Baby Reindeer sounds intense enough from the description alone. When I sat down to watch Netflix’s most recent word-of-mouth sensation, all I knew was it was about a man stalked by an older woman over a period of several years. Obviously, I knew I'd be venturing into dark territory, but I had no idea I was about to view one of the streamer’s most disturbing and brilliant originals to date.
When we see fledgling comedian Donny Dunn (Richard Gadd) working at a pub, it’s obvious his career isn’t taking off the way he wants it to. While working a slow shift, he can't help but notice when the glum Martha Scott (Jessica Gunning) takes a seat. Donny offers to serve her, but Martha admits she can’t afford anything. Without hesitating, Donny offers her cup of tea on the house. This errant act of kindness leads to 41,000 emails, 350 hours of voicemails, 106 pages of letters, and countless social media messages over the next few years. Yep, Martha is a stalker.
But she’s so kind and jovial it's hard – for the viewer as well as the bartender – not to be drawn into her world. And the lies she tells to make herself appear more palatable don’t really seem like lies at first. It’s easy to make a logical assumption about each mistruth. She carries a basic candy bar phone, but her email sign-offs read "Sent from my iPhone." Maybe she has a business phone and a personal phone. She can’t afford to drink at a bar, but owns lavish properties. Maybe she’s fallen on hard times, right? Whatever the case, Donny, against his better judgment, has fallen for it. He’s as captivated by Martha as I was at that point, as I hung on every word, and did my best to map out where Baby Reindeer could possibly go next – and Gadd’s scripts defied my predictions at every turn.
It felt like I was supposed to laugh at Martha’s attempt at dolling herself up to impress Donny. Or the seemingly ridiculous notion that Donny would ever be interested in having sex with her. But Baby Reindeer, for all its bleakness, is more complex than that. It’s never so cruel to suggest that Donny shouldn’t be attracted to Martha because of her weight. Instead, it turns our attention to more honest red flags like her apparent instability and her very personality – the latter of which Gunning skillfully depicts as quite benign at first, though she’s clearly overattached.
I continuously marveled at how far Donny is willing to go with Martha before making a solid attempt at letting her down easy, though. He becomes painfully addicted to her compliments and relishes her attention more and more as the show goes on. Each innocent interaction between them strengthens her perception that they're meant to be together. That delusion often had me cringing in my seat, struggling to understand how Martha could live with herself after behaving in such a way.
It’s all especially difficult to watch, as Donny makes it clear to the audience that he’s already in a relationship with Teri (Nava Mau), a therapist he met on a trans dating site. When Donny’s confusion about his seemingly fluid sexual orientation and masculinity cause him to self-sabotage, I was disappointed that he couldn’t have one good relationship in his life – not with Teri, and not even with Martha. Baby Reindeer makes Donny someone worth rooting for. I wanted him to succeed. But there’s something in the way, and I couldn’t piece together what that was.
Considering that Gadd is dramatizing events from his real life, you'd think he'd sugarcoat things, but thankfully that's not the case
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Luckily, Baby Reindeer spells it out in very plain terms in a gut punch of a reveal. I won’t go into details here for spoiler reasons, but I do want to emphasize that the series faces topics like sexual violence in sometimes brutally graphic ways. The most intense of these scenes are confined to flashbacks in the fourth episode; the incidents they depicted are difficult to digest, but they also illuminate the self-loathing and masochism that Donny exhibits in the present day. This elevates Baby Reindeer from a seemingly simple and comical look at a dangerous situation and gives it even much higher stakes. It explains so much about what I had wondered about Donny that it almost felt cathartic for me as well. Considering that Gadd is dramatizing events from his real life, you'd think there'd be an attempt to sugarcoat things, but thankfully that's not the case. He gives an incredibly raw portrayal of the trauma he both faced and inflicted with incredible zeal.
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Gunning's performance also deserves applause. She's instantly able to switch from childlike naivete to heart-wrenching melancholy, sexual aggression, and outright violence. She sells both the adoration and malice Martha shows Donny with such aplomb that Baby Reindeer would have been much less successful without her.
One of the most poignant lines of the series is when Donny breaks down on stage at a comedy competition and bears all to the audience. He says, "I loved one thing in this world more than I did her – right? – one thing. And do you know what that one thing was? Hating myself." Baby Reindeer isn't a show about a guy being stalked by an older woman. It's about the circular nature of victimization. When it closes out on Donny at his lowest point, right where he found Martha, we’re unfortunately reminded that there’s rarely ever a simple resolution for the trauma some face.
