The first couple of episodes of this Netflix series make it look like standard party line propaganda but no, friends, it’s good. It’s actually kind of deep.
The series is about a young working class man who’s trying to claw his way out of a crappy job and an impossible housing situation by becoming a comedian. In the process he becomes a plaything of people with fancy educations who are perverts, rapists, paraphiliacs, and groomers. They abuse him in such terrible ways that the actor playing the role of the young man in his twenties looks like he’s 45. Anybody younger would look too disturbing in this role.
Baby Reindeer throws out all the gender mythology we are currently told to worship. I don’t know if it’s purposeful or not but it’s good. The working class man has to accept the new gender identity that was raped into him and loudly proclaim himself a fashionable sort of victim to be able to make a living and stop being a reject. But deep down he knows that all this crap about identities is a fabrication.
Has somebody watched it? What did you think? The ending simply slaughtered but I don’t want to give anything away if people want to watch. Please sit through the first two episodes. I promise it will start making sense afterwards.
Clarissa's Blog 
Why are people downvoting the post instead of commenting? If you watched the series, I want to hear from you. Say something. I want to hear different takes on the show. It’s a devastating takedown of wokeness and gender theory. The raped dude who becomes “bisexual” and forces himself to date “trans women” as a result of being brutalized even says the famous phrase “do you want a dead son or a live [whatever was done to him]”?
And the way the show portrays hetero women…. Very hardcore.
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On Baby Reindeer, it’s on my schedule now but I probably wont’ be able to get to it until next week..
Just some quick googling reveals the lead actor is 34 and is based (probably pretty loosely) on his real life experience of a female stalker and being sexually assaulted.
Just a quick view of some scenes makes me wonder what happened to him as a kid… I don’t think a person with a normal childhood enables and prolongs dysfunctional and/or abusive relationships so consistently as he seems to….
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I don’t want to give any spoilers but the relationship with the stalker is complicated. I see it as a metaphor for how hetero women are screwing themselves out of relationships because they have let themselves go completely and embraced screeching entitlement and how all this leads to the proliferation of sexual pathologies of all kinds.
I’m very interested in hearing your take if you watch it.
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I don’t think nice, stable, mentally healthy people go into standup. It’s an open question whether the desperately-needs-attention personality starts with abuse, or is just a magnet for it. Probably both?
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That’s exactly what the main character in the series realizes. It was never about comedy. It was about needing to be seen as “the funny guy” instead of the “abused guy “
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So far I’ve seen just the first ep. It certainly got my attention! But I’m only drawn to continue by comments like yours, and the promos that say “Not just another bunny-burner” — I’m still worrying that it will be pretty much just that, but glad people are saying otherwise.
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Baby reindeer, one episode in…. random thoughts:
Yikes! does this guy have any survival skills whatsoever?
I did laugh out loud at the Serena Williams line (yes I’m shallow).
So many men never ever receive positive unsolicited attention from women that when it happens they’re sort of…. clueless about how to respond, especially if the attention isn’t wanted. Also men tend to not get any… socialization in how to dial back the attention meter so everytime he tries to close the door he cracks it open again.
And as you said once about people who stay in dysfunctional relationships…. there’s always a payoff. It’s clear he craves some type of approval and it’s clear she’s giving it to him and this is new and delightful so he’s ignoring the massive red flags so he can keep the supply coming.
Not entirely clear what to make of her yet…. I have thoughts but want to wait an episode or two before expressing them.
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Martha is clearly an unwell person but she’s the only one who notices that something is going on with him. Nobody else even tries.
Wait until you get to the “trans woman” who is…. a therapist. And the reasons why a straight guy has convinced himself he doesn’t deserve an actual woman.
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“clearly an unwell person”
To most people that would be blindingly obvious…. but he’s just blinded.
“she’s the only one who notices that something is going on with him”
That’s ambiguous… i’m reminded of abusers who target those in whom they sense vulnerability but also she seems to sense talent and potential in him that no one else does.
I have the idea a lot is going on with accents but I don’t have an active command of british accents to know exactly what….
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Oh yes, accents are a big part of it. She’s Scottish, and Scots are perceived as exceptionally crazy at this moment because of the political stuff that’s going on there. So this adds to the perception of her as being at the outer edge of sanity. And there’s also a hint of an unhealthy relationship between Scots and other Brits.
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I hated the first two episodes and didn’t quit watching only because I was too lazy to look for something else to watch.
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“I hated the first two episodes”
Why? I think the first episode has more content than most movies (or several put together) and the acting is amazing (especially the actress playing Martha).
And the direction is top notch… who else could evoke so much desperate longing and sadness watching a lonely overweight woman walking home in the dark?
I could understand not wanting to see the horrible damage that is inevitable for Martha (you just know there are no happy or optimistic ends there….). I think some might have been put off because it’s being marketed sort of like a comedy which is… insane.
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I thought it was going to be woke. I’m like a spooked bunny, I’m afraid woke hunters are behind every bush. 🙂 But I’m glad I stuck with it and discovered that it’s the opposite of woke. I’m really glad you are liking it!
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It’s that “Hey, I see you, you exist’ look. I’d have said she’s a maternal figure, but there are shades of both his parents in her, and it’s kinda obvious looking at their relationship why their kid has such conflicting issues around being seen and not seen.
Btw, when you talk about this show’s portrayal of hetero women, is that in general or just about Martha?
The ending was indeed phenomenal. Very elegantly constructed.
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I think Martha is a metaphor, and so is Donny. They can’t find their way to each other because they have stamped out everything normal inside themselves and the result is ugliness.
