When Netflix recommended Baby Reindeer to me, I expected the next low-budget true crime documentary. Naturally, being the white woman I am, I pressed play.
Instead, I was silently captivated for the next 4 hours and immediately opened my laptop at 2am to write. For over a year, I have been unable to figure out how to write about my own experiences about the end of an important relationship. This unlocked something in me that I hadn’t realized I had been waiting for.
Baby Reindeer is a quirky, gut-wrenching, and relatable. The victim, Richard Gadd, “stars” as himself, a character named Donny. He both dramatizes and gently strips down his story to the emotional experience itself. Get ready for FEELINGS.
His stalker, Martha, is played by a well-cast Jessica Gunning. The main storyline is about (mentally-ill) Martha, which is compassionately told—but he weaves so much more into 7 short episodes including the emotional consequences of psychological abuse, struggles with his own queer identity, cis/trans relationships, and depictions of both healthy and abusive sexual relationships. I feel naive even trying to apply the art of word salad to this masterpiece, currently sporting a perfect Rotten Tomatoes score and now a surprise Emmy contender.
Note that there are mild spoilers below. I do talk about the topics explored in this series, though stop short of revealing major spoilers or the ending. In addition to stalking, this show contains a reenactment of a man raping another man, depictions of psychological abuse, and a scene where a trans person is verbally/physically abused. If that is not something you are up for, this post (and the show) would be one to skip.
Baby Reindeer touched me in ways I don’t think I can fully appreciate yet. The last year has been rough for me personally. I, too, feel complicated feelings about the ways my boundaries affected a loved one for whom those boundaries proved necessary. But even if that’s not your story, one of these probably hits a little too close to home:
Love as a drug that blinds us to the red flags in front of us.
Questioning your own sanity while in unhealthy relationship
Desperately wanting to be believed by others, while doubting yourself.
The level of peace you feel when someone demonstrates that they really, truly see YOU.
The ability to recognize generational trauma and the desire to break patterns.
The depth of empathy we can feel toward people who are hurting, even as they are hurting us.
Not being able to see an obviously unhealthy situation as unhealthy as you are living it.
Desperately wanting to follow your professional dreams and hitting roadblock after roadblock.
And this fucking quote:
The characters in Baby Reindeer are so far from perfect, impressively so at times. I wanted to reach out and grab Donny at times and yell at him, “DUDE! WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU THINKING?” I was acutely aware that a chorus of my friends have done the same to me. Everyone is so thoroughly flawed, even when we go to therapy, take our meds, and go on stupid little walks for our stupid little mental health. And yet the compassion for even the most unhinged behavior is a thread that runs through the entire series.
Everyone is doing their best.
EVERYONE is doing their best.
Everyone is doing their BEST.
Even when their best isn’t that great.
Which brings me to the most surprising part of Baby Reindeer for me: how it represents queer relationships as a backdrop to the story. Nava Mau, the openly trans actress who plays Teri told Diva Magazine: “This still feels groundbreaking to have a trans woman be one of the main characters in a series that feels like it's written in a respectful and loving and nuanced way, so it's an honor for me to have that opportunity. What a dream as an actor to actually have a role that is layered and integral to the story.”
So let’s talk about that storyline for a minute. Portrayal of trans people in media is often centered on their story lines of gender transition, abuse, or trauma. Those are important stories to tell but trans people are more than their trauma—they are regular people too. To say that Teri is most emotional intelligent character in the series is an understatement. Her gender identity is simply fact about her, not the center of the entire story. At the same time, the nuances of how her life is different aren’t just glossed over.
As someone who has dated trans woman, I was delighted to see Donny and Teri doing normal couple things like going out on dates, talking about their lives, and kissing without any mention of her transition, genitals, or surgeries. She’s beautiful but not sexualized for the screen. She’s a character, not a sex object. When sex is referenced, there are multiple scenes where sexual consent is modeled: one party isn’t up for sex, the partner accepts their choice, deals with their own feelings, and offers to make them tea.
