My Brilliant Friend aka L’amica geniale in Italian, is a powerful coming-of-age drama series. Based on Elena Ferrante‘s Neapolitan novels. It has been made into four seasons for HBO, RAI, and TIMvision. The show, which was created by Saverio Costanzo, follows Elena and Lila, two childhood friends, as they deal with love, loss, and the difficulties of growing up in Italy during a terrible time. The show was picked up for a fourth and final season in March 2022. It will be based on the last book in the series, The Story of the Lost Child.
In Season 4, Episode 6 (“The Cheat”), directed by Laura Bispuri, we are thrown into a world of betrayal, sadness, and how relationships are always changing. The episode does a great job of weaving together Elena and Lila’s personal problems. Both are dealing with the weight of motherhood, death—and—the results of the choices they’ve made in their lives. Nino’s cheating on Elena is at the heart of it all and it shocks her to the core.
My Brilliant Friend Season 4 Episode 6 Recap: The Cheat
At the start of the show, there is a lot of emotional tension because Elena, or Lenù ( Alba Rohrwacher) , is spending more and more time at the clinic with her sick mother, Immacolata (Anna Rita Vitolo). The family is getting ready for what’s going to happen, and Lenù is having a hard time making sense of her life with Nino. Because of how crazy her life is, she can’t fully deal with the fact that she thinks things with him are much worse than she thought. If Immacolata wants her sons to get a job and her daughter Elisa to marry Marcello Solara (Lino Musella), those are her last wishes. Lenù doesn’t understand why her mother would make those choices.
Before Immacolata dies, Lenù and her mother share some tender moments. This ends their difficult relationship in a bittersweet way. As people from the neighborhood gather for the funeral, old faces, like Fernando, Lila’s father, show up to cast a shade over Lenù. To make his point, he tells her that they are all stuck in their lives as “neighborhood people,” meaning that they can’t get away no matter how hard they try. This sad and dark thought keeps coming back to Lenù as she tries to face the truth about the choices she has made in her life.
In the meantime, Lila is having her own problems because she is about to give birth soon after Immacolata died. Lila has always been shown as the stronger of the two friends, but when she gives birth, she looks weak and scared. It is shown that her fight during labor was both physical and mental, full of anger and frustration. There is a sweet moment when Lila gives birth to a girl named Tina. Lenù wonders if Lila knows she named her daughter after the doll they had together as kids. Lila says it was just an accident, but the moment feels heavy because of the past they both have.
Lenù’s life doesn’t slow down when she gets home. It has been a year since Immacolata’s death, and now Lenù is taking care of her three girls and growing as a writer. At a dinner party, Nino’s annoying goal is made very clear. He tells Lenù’s editor about his own thoughts without any shame, which makes her look bad. When Lenù saw how self-centered Nino (Fabrizio Gifuni)really is, she used to admire his confidence but now she finds it disgusting. The way they live makes his big ideas about reforming and changing the system sound empty and self-centered.
When Lenù tells Nino that he is having an affair with Eleonora (Valeria Bello), the tension between them finally breaks. Lenù is very angry as she hits him over the head with all the things she has given up for him. She feels deeply hurt by the deception but it also makes her want to take back her life and identity. She makes up her mind to work on her writing, meet the tight limit her editor has set, and show Nino that she can do well without him.
Near the end of the episode, Lenù starts to break free from Nino’s controlling hold on her life. She thinks about how their pasts have made them into the people they are now. And how different the boy she used to love is from the man he has become. As she starts to see Nino for what he really is—a man who can’t change and is only interested in himself—she feels like the end is near.
The Cheat is an emotional roller coaster with sadness, betrayal, and finally a glimmer of hope as Lenù starts to take back her independence. Love and loyalty can sometimes make us blind to the truth, which is shown in this episode about complicated relationships between people. This episode is a turning point for Lenù because it’s when she starts to break away from Nino’s bad impact and focus on her own way forward.
Photos by Eduardo Castaldo/HBO