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” thought it was going to be woke”
That’s one reason I mostly watch non-US content now…
Speaking of which, I just saw the Swedish crime procedural Veronika and while it’s mostly mid as scandinavian mysteries go it comes the closest to depicting the way that the supernatural events really play out for most who experience them.
The title characters is a police officer addicted to an anxiety medicine (and who’s been stuffed will pills and therapy since she was a child). She suffers from nightmares and starts seeing a few weird things she can’t control or really understand and which end up being related to a murderer….
It’s a bit too linear (for purposes of a series structure) but it does have the ‘what was that about?’ feeling of peripheral randomness that are how such episodes are really experienced by most. The supernatural elements aren’t a get out of jail card for her, she never controls them and they never stop bothering her and are only intermittently helpful. Recommended for that alone.
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Baby Reindeer….
Just saw episode two and you might want to start another post… cause I’m probably going to have things to say about every episode….
The trans girlfriend…. so far so good… she seems to be HSTS (homosexual transsexual who self-feminize in hopes of attracting more masculine men) rather than an AGР (autоgyneрhile). It’s the latter that cause about 80% of problems… (the other 20 % being butchers who mutilate them for pay).
But anyway… she seems intelligent and has some boundaries and principles which is good. On the other hand she’s attracted to Donny so…. something is clearly off, the idea of a non-damaged person being attracted to him is…. negligible.
And after her comment about him ‘loving’ the drama with Martha I have a new idea about some of what he’s getting from the “relationship”: Her vulnerability makes him feel tough and strong and that he has the power to hurt someone…. and that’s also what attracts him to Teri and why he does the horrifically cruel thing he does to her in the subway car. And with Teri around he doesn’t need Martha except as a back up.
There’s also probably some stuff about self-loathing in there so when Martha sexually assaults him he’s clearly back in his comfort space….
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Donny doesn’t think he deserves a heterosexual relationship any more, so he tries to force himself into being with Teri, which every part of him resists. Teri, a therapist, of all things, somehow manages not to see it.
With Martha, he clearly needs her deeply. It’s a very honest portrayal of how this works.
I told you it was good!
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Baby Reindeer double decker:
Episode three: Somewhere in the middle I began wondering….. “Where are the drugs?” the guy seems sooooo like someone who tries to self-medicate and then I realized ‘Martha is his drug’…. (shivers)
and Teri is definitely messed up. A better adjusted person might have listened to his apology and then said (more or less) “I wish you well in the future but… that future needs to be very far away from me”
Toward the end his life seemed to be turning into a weird burlesque of upper class British life. He has the wife (Martha) he won’t leave and his piece on the side (Teri) and then the two world clash horribly… at least his surrogate mother (who seems like the most decent person in the show so far) wasn’t involved.
It was grimly funny how people were reacting less to Martha’s violent craziness and more to her un-PC comments about sinking migrant boats….
Episode four: It”s supposed to be his origin story, but I’m beginning to wonder how reliable this narrator is….To be clear, I’m sure that he didn’t make up any of the sexual abuse he received from Darrien… if anything I assume it was probably a lot worse in real life and was sanitized for tv. But….. the time line doesn’t make any sense… it’s suggested that the grooming took place over months while I’m assuming it was more like weeks or days but that’s a quibble.
His ex-girlfriend Keeley seems way too normal for him (I’m reminded of characters like Betty in Sunset Boulevard or Marjorie in Vertigo… sane women who are way out of their depth in the insane scenarios the men in their lives get up to).
It’s weird that both his dive into gay pornography and his relationship with Teri seem like conversion therapy (into and out of being gay).
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I also felt there was something weird about the timeline. Some other things didn’t make sense either. What did he live on the entire time he was running his unsuccessful show at the restaurant? This sounds like a rich boy whim. Also his writing for no pay for Darien. A person who has worked a low-paid job would always wonder about payment before anything else.
But I really appreciate his honesty in exploring both the sexual abuse and the stalking. It’s very rare that anybody would go in the direction of showing that there is an interplay between victim and abuser which does not diminish the abuser’s guilt in any way. It’s the most nuanced depiction I’ve seen in a long time.
Keeley is very similar to Terri in that they both see Donny as a vibrator. He needs to perform sexually and if not,he’s not needed. I mean, your boyfriend is getting raped, and you manage not to notice? If it were a man badgering a freshly raped girlfriend for sex, we’d be more appalled. But male sexuality is undervalued. Men are supposed to be always ready. This series shows that male sexuality is not primitive. We’ve had a whole #MeToo with a very primitive view of male sexuality, and this series undoes much of that silliness.
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“What did he live on the entire time he was running his unsuccessful show at the restaurant?”
Good point, I’d kind of assume his parents and that Darrien was keeping him in walking-around money… which would be part of the grooming (Donny wanting to give him his money’s worth).
Also a lot of steps were skipped around his time in acting school…
“I mean, your boyfriend is getting raped, and you manage not to notice?”
When I said ‘normal’ I didn’t mean ‘good’ or ‘morally upstanding’ just more like… your average person who hasn’t experienced extraordinary trauma…
My reading (maybe too generous) is that her worldview doesn’t include guys getting raped…. (again she’s a lot more normal than most people in the show). It’s not something she’d suspect unless he told her and that’s not something he could do at that time. So from her point of view he was a crap boyfriend who was away for days at a time and didn’t seem interested in her…
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Such a great show, right? And it totally makes sense that the 1st person narrative has inconsistencies. A traumatized person recounting his experience would always get confused and mess up some details. That’s very realistic.
Also I like that everything is complicated, and there are no easy answers. That’s how it is in life. There’s food for thought here.
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