This article contains spoilers baby reindeer.
What would you do if a moment of kindness ruined your life?This is the premise baby reindeeris the drama-thriller sleeper hit that has soared to the top of the Netflix charts over the past week and a half, seemingly out of nowhere. The success of the limited series is in some ways surprising for a show created by and starring Richard Gadd, a comedian unknown in America and only slightly known in his native England, but after watching all seven episodes, I can say: , baby reindeer This work deserves word of mouth success. It’s very good and very scary at the same time, and it’s not quite as comedic as its comic book protagonist might suggest.
Gad plays Donny, a struggling comedian who works in a pub. One day, he felt sorry for a crying customer at the bar and offered him tea at his house. From this point on, the client (a middle-aged woman named Martha who calls herself a lawyer) develops an obsession with Donnie, calling him her “baby reindeer.” At first, Donnie humorously talked about his obsession, thanking him for the attention. But eventually, Martha began stalking him and his loved ones on her phone, by email, and in person, showing up at his shows and yelling abuse at him, and at one time at the bus stop outside his house. I started sitting for hours on end.
In a way, I hate that I have this urge to immediately question whether these events really happened, but I’m not the only one who feels that way. And many of the stories actually were. The series is based on Gadd’s stage show of the same name and an earlier one-man show that he called. Monkey See, Monkey DoBoth are drawn directly from his life. Gad does indeed have a stalker, a completely different person than Martha in the series, who has been invading his life and sending him tons of emails and voicemails. Gad also suffered abuse from older men in the comedy industry. Both events are unraveled in the film version and nearly destroy Donnie.
Whether you know all of this actually happened to Gad or not, this series is a tough piece. The scenes where Donnie’s abuser drugs and takes advantage of him are painful to sit through. The effect this abuse has on Donnie, combined with Martha’s relentless stalking, leads to the breakdown of Donnie’s relationship, which is also painful to watch. Despite being the victim of horrific circumstances, Donnie is not always a likable character, and his self-destructive decisions test the limits of the audience’s sympathy.
But what stays with me after the credits roll is… baby reindeer Treat Martha herself. She is played by the amazingly talented British actress Jessica Gunning. She’s perfect for the role and has such a lovely baby face that you can understand why Donnie didn’t find her threatening enough to distance herself so quickly. For example, even if she says something like she wants to unzip a person and wear her clothes. coat.
But in a show about stalkers, it would be easy and boring to paint them as just weird villains.No such thing baby reindeer that’s right. Martha’s actions are often horrifying and sometimes truly abhorrent. She attacked Donnie’s girlfriend, thinking she was a foreigner, tearing out chunks of her hair, and yelling racist things at her. But Donnie, and the series itself, becomes interested in why she is the way she is. When Donnie finally calls the police to protect her parents, who have started harassing her, she is told that he first has to listen to the thousands of insane voicemails Martha has left. Before the authorities can take action against her, he needs to find evidence of something clearly threatening. Donny discovers this evidence relatively quickly and takes this to the police to press charges, as Martha threatens him and his family with physical harm. But he didn’t stop listening to voicemails. He wants to get to the bottom of her truth.
The climax of the series finds Donnie in the worst of his decline. Having agreed to collaborate on the show with his former abuser, he sits in a pub listening to Martha’s voicemail on the verge of a panic attack. He opens a song he hasn’t heard yet and presses play. With this voicemail, he finally got an answer to a question he never intended to ask. Why has she called him “Baby Reindeer” all these years? She believes that the only good thing about Donnie’s childhood was a toy baby reindeer (which looks uncannily similar to Donnie). He says it was. It was the only positive memory of an excruciating time. In this moment, Donnie is someone Martha has never understood for herself, someone who has suffered immensely, and someone who is currently in prison because of Martha’s (to be fair, horrible) attitude towards him. I realize that.
When Donnie starts crying, the bartender takes pity on him and offers him a free Diet Coke, just as Donnie offered Martha a cup of tea. He looked up at the bartender and gave him a strange look. Is this the moment Donnie remembers that first cup of tea and the havoc it wreaked in his life? Or perhaps the final shot of the series, an upward shot, suggests that Donnie, like Martha, is someone who has experienced great suffering and acts of kindness from strangers in times of vulnerability. Is it true? Is it possible that in another life, maybe even this one, he too would become the kind of person who develops unhealthy attachments to strangers? It strikes me as a brave and unusual place that the desired protagonist of this series is not all that different from the ostensible villain. Put on a show.But for the grace of God, we’ll all go there, and the line separating the sane from the “insane” is thinner than we’d like. think.
