy comedy-drama that forces you to think about the decisions we make in our lives, and also about making the best of the life we have been given. The only downside to the series is that it is in Spanish and you have to rely on subtitles to make the head and tail of the story.
It is one of the series which has a predictable and limited canvas, but you end up enjoying it because the characters are having fun onscreen. The series has its tear-jerker moments and is almost always hilarious. It is not too serious nor too comic and that doesn’t dilute the crux of the story that one of these women is dying, but keeping this fact a secret till the last episode ensures that the series doesn’t revolve around that.
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