Well, the floodgates finally opened up on Baby Reindeer’s sixth episode in an alarming and deeply satisfying way. First, we find out that Martha has gotten Donny’s dad’s number from his assistant and has, in turn, been absolutely blowing his phone up. While it’s kind of joyful to watch Donny’s red-faced Scottish dad absolutely tear into Martha on the phone, we also find out that she’s called all his coworkers to tell them he’s a pedophile, which gives the proceedings a much less jolly tinge.
When Donny zips on up to Scotland to intervene, he and his mom end up sitting with the police, only to find out that, actually, Martha harassing Donny’s parents doesn’t really violate the terms of what she had going on in relation to Donny since she’s not harassing him, she’s harassing the people who are responsible for his very existence. Totally different, right?
Hearing that, Donny tries to take matters into his own hands, sneaking to Martha’s apartment complex to trick her into sending him a truly vile “sexy” email at his request because, as he tells her, he “likes it rough.” That backfires quickly because, as Donny finds out pretty much the second he forwards said email to Detective Culver, Martha recorded the whole exchange that led to the email. In fact, she’s recorded everything he’s ever said to her and turned it all over to the police. (Though it’s kind of unclear if she turned over the stuff where he told her to back the fuck off, that they were not and had never been dating, and so on.)
While Detective Culver seems to have it together, for the most part, she seems understandably ticked that Donny tried to circumvent the authorities. She tells him to stop contacting Martha, full stop, and that he should also apologize to her. She doesn’t want to hear from either of them again, a fact that he takes as putting them on a sort of even playing field, as if they’re equally nuts. That seems like a dramatic overreaction from the police, but since they haven’t seen everything we have — and since Donny seemingly never gave them the timeline they asked for or reported Martha’s assault of Teri — then it’s not too much of a jump to see how they landed where they did. Either way, Donny leaves the conversation thinking he’s been beaten, both by the legal system and by Martha, whom he dubs a “seasoned pro” at stalking, finally understanding that she “knew exactly what she was doing and exactly how to get to [him] and to evade the law.”
Down and out, Donny heads home to Teri, who’s really not there to lend much of a sympathetic ear. She’s not about to shut herself in her house and live in fear for the rest of her life. She’s come too far in her life — in her gender identity, even — to hide. Donny even suggests she takes her social media down which might seem like nothing to him, but to Teri it makes a big difference. She’s finally the person she wants to be, and he doesn’t seem to understand that. Moreover, he doesn’t seem to even care to try to understand that, or to think about how hard all of this must have been for her. Teri ends up breaking up with Donny, telling him that she thinks he actually loves the drama Martha causes, something not too dissimilar from what we heard from Keely earlier in the series. Teri calls Martha the “embodiment of all [Donny’s] nasty repressions bottled up into one human being,” telling Donny that she’s not ending things because of Martha but because of him.
While the dissolution of Donny and Teri’s relationship makes total sense, I think Teri is a little naive to think that she can just break up with Donny and go back to her free, clear, and Martha-less life. That being said, cutting him loose is 1,000 percent the right move for her. It’s entirely unfair of him to suggest that Teri should shrink to his size, walking back years of self-work and whatever social media presence she’s built. What’s reasonable for him just isn’t for her, and the fact that he can’t see that just proves how myopic he really is. He doesn’t want a partner. He just wants someone to wallow with.
While I held out a little hope that we might get to see Teri again — maybe at the comedy show — I’ve heard that’s the last we’ll see of Nava Mau, which is truly disappointing. I thought she was great in the series, and I can’t wait to see what she does next.
Speaking of that comedy show: Though Donny thinks he’s hit rock bottom after Teri dumps him, it turns out he’s still got a little lower to sink. He heads to his shift at the bar, only to have to face Martha, who’s apparently feeling emboldened now that he’s been chastised. It’s a shitty confluence of events because, even though she’s been barred from the pub, there’s no manager there to help Donny kick her out. (I think because they’re off doing coke?) A shitty barback kind of kid seems too dumb to help him, and when Martha tries to shit on Donny while joking with another patron, telling the stranger to Google “Donny Dunn comedy” and then pairing up to take jabs at his anti-comedy. Set off, Donny tells the patron to Google “serial stalker torments barrister’s deaf child,” repeating it forcefully several times in Martha’s face. She snaps, lunges, and breaks her glass in his face. She appears to be trying to gouge his eyes out and he hits her back. The barback and the other guy wrestle her out the door while Donny bleeds; lucky her glass didn’t blind him or cut his throat.
