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Baby Reindeer Richard Gadd's biggest mistake

Written by TVSA Team from the blog Netflix on 13 May 2024
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We're not here to victim blame. No.

We don't blame Donny for the fact that he got he stalked by a psycho in the Netflix mindbender Baby Reindeer, however, he did commit some humdinging blunders in how he handled the situation.

Donny and series creator Richard Gadd were the first to admit many of his short comings in the autobiographical story but where did Richard ultimately get it wrong?

It wasn't that he felt sorry for "Martha" when he first met her because that's human empathy and we'd be doomed without it.

It also wasn't the fact that Martha's real world identity has come out in public with Fiona Harvey being identified as Richard's alleged stalker. 

Richard and the series producers have said that they did their best to conceal her identity but they would have known that people would go berserk trying to work out who she is - the messages and tweets in the show were all clues.

No mistakes there.

At first we thought that Donny's biggest mistake was not telling the police about Martha's brutal physical attack on his girlfriend Teri.

If him and Teri had laid a case of assault against her the police would immediately have taken it much more seriously and things wouldn't have escalated as they did.

But Donny and Richard weren't only abused by Martha, it happened with the TV show writer Darrien too - who Donny went back to despite the rape! 

The combo of both situations puts an exclamation mark on his biggest mistake: he accepted being abused because of the affirmations he received from both of them. 

They both said that they saw him the way he wanted to be seen, which gave him confidence. Remember that folder he had on his phone of messages from Martha labelled "Confidence"?

In the moments when Martha and Darrien weren't directly abusing him they boosted his ego and gave him what he thought he needed. 

Hectic and intense, you can see how it could happen. But the going back to Darrien - that's beyond our understanding. On one hand you could argue that he gained something positive after the abuse but on another you can see it as him accepting his abuse.

It's made us pause, pondering our own relationships and the dynamics within them.

And it's raised the question: Have you ever had a relationship (or more) where you've accepted being abused?
 

Channels in this post: Netflix, Netflix South Africa



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