Every once in a while a TV show comes along that is so hard to watch, but its message makes it impossible to look away. This latest instance is “Baby Reindeer,” a new hit show on Netflix. It’s a series that makes you question your biases both in television and more importantly, the real world. It’s dark. It’s funny. It’s uncomfortable (trigger warning). It’s based on a true story. And it’s something that once you watch, you won’t be able to stop thinking about.
The show starts with a man named Donny walking into a police station to file a report on a stalker. You learn that the stalking has been going on for over 6 months, so the cop, and you and as a viewer, wonder: why did it take so long for him to report it? And to answer that, Donny has to take us both back to the beginning.
Donny is a bartender slash semi-aspiring comedian. One day while working, a woman named Martha comes in crying. Donny tells us via voiceover that he instantly feels bad for her, and gives her a cup of tea on the house. And that one gesture changes everything. Martha quickly becomes obsessed. Showing up daily, making inappropriate comments, becoming possessive, and Donny…entertains it all. As more and more unsettling things happen, as a viewer you find yourself wondering yet again why he’s not putting an end to it all. Is it ego? Shame? Enjoyment? Self-loathing? You learn halfway through the series, the answer is simply: yes. It’s all of the above.
In Episode 4—a flashback—we watch Donny get groomed and sexually assaulted by a famous comedy writer he idolizes. Multiple times. He goes there, does a bunch of drugs, and often comes to while being sexually abused in some way. One time, he even awakes to find out he’s been raped. While this is all happening, Donny is using the voiceover to cycle through his shoulda-coulda-wouldas. Why did he stay? Why did he keep going back? They’re questions you as the viewer, again, are wondering too. You’re wondering even though you know that by doing so, you are essentially victim-blaming. But you quickly realize that’s kind of the point.
And you feel it with Martha too. She starts terrorizing Donny’s family, she sexually assaults him, and she even violently attacks Donny’s trans girlfriend. Yet even after all of that (and that list is truly just skimming the surface) you still kind of feel bad for her. And so does Donny. And you both are confused about if you actually should.
But the show wants that ambiguity. It lives in those grey areas. Baby Reindeer reminds us that when it comes to mental illness and trauma, it doesn’t all fit neatly inside a box. It’s messy. It’s contradictory. And it’s always changing. It reminds me a lot of Michaela Coel’s award-winning HBO series “I May Destroy You.” That series follows Coel’s character, Arabella, and shows how she tries to come to terms with the trauma of being sexually assaulted and not letting it alter her reality. Both of these series show their creators trying to not only own their stories, but also own the conflicting feelings, thoughts and behaviors that go with them.
Richard Gadd, the creator and writer who plays Donny, purposefully casts his character in an unflattering light. He makes Donny a good person, but also not a saint. He shows him as a victim, but also doesn’t make him blameless. He makes mistakes. He causes pain too. It’s nuanced. And that somehow applies to Martha as well. In one of the (legit) hundreds of voicemails she leaves Donny, you learn the heartbreaking reason gives him the nickname “Baby Reindeer” in the first place. As a kid, she had a stuffed baby reindeer and holding it was the only safety she felt during her violent and tumultuous upbringing. You see yet another example of the impact of trauma.
Throughout the series you watch as Donny fears Martha, feels bad for her, wants to escape her, wants to help her, masturbates about her, and can’t get it up because of her. And it’s because deep down, he can relate. He knows what it’s like to have shame and feel things you can’t control. He knows nothing about it is black and white.
That’s what the show does so well. It shows the ripple effect of trauma. That life, like the show, is filled with people who are flawed and sometimes not deserving of your sympathy. But that’s not the goal. The goal isn’t for you to feel bad for them—that’s what brought Martha into Donny’s life in the first place. The goal, to me, is to find empathy. To remember that hurt people, hurt people—intentionally or not. To remember that some days you’re the saint, and some days you’re the sinner. But most days, the truth is, we’re all both.