"DID SOMEONE HURT YOU?" - Talking About BABY REINDEER

*THIS REVIEW WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS*

With so much content out there these days, it can be a bit surprising when something just falls into your lap that you had heard nothing about.

On April 11, 2024, Netflix dropped a Limited Series called Baby Reindeer that was created, written by, and starring Scottish actor/writer/comedian Richard Gadd. I had no prior knowledge of Gadd, but when the series began with a caption implying that it was based on a true story, I had to wonder. I mean...how true is "true". I always think back to the Coen Brothers and how Fargo begins. 

It just so happens that Gadd did have a stalker, and the creation of this series came from the one-man stage show he had developed/performed in London.

Many of the elements from beyond this point were fictionalized, but Gadd does take certain incidents from his life to inform his fictional counterpart...and it takes the series into some darker directions that I certainly wasn't expecting at first.

Gadd's fictional counterpart is a 25-year-old Donny Dunn, the age Gadd was when this incident occurred. We first meet him at a police precinct in which he wants to report that he is being stalked...but when he is asked why it has taken him six months to make a report, he doesn't have an answer.

We then flashback to where Donny meets his stalker, the middle-aged Martha (Jessica Gunning). Martha comes into the pub where Donny is working and seems lonely and distraught. He does take pity on her and asks what she would like to order. She claims that she "can't afford anything", but he offers to get her a cup of tea on the house.

From there, Martha goes on and on about how she is very prolific lawyer who had worked with some of the "great, political minds" of the country, which apparently includes former British Prime Ministers David Cameron and Tony Blair. This begs the question: how can a lawyer not afford a cup of tea...or any drink for that matter?

The signs were pointing to Baby Reindeer being a very dark comedy...perhaps like some kind of strange Beef/Fleabag hybrid...but instead it takes a few darker turns. My final opinion of the show is actually quite positive, but I do struggle with some of these tonal shifts. I found myself wondering if certain events played out in such a way or if Gadd was writing the storyline in order to justify it as in many cases, I found myself wanting to yell at the screen for him to do more to try to stop Martha.

Donny looks onto Martha with pity, but it does seem as if on some subconscious level he sees someone else who needs help just like him. 

My first response to Donny was that he was just some noob who was not handling having an admirer and instead of taking the appropriate steps to stop her, he seemed to almost milk her obsession. It makes you question what is exactly is up with this guy; is he simply a noob or is there something deeper within the service?

Early on, we get a scene where we see him joining a Trans dating site. No explanation is given, but you are left to wonder if he is perhaps fetishizing trans people...and it is made even more questionable when he creates an alias and acts as though he is in construction and not a struggling comedian who is working as a bartender.

Eventually we discover that right out of college, Donny was sexually assaulted repeatedly by a writer named Darien O'Connor that he greatly admired, and he had hoped would give him a jumpstart to his career. The experience led him to questioning his own sexuality and he would find himself sleeping around and taking drugs to try to cope. The self-loathing and self-destructive tendencies make a little more sense after this...not to say it excuses how he treats others. It is that old saying "HURT people hurt people."

Donny's desire to be wanted and sought after plays right into Martha's obsession. He may not see her as a sexual being, but he does love knowing someone views him as the best thing ever. She takes to calling him her "baby reindeer" which we assume has something to do with his facial structure and the fact he is roughly 20 years younger than her. 

However, Donny's carelessness to the situation at first does become a bit more bracing when he realizes that Martha is indeed a former lawyer but one who has been charged for stalking and assault on multiple occasions. 

Martha's obsession becomes Donny's own obsession as if he can't seem to live without being Martha's object. She will send him emails (because he does, at first, make sure she doesn't get his phone number) and the only reason she is able to email is due to its inclusion on his website. The emails keep pouring in but none of them are enough to incriminate here even though she is a former felon for the exact crime she is now committing. 

I do want to take time to discuss the acting as I feel like our two leads are definitely worth praising. It is no surprise that due to the fact this is his story, Gadd throws himself into the role with abandon. He manages to walk that fine line between being a sympathetic anti-hero with great confidence...and a lot of that confidence comes from how vulnerable he is. He is not afraid to put himself out there and to make a fool of himself...but I would be remiss to not discuss Jessica Gunning's work as Martha.

I had some slight knowledge of Gunning prior to this, but not really familiar with her work. I had only seen her name pop up in various theatre productions or on the BBC show The Outlaws she did with, of all people, Christopher Walken. 

Gunning has a difficult task here and in some ways, you can relate a role like this to something like Glenn Close's Alex from Fatal Attraction. This is a whole different kind of woman scorned, though. It isn't so much that she is a woman scorned, but she is a woman who is clearly suffering from a mental illness and not receiving the proper care. 

Fatal Attraction, as entertaining as it is, didn't really try to analyze Alex as a character which makes her seem like just a straight up villain. The reason the role worked was that Glenn Close, being the stellar actor that she is, put in the work to understand the psychological backstory and even though the script may not tell us any of this, SHE does.

Gadd is able to show us that Donny contributes to egging on Martha, but he also shows that deep down, Martha is actually a person who simply needs help and perhaps has a method to her madness.

Nearing the climax of the series, Donny is able to incriminate Martha when she finally sends him a voicemail (once he slips and gives her a way to contact him via cell) that is violently threatening to him and his parents (which, by the way, the actor playing Donny's father is hilarious with his thick Scottish brogue telling off Martha over the phone)...but in the courtroom scene in which she pleads guilty to all of the charges against Donny and his family, Gunning is glorious.

I am not saying I condone what Martha does, but there is no way for me to not feel sympathy for her in that moment. Jessica Gunning was a marvel in this role, because she was able to dig deep into finding the humanity in Martha that truly makes you realize that this woman needed serious help.

And who else needs help? Donny. 

In fact, even after Martha is sent to prison for 9 months which will then be followed by a restraining order, Donny still listens to all of the voicemails she left him...which he went so far as to categorize by her moods when she sent them. 

If he is feeling down, he will listen to voicemails he finds in the "complimentary" section...and even earlier on, the whole ordeal actually turns him on to the point where he starts masturbating to her even though he admits to himself that he is totally not attracted to her.

The final scene is him at a pub listening to a voicemail that finally reveals as to why she calls him "baby reindeer". You could argue that it falls into a similar territory as Citizen Kane in that as a child, Martha had a small plushy reindeer toy that she loved and she still has it. She felt that Donny represented the "spit image" of this stuffed reindeer: "same nose, same eyes, same cute wee bum..."

In a recent interview, Gunning said she had already recorded this monologue prior to filming the courtroom sentencing and that she "clung" to it. She stated as follows:

"So in the courtroom scene, in the scene when she’s on her own at the bar, that’s actually the voicemail I read just to get me into that – I find it so emotional, that final voicemail. That’s the thing that I clung to in terms of her past. That voicemail is absolutely the thing I clung to for sure because I just found that so emotional."

In the end, both Donny and Martha are lost in various ways. Even though Donny is technically free of Martha, he never truly will be as he can't seem to let go of her obsession.

Martha probably got what she deserved, but I was left hoping she could get the help she needed. Donny feels like maybe he is on some kind of right path, but he still seems to be showing signs of potential self-destruction...even as far as him going back to the man that sexually assaulted him in hopes that he could somehow get another chance even if it may mean putting himself in danger again.

For some of its more erratic and indulgent moments, Baby Reindeer ends up leaving you feeling a bit breathless and uncomfortable. It is kind of hard to deny the appeal of a project when it manages to work so well at bringing those kinds of emotions out of you.

Check this one out. Just be forewarned that you will see depictions of sexual assault and also violence towards someone who is trans.