Why Empathy Is Baby Reindeer’s Greatest Strength

Baby Reindeer is a harrowing watch, partly because of its brutal honesty, but stays compelling by using empathy as its greatest strength.  

The Netflix hit is based on a true story – Richard Gadd, the man who wrote the show, was stalked in his twenties by a woman the show calls Martha. Maybe in an attempt to distance himself, Gadd also plays a fictionalised version of himself called Donny Dunn. The show displays Donny and Martha’s relationship in excruciating detail; as friendship quickly turns into obsession.

The story begins simply enough. Donny, whilst working in a bar, notices a distraught woman sat at it. In an attempt to brighten her spirits, he decides to buy her a cup of tea. This is all it takes, seemingly, for Martha to become interested in Donny. Soon, she arrives at the pub every day, sitting at the bar for hours, nursing a single drink just so she can spend time with him.

At an alarmingly quick rate, Martha begins emailing him many times in a day, using flirtatious and sometimes crude, sexual language to convey her desire for him. Donny’s colleagues at the pub don’t see the harm – at one point, a rather stupid man replies to one of Martha’s messages stating that Donny wants to have anal sex with her.

The show depicts how this toxic relationship escalates in brutal, shocking fashion; made all the more alarming by the fact this is based on a true story. So, what stops Baby Reindeer from just becoming the TV show equivalent of Fatal Attraction? One word: empathy.

Having experienced the events that influenced the show, one aspect I have to give credit for to Gadd is that he never fails to examine the intricacies of his characters. Initially, I was concerned that Gadd would portray Donny as a hero, as opposed to a nuanced, compelling character. However, Donny is anything but. Here, Gadd portrays him as an incredibly flawed individual – as his relationship with Martha deepens, he begins questioning why he doesn’t simply turn Martha into the police.

There are many reasons for this, one of which being he is the victim of sexual abuse, meaning that he doesn’t feel like he is “worthy” of a normal sexual relationship. He enjoys the fact that Martha flirts with him but is partly attracted to it because he knows it’s taboo. Martha is almost twenty years older than him and quickly begins stalking him. For many people, this would ring alarm bells.

However, Donny seems to live quite a lonely existence – with few actual friends and parents that live in Scotland, his isolated existence leads him to partly crave Martha’s attention. It gives him something to look forward to every day.  

Furthermore, we have to talk about Martha. Brilliantly portrayed by Jessica Gunning, she is able to peel back many layers to her character. When angry and frustrated, Martha turns into a foul-mouthed, powerful force of nature. However, there are touching moments of vulnerability with her that Gunning portrays beautifully.

In episode three, realising that Martha genuinely thinks they are together as a couple, Donny tries to let her down gently, upon wanting her delusion to be over so they can both move on. This leads to a heartbreaking scene – one that most scripts about a stalker wouldn’t even consider including. By showing the audience that scene, it gives Martha, as a character, a lot more depth as we see the genuine pain she feels. It isn’t a delusion to her, but her form of reality.

Gadd’s writing is very empathetic to Martha. In portraying these two incredibly flawed characters, it shows what draws them together as much as what blows them apart. There are many sides to their characters – Donny can be charming and funny one minute, before becoming withdrawn and terrified the next. He makes many mistakes, as he attempts to understand his sexuality, reckon with his past and find a way of dealing with Martha.

Another side of Donny’s character is as a stand-up comedian. A dream that he has had from a young age, part of Baby Reindeer deals with his attempts to build a career. He uses props on stage, speaking one-liners in an attempt to make people laugh. He enjoys the escapism – he gets to forget all of his self-hatred and failings when on stage. However, even then, the edges of his reality begin folding in. In many scenes, his jokes get a muted response from the audience. In one gut-punching scene, Martha confronts him in front of people by singing to him before becoming aggressive as he makes fun of her sentimentality.

Eventually, his persona as a stand-up comedian collapses in on itself. He realises that this career he’s trying to build is just an attempt to escape from his problems. In one scene, he finally cracks – giving up after a joke doesn’t land before confessing all of his deepest, darkest secrets to a shocked, stunned audience. It’s Donny finally accepting who he is – trying to piece together parts of his personality that he has shunned for so long.

In finding cracks within both of its main characters, in not shying away from the uncomfortable truths, in not being intent on blaming but instead in trying to understand, Baby Reindeer finds its undeniable strength. Whilst there are moments of comedy, the narrative never laughs at Martha. The show could easily devolve into an ugly portrayal of a one-dimensional character but it becomes a lot more than that.

Make no mistake – it won’t be to everyone’s tastes. It’s still a difficult, sometimes ugly show but the ugliness is vital to its writing.  It shows that it is only by revealing the ugly parts of ourselves that we can truly begin to move on. There are many raw, uncompromising, disturbing scenes, but it needs to show these scenes so you understand what made and built these characters.

The fact that it is based on a true story is staggering, both in terms of the series of events and the fact that Gadd has recovered to the extent that he feels comfortable writing about many awful acts with such clarity. It’s an astonishing achievement; one that asks you not to look away by peeling back layer after layer of these characters in order to fully understand who they are. The characters grapple with these truths just as we, the audience, do. It’s through this that Baby Reindeer is able to highlight how powerful it truly is.

The Issue With Retconning

This week we’re going to talk about one of my absolute pet peeves. I often see it in television writing and that is the retcon.

Retconning is basically when a piece of information is quickly introduced to conveniently stop or sidestep the logical consequences of a particular action. This isn’t the same as a plot twist – a plot twist hinges more on structure and when exactly information is revealed. A retcon is, effectively, a way a writer can conveniently stop a particular foreshadowed or forewarned event from occurring.

You may wonder: why would a writer want to do this? Well, I said before that I see this issue happen more in television writing than in films and novels and there’s a reason for this. You see, to build tension in a drama series, there could be a storyline that threatens the life of a particular character or could result in a character getting fired from a work position, resulting in them potentially no longer being in the show.

The reason you may not find such storylines in a film or novel is simple: because most of them aren’t long forms of narrative; not when compared to a long-running television series. And, to a certain extent, I get it – writing is really hard and it must be a very difficult balancing act trying, week in, week out, to come with engaging and interesting storylines that come to a satisfying conclusion. In this lies my issue with the retcon: it results in the storyline almost never building to a satisfying conclusion.

Let’s give an example to highlight what I mean. I’m currently watching The Morning Show on Apple TV. It’s not the greatest show in the world but the acting is great and the storylines can, in some instances, be engaging. It also has some soapy tendencies that I’ve learnt to enjoy.

Now, I should say there are very minor spoilers for Seasons 1 and 2 of the show here, but they are needed in order to make my point. Billy Crudup plays Cory Ellison, the CEO of UBA, the network that runs the aforementioned Morning Show. Now, at the end of Season 1, Cory, working with Bradley Jackson (Reese Witherspoon) and Alex Levy (Jennifer Aniston) enable an interview with a whistleblower.

This isn’t just any whistleblower – this is a woman called Hannah who has been sexually assaulted by the now-disgraced, former anchor Mitch Kessler (Steve Carrell). The ins and outs of this aren’t really important. However, what is are the stakes involved: you very much get the sense that, if this goes poorly, baring in mind they are biting the hand that feeds them, that the network could fire them for enabling this interview.

So, Season 2 begins and Cory Ellison is brought into a meeting with other board members to discuss his actions. In one effective, well-acted scene, he’s fired because he disobeyed the network and made them look bad by enabling this interview. This was a potentially expected outcome; one that sold the dramatic stakes of the interview and one that seemed to complete the dramatic story arc laid out from the end of the previous season.

HOWEVER, the show then flashforwