Dirty Lines season 1, episode 6 recap – the ending explained

This recap of Dirty Lines season 1, episode 6 contains spoilers, including for the Dirty Lines ending.

The fall of the Berlin Wall forms the cultural backdrop of Dirty Lines‘ first season finale, but it’s far from the only thing that seems to be collapsing. However, much as November 9, 1989, was an enormous moment of human emancipation, so too does a lot of new life grow from the rubble of Teledutch and the various people who have been sucked into its orbit. It just takes a while to get there.

Dirty Lines season 1, episode 6 recap

Just check out these relationships. Marly and Leon are together after he left his wife in the previous episode, but she’s far from satisfied with the arrangement, especially when he starts getting snooty about her job at Teledutch. Eventually Marly breaks things off with him, and after a chance encounter with Mischa, seems to be heading in his direction until she spots him with another woman and turns right around. This is all part of Marly’s personal emancipation, both from her unfulfilling relationships but also from her prudish nature. As we saw right at the start of the season, she eventually opens up enough to get high on molly and dance in the new year, completely carefree, but it was a long road leading to that moment (and don’t worry, we’ll return to it a little later.)

Speaking of personal emancipation — Ramon. He and Natasja are on the rocks, trying to carry on an unfulfilling sex life despite Ramon’s obvious disinterest and Natasja’s lingering knowledge that she slept with Frank. Eventually, and predictably, he sleeps with Alexander, and on the back of that resolves to tell his wife the truth about his sexuality. Before he gets the chance, though, she reveals she’s pregnant, though doesn’t reveal that there’s a possibility the baby is Frank’s. While it brings Ramon and Natasja closer together, it also keeps Ramon in a personal prison, unable to be who he truly is out of a sense of responsibility.

Things at Teledutch, meanwhile, are a real mess. Frank has run up an absurd tax bill, and his general mismanagement of the company leads him and Ramon to a physical fight in the office. He also needs to give Anoek half of his assets in the divorce, which he isn’t willing to do, so there’s no wonder he finds himself in his Ferrari at the docks, contemplating driving himself straight into a watery grave. Of course, he can’t commit. When his car topples into the water, he swims to safety, his perspective changed a little. Teledutch can be saved, but it’ll require him to step up and be responsible in a way he hasn’t thus far.

Dirty Lines ending

As it turns out, Nastasja is able to arrange a payment deal with the IRS that’ll have Teledutch making profit again in a year or two. Part of tightening up the books reveals that Uncle Jaap has been siphoning the company’s money to the cult of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh — Wild Wild Country, also on Netflix, is worth a look if you’re interested in that guy — which leads to him fleeing. With that bad apple out of the barrel, Teledutch seems like it might get back on its feet in due course. Frank even has ideas to expand the operations abroad, which will leave his current role as Business Director in the Netherlands vacant. Luckily, Ramon has an idea for who might replace him — Marly, even though she’s in the process of making a major breakthrough in female sexuality that she and Janna break the fourth wall to tell us about.

The show leaves things a little unclear regarding whether or not Marly takes the position. At first she refuses it, but when we catch back up with the party sequence, Frank pitches her the job while she’s high on ecstasy, and she seems to like the idea. So much so, in fact, that when she and Janna wake up the next morning, they’re both in bed with Frank. Uh-oh.

You can stream Dirty Lines season 1, episode 6 exclusively on Netflix. Do you have any thoughts about the Dirty Lines ending? Let us know in the comments.