Diary of a Ditched Girl Review: 7 Chapters of Terrible Dates & Sisterhood
Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
This show is is officially rated TV-MA (Mature Audience)
Jean-Paul Sartre’s famous quote needs to be tweaked to: hell is trying to date other people. And ‘Diary of a Ditched Girl’ does an entertaining job of displaying the ruthless rigors of romancing in the times of dating apps. Too bad protagonist Amanda isn’t too likable (I was rooting for the sister) even though the actor playing her is fantastic. In the immortal words of Taylor Swift, Amanda’s catch-phrase should be “it’s me, hi, I am the problem”.
Based on the Swedish novel Halva Malmö består av killar som dumpat mig (translation: Half of Malmö Is Made of Guys Who Have Dumped Me) by Amanda Romare, the seven-episode Netflix series ‘Diary of a Ditched Girl’ opens opens on an unsettling yet darkly funny note. Protagonist Amanda (Carla Sehn) is flashed by a man while jogging at a park, but instead of panicking, she unnerves him by stepping closer. Later, she recounts the incident to her sister Adina (Moah Madsen) and mother Monika (Ingela Olsson), confessing that it had been so long since she’d seen a man’s private parts that the encounter felt more bizarrely thrilling than frightening. It’s almost comically tragic.
The rest of ‘Diary of a Ditched Girl’ follows 31-year-old Amanda, single for 12 years, stumbling through relationships with men who are “just not that into her,” while making one questionable choice after another. At times, she feels more like a desperate 17-year-old with rock-bottom self-esteem, although other times her courage to ‘put herself out there’ is admirable.
But just when you begin warming up to her, she shows an undesirable side, like barely pulling her weight at work, and constantly dumping responsibilities on her sister Adina, who also happens to be her colleague at a family-run event and design company. For most of the series, I assumed Adina was the elder sibling, only to later learn Amanda is actually the first-born.
Take, for example, the bartender (an admittedly charming Adam Dahlström) Amanda hooks up with after knowing him for just one night. Amanda convinces herself it’s love, despite the glaring warnings: he was in a cult, admits to have dabbled with hard drugs, and is still friends with the neighborhood junkies. If that isn’t a parade of red flags rolled out on a red carpet, I don’t know what is. But okay, that’s the part of the process: hump a lot of acidic frogs, before an edible prince comes along. And the creators of ‘Diary of a Ditched Girl’ don’t hold back on the sex scenes, so the show is laden with several explicit moments between the sheets.
Even though ‘Diary of a Ditched Girl’ is steered by a protagonist most would not root for, lead actor Carla Sehn is terrific in the role. Carla makes Amanda’s vulnerabilities painfully relatable, especially in moments where she hides hurt behind laughter. Midway through, a date devolves into a degrading sexual experience, Amanda plays along and later spins it into a wild story for her friends, but her tears betray the truth. It’s her sister who realizes: beneath the jokes, each disastrous fling leaves Amanda a little more broken.
Which leads one to Moah Madsen’s portrayal of Amanda’s sister Adina in ‘Diary of a Ditched Girl’, who shines at the supportive sibling, although not without her own demons. Adina is in a content live-in relationship with boyfriend Filip (Isac Calmroth), but struggles with severe OCD, not the sitcom variety where a spotless apartment is the punchline, but the paralyzing kind, where leaving the house means checking three times or more to ensure nothing’s plugged in, nothing’s left on, and nothing’s about to burst into flames. Even with her crippling disorder, Adina always steps up for Amanda whenever there’s a crisis, something that can’t always be said of their other sister.
A smaller subplot in ‘Diary of a Ditched Girl’ explores Amanda and Adina’s strained bond with their distant father (Torkel Petersson), a barely-there parent who only appears when it suits him. Amanda suspects his lack of affection warped her understanding of love, while their hippie mother Monika (Ingela Olsson) prefers to chalk up her daughter’s romantic failures to the whims of the ‘cosmos’.
At its core, ‘Diary of a Ditched Girl’ is about Amanda’s quest for Mr. Right, though the candidates who cross her path are anything but. Then again, Amanda hardly helps her case, on one date, she’s flat-out unbearable, giggling over the phone with another man while her companion sits ignored at the table. And then she is left wonder why the dude ditches her far too quickly. (Cue Taylor Swift: “It’s you, Amanda, you’re the problem.”)
The climactic episode gives Amanda an ‘almost happy ending’, she is on the cusp of a serious relationship with a half-decent guy. However, Amanda being Amanda, has already ruined things for herself behind the guy’s back. Will she be ditched again? The series leaves viewers with a cliffhanger! Watch the show if you’re in the mood to watch someone fail miserably at navigating men, dating apps, and relationships.
Rating: 6 on 10. Watch ‘Diary of a Ditched Girl’ on Netflix.
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