While Baby Reindeer’s fifth episode comes with a bit of a softer touch — a welcome easing off after the sexual-assault revelations of episode four — as a viewer, you can’t help but be on edge. When will Martha spring out? When will something horrible happen? When will the other shoe drop?
It’s an interesting and appropriate dramatic technique because, in a way, it makes us all feel like Donny in some sense. Even though, as of this episode, Martha’s been banned from the pub and things with Teri have started to go relatively well, he’s still wary. Part of that is because of Martha, naturally, because it’s hard to trust that an unstable person will act rationally all on their own, but part of that also stems from what Donny has suppressed deep inside himself. When he thought things were going well with Darrien, when he was soaring high, the biggest crashes began.
It’s also because he’s still not being honest with himself — or with anyone else, for that matter. When things with Donny and Teri start to get a little spicy, he can’t get hard, something she takes not as a sign that something’s wrong with him but that something’s wrong with her. Is it, Teri asks, because Martha said she looked like a man? Could it be because her hair is growing back in clumps and she looks like Beetlejuice? It’s deeper than all of that, of course, but it’s also so buried, so alien from what Teri knows of Donny, that you can’t blame her for not knowing how or what to ask. The only person who can make Donny whole again, both sexually and emotionally, is Donny. He has people who love him, but it’s unclear if anyone — even Keely, who was, in theory, around when at least some of the destructive behavior was happening — has a real clear picture that something truly awful went down. (It also doesn’t help that Donny seems to give zero fucks that Martha threw a Coke in Keely’s face.)
Speaking of that, I should note a couple of things: First, I’m honestly impressed that Donny moving in with two psychedelic-loving, dance-music heads didn’t send him into some sort of awful “shades of that night” shame spiral. It’s a shit place to live, for sure, but things could have gone worse, especially considering it basically forces him to live with Teri instead.
The same kind of thing happened with the pub bros finding his YouTube videos. They’re dickheads, of course, but that’s who they are by nature. It was bound to happen, and now it has, so, hopefully, Donny can breathe a little easier again.
He should also be able to breathe a little easier now that the police seem to have a handle on the Martha situation. However, I did for a second there think that they were asking him to come into a back room because Martha had filed some horrible complaint against him and he was going to face questioning. While I don’t in any way believe that she’s up and moved on, it does seem like Martha’s at least somewhat capable of seeming like a functional person operating in society, even when there’s clearly something else going on underneath. That’s clear at the end of the episode when we hear that call from Donny’s parents — true emotional terrorism, really — but there’s still a part of me that thinks that even when Donny takes one step forward, like going to the police, he still inevitably takes two steps back. Is he not reporting what happened to Teri because he’s still ashamed of her? (And, frankly, why isn’t she forcing the issue? Own your power, Teri!) Why hasn’t he made the timeline of Martha’s actions? Because he’d have to include the assault, thus admitting it even happened?
In theory, just because he has to admit the Martha assault doesn’t mean that Donny will have to say anything more about his past. His fucked-up lizard brain undoubtedly can’t wrap itself around that, because it’s been groomed and manipulated into all sorts of self-doubt and repression, but if anything, talking about the Martha assault, about how it’s okay he froze and how it’s okay that he feels shame and excitement sometimes all at once, could lighten the load of his other assaults.
I’m not a therapist like Teri, and I can’t pretend to predict what Martha will do. I can’t purport to understand what really is going on in Donny’s brain. He is allowed to feel how he feels and act how he thinks he needs to. However, I think as a viewer, I’m still trying to acclimate to having the grace to accept him as he is versus doing what I’d normally do watching another random drama, which is to yell stuff like “What are you doing!” at the screen. Hopefully, I’m not alone in this because (a) I’d be ashamed if I am (and I should be), and (b) because I think Baby Reindeer is trying to teach viewers to have that kind of empathy and to appreciate the gray areas in both a story line and in everyday life. We’ve still got a few episodes to go, but if the show can move the needle in that direction even a little after it’s all said and done, then it’ll be a tremendous victory, to be sure.
Reindeer Tales
• I have a feeling that something will happen at the comedy finals. It could be Martha, of course, but what if Darrien is there as a judge? That would be the perfect confluence of shit to finally throw Donny into absolute emotional upheaval.
• Let me note here, randomly, that I like how Martha’s hair dye seems to have been growing out over the course of the season, leaving her with increasingly wiry gray roots. The true sign of mental distress!
