This week’s post discusses “Reindeer Baby,” a show that discusses stalking and graphic sexual violence explicitly. I won’t be doing that in this here newsletter, but if you need to skip this one, that’s ok! I’ll see you next week.
Netflix’s most recent limited series, “Reindeer Baby,” completely mesmerized me from the very first scene. And when a title card that said it was based on a true story popped up on screen, I was completely hooked.
If you haven’t heard, “Reindeer Baby” is the brainchild of writer and actor Richard Gadd, who plays himself. It has most notably received a perfect 100% critic’s score on Rotten Tomatoes. And it has more than earned that honor, in my humble opinion.
This is one of those shows that’s best watched with as little knowledge ahead of time as possible. But for the sake of our newsletter: a bartender named Donny (who dreams of being a successful comedian) shows an emotionally disturbed woman some kindness when she cannot afford to buy a cup of tea. From there, her obsession with him grows and she begins to stalk him in-person and online.
The ensuing chaos forces our protagonist to confront his darkest trauma, as well as his complicated relationship to relationships, sexuality, masculinity, and his own self-worth. It’s not a show for the faint of heart (It is dark. Dark as in: it depicts both grooming and sexual violence) but it is beautifully and thoughtfully told.
We aren’t here to discuss the darkest moments in detail though. What I do want to discuss though is this: what captivated me most was the tenderness of the show. And this tenderness payed homage to every character’s anxieties, without minimizing even the most difficult characters.
If you’ve been around my Substack for a minute: around here, we feel strongly that everyone has anxieties, and if we understand each other’s anxieties better, we can create a better, more empathetic world.
And everyone on this show is anxious. Donny is anxious about his comedy career, and having someone laugh at his jokes and pay attention to him (even if she is clearly mentally unwell) soothes his own profound anxiety that he is not good enough. His stalker, Martha, is desperately seeking love and attention in a world that largely ignores her. She wants to feel important after losing her life and career (due to, you guessed it, a stalking charge and some time in jail), which Donny allows her to feel in his presence. Teri, Donny’s love interest, is a trans woman who walks through the world especially vulnerable but proud of who she is. But when Donny’s bad behavior as a result of Martha’s stalking poses a threat to her own well-being, she has to decide whether she cares enough about him to endure the danger surrounding him.
For Donny, Martha’s stalking not only ruins his life for a number of years, but it touches upon an especially dark trauma, one he has buried in sex, drugs, and desperate attempts to succeed as a comedian. And this trauma, as well as his helplessness as Martha ruins his life, makes him question his own masculinity as a trans-attracted, possibly pansexual man who is fascinated by Martha while simultaneously terrified of her?
The entire show feels like an homage to the horrors we know men go through but never hear about in real detail. In the wake of #MeToo, we’ve heard many stories of women reeling from sexual violence, blaming themselves, rarely believed by others, and struggling with their mental health as a result. But we rarely hear the stories of men who are sexually assaulted and/or stalked in part because of how emasculating it can be, and in part because it requires a level of intimacy we never incentivize men to share.
But Richard Gadd takes us there—the anxiety of being followed, of receiving unhinged messages, of desperately trying to avoid traumatic memories, of wanting to be liked so badly they’d be willing to do nearly anything for a laugh.
Even more rare: a male storyteller brutally honest enough to admit to his own follies and missteps handling both Martha and his relationship to his previous assailant. The result is a show so raw it feels as if I ought to look away. That’s how personal it feels. Richard Gadd is not, and was never, a perfect victim. And that what makes “Reindeer Baby” a genius take on a post-#MeToo genre—there are no perfect victims or perfect perpetrators, but a web of messy, fucked up people hurting each other and themselves, sometimes indiscriminantly. Which is altogether the most human kind of story we can tell, even if it’s the hardest story to tell and to take in.
Now, it must be said that this show clearly takes its cues from it’s most obvious predecessor, the darkly comedic and delightfully brutal Michaela Coel’s I May Destroy You, which explored similar questions of how consent and power intersect with race and cancel culture. There’s also traces of Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag, which doesn’t deal explicitly with sexual assault but instead with a narrator trying desperately (and ultimately, unsuccessfully) to outrun their trauma. There would be no show if not for these women’s stories (in particular, Michaela Coel’s story as a person of color surviving sexual trauma in England).
But “Reindeer Baby” is hardly a knock-off. It feels like a thoughtful and considered yet fresh take on the genre, one that fills a hole I didn’t even fully realize was there until it was filled.
I realize this week’s post is a little more review than essay. But that’s because I loved the show and I loved getting to see a glimpse about a version of anxiety that we don’t see explored very often.
So pour yourself a cup of tea and belly up to the bar. It’s about to be a wild ride.