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Baby Reindeer, the latest runaway hit on Netflix, is a story about a stalker on the surface. However, upon watching the show, it becomes evident that it deals with serious themes of mental health issues, trauma, sexual abuse, and the unhealthy pattern of self-sabotaging loops that are not very unfamiliar to most of us. The show starts with Martha (Jessica Gunning), a middle-aged woman who is obese and looks pale, walking into a bar and getting a free drink offered by Donny (Richard Gadd). Sounds simple enough, right? But things go into an uncontrollable spiral from here, and with each episode, the audience is sucked more and more into the horrors that Donny faces because of his deeds and past trauma that do not let him act rationally.
What Exactly Happens in Baby Reindeer?
Baby Reindeer is about Donny and how he is brutally stalked and abused by this serial stalker, Martha, who almost ruins his life in every possible way. Inspired by real-life events of the creator Richard Gadd, we see that from the day Martha meets Donny at the bar, she mistakes his kindness as something else, maybe love, and starts getting obsessed with him. She starts stalking him, sending him hundreds of texts and emails a day and constantly demanding his attention. Whenever Donny tries to break free from her, she gets into a mood and throws tantrums, making Donny unable to leave her. However, Donny also keeps making wrong decisions regarding the whole situation with Martha; he does not report her to the police right away after he comes to know of her past behaviors of stalking, he also encourages her at times, giving her the wrong idea about his intentions with her. Things like these make the situation gradually worsen, and it is not until Martha threatens to stab Donny’s parents that he takes serious action against her. Martha also jeopardizes Donny’s relationship with his transgender girlfriend Teri (Nava Mau), even after which Donny remains passive regarding the whole thing.