In one scene, Teri is dancing in the kitchen, getting Donny to loosen up and just move his body, talking about her dance education and said, “my mom always wanted a girl,” an acknowledgement that she was seen by her mother as a son for part of her life. The nuance in that scene felt like such an accurate reflection of my own experiences dating trans people. I thought to myself later, “does the religious right realize that trans people dance in the kitchen and do their dishes just like everyone else?”
In another scene, Donny talks to his own parents about his sexuality, something none of them seem all that comfortable with. He knows he’s not entirely straight but can’t specify much more than that. Queer people young and old understand this. We know without doubt that we are not straight, but the ability to articulate our identities to straight people even decades into the coming out process feels elusive.
Donny doesn’t shy away from portraying the ways his own struggle with internalized homophobia impacts Teri negatively. Donny is worried about what his friends might think if they “clock” Teri as a trans woman so he only sees her on the outskirts of town. Teri has patience with Donny while still calling him out on his behavior. When a bar goer attacks Teri and screams at her that she “looks like a man”, quickly her confident therapist-as-profession demeanor changes. Donny’s reaction is to protect her. I’ve had conversations with trans partners about what my role would be if they were ever attacked in public—something we feared because it has happened before.
After decades of seeing straight people date on TV, it was very emotional for me to see queer relationships portrayed with such accuracy. It’s still common place to see queer stories told by cis people as diversity hires, are we finally seeing queer people telling their own stories with all the nuance? It’s not like Baby Reindeer is the first—credit to Orange is the New Black, Euphoria, The Umbrella Academy, and Pose. But we still can rely on writers to include trans characters as tokens or cast them with cis actors. Seems as good a time as any to point out that The Little Mermaid’s villain Ursula was modeled after drag queen Divine.
It’s really important that I speak about two separate concepts separately: representation of non-heterosexual relationships AND the health of those relationships. While the relationship with Teri has elements that are healthy, Donny’s same sex relationship with Darrien is a years long cycle of sexual assault, consent violation, and emotional manipulation that is heartbreakingly common in both same sex and opposite sex relationships. Abuse can happen to anyone. Richard originally shared his story of sexual assault in his stage show ‘Monkey See Monkey Do.’ He told the Independent, “The way people received that show, and received me, and accepted what happened to me: it saved my life. It’s mad that it happened that way.”
While I’m grateful for Baby Reindeer’s queer representation, that exists mostly as a backdrop to the main storyline: “struggling comedian and barman Donny meets a lonely woman claiming to be a lawyer. He offers her a cup of tea on the house, and she's instantly obsessed.” A single act of kindness creates a whole *situation* for him.
Stalking is a crime. But what happens when the person doing the stalking is experiencing mental illness? What if the victim understands why they are making those choices and has empathy for their pain? At what point does the depth of that compassion go too far?
Richard Gadd refuses to release personal information about the real Martha saying on Instagram, “Please don’t speculate on who any of the real-life people could be. That’s not the point of our show. Lots of love, Richard.”
Dammit, Richard. I think that’s exactly why I haven’t spoken much about what has happened to me in the last year. I am uncomfortable with writing about someone who is also struggling. I don’t want to reveal information about them that could make their experience more difficult. Even if they are behaving in ways that are unkind or unhinged, I understand on some level why they made those choices. It’s hard for me attribute malice to what can be explained by someone experiencing pain they don’t have the tools to cope with.
Like Richard, I am holding so much compassion in my own anger. I’m oddly protective of the person who caused me pain because deep down, creating more pain in this world doesn’t feel right. And until I saw Baby Reindeer, I resigned myself to not being able to talk about it publicly, which never sat quite right with me either. Richard’s story is no where even close to my own, I dare not even compare. But I admire how he’s able to speak to his experiences with such love and compassion toward others, especially himself.
There is no tidy way to end a reflection that is only just beginning but I think we can all agree on this: here’s to telling our own stories in ways that allow others to heal from theirs.
Love ya’ll,
Barb
PS This post brought to you by my current ADHD hyper fixation song. If you aren’t writing in a coffee shop and dancing to the same vibe song on repeat, are you really even a writer?