When the managers show up in the aftermath, though, they tell him that he can’t — or at least shouldn’t — call the police because, legally, there has to be a manager on duty, and they were clearly derelict. They don’t want to get in trouble and because they clearly care very, very little about Donny’s feelings or well-being, they try to save themselves. He goes along with it, though, offering up a monotone “fine” that seems to hint at just how done with everything he really is.
After a brief stop at his rich kid house, where he finds people getting fucked up on his bed, Donny is off to his comedy finals, which are in a truly posh nightclub. Things go okay at first, as he takes jabs at his facial injuries, but they go quickly downhill thanks to a truly unfortunate joke about a teapot spout with gout and an audio bit about “proper, proper condoms.” Something flashes across Donny’s face, and it’s clear that he finally gets why his jokes aren’t working. They’re not about him, or, as he explains, “Of course you didn’t see anything in [these jokes.] You only saw me.”
“I used to think, genuinely, that what you’re seeing here is breaking the mold,” Donny tells the crowd. “I’d watch these fucking other comics rising above me, and I’d never understand why them and not me.” He’s been too naive, he says — so naive that he was easily manipulated by Darrien, telling the crowd in brutal detail about his grooming and assault. Darrien, Donny says, was able to prey on him because he offered the kind of praise he’d wanted his entire life. He wanted to be seen and recognized, and so when Darrien offered even a glimpse at that, he ate it right up. He wanted to be famous because “when you’re famous, people see you as famous.” Being famous, Donny says, means no one thinks you’re a loser, a drip, or queer.
Why, Donny asks the crowd, did he keep going back for more, even after he’d been raped? “Is my self-respect so low,” he asks. “Is my lust for success so fucking high that I will repeatedly go back to this man’s house and let him abuse me for a little peek at fame?” Calling himself “a sticking plaster for all of life’s weirdos” after Darrien’s abuse, he says he’s become “an open wound” for horrible people to sniff at, including Martha. When it comes to that situation, he says, he’s not sure how it will end. “I really think one of us is going to have to die now,” he deadpans.” And I’m not a killer.”
The hits keep on coming, too, with Donny telling the audience about his breakup with Teri, telling them that he ultimately loved hating himself more than he loved her. Things somehow turn even darker after that, as he tells the room that he’s “going to stop running now because I just don’t have the legs for it.” He says he’s only got about 100 meters left in him despite life being a “marathon that I was never going to finish.” If he walked out into traffic after the show ended, I don’t think anyone in the room would be surprised. In America, we’d probably worry that he’d have a gun. I’d like to think that if I was in the room, I’d be texting the cops under my jacket, trying to get some medical professional down there to put Donny on some sort of “danger to oneself” hold, but I also don’t really know what I’d do.
After all, as Baby Reindeer has taught us in just a few short episodes, no one really knows what they’d do when faced with some truly horrible situation. We’d like to think we’re strong, we’re smart, and we’d do the perfect thing, but the reality is that if someone can find the right buttons to press to get whatever it is they want, we’d almost all fold like a house of cards.
Watching Donny lay all his history out at the show felt like watching someone set themselves on fire. He’s setting fire to his career, to his relationships with his coworkers in the audience, and to pretty much all of his material. On the other hand, he’s also setting fire to all his secrets — and to the risk that somehow they will come out in a way that’s not in his control. Everything he hid is now out in the most sweeping and public way possible. He didn’t just dump his truth on a close confidant in a way that he could walk back later. He dropped it to a room of 100 strangers, and in a place where it could perceivably have been recorded for online posterity. The act was excruciating, but it was also necessary and I’d like to think that, in some ways, it will feel like a weight’s been lifted from Donny’s shoulders.
I’m interested in where Baby Reindeer goes from here, with its big finale episode. While part of me expects some shocking knock-down drag out between Donny, Martha, Keely, and whoever else, there’s also part of me that wonders if it ends more with a whimper than a bang. Now that Donny’s come clean, he’s gotten some of his power back, even if he doesn’t yet know it. Everything seems to be hinged on what happens when he gets off the stage, which could go any way. All I know is that, like Donny said closing his set, I really look forward to him winning this whole thing.
Reindeer Tales
• I love how Donny’s brusque Scottish dad gives it right back to Martha, though you have to think that kind of bluster and (probably empty) threats aren’t sustainable long-term, whereas hers very much are.
• According to Martha, you can’t legally deny a woman on her period a glass of water. She’s a lawyer, too, so she must know.
• If real-life Richard Gadd ever used that teapot spout/gout joke in a show, he deserved to hear absolute crickets because, God, is it horrible. On the other hand, I’m pretty intrigued by the guy in the train conductor outfit backstage at the comedy show, because, like Donny, I’m absolutely sure that he’s going to be funny.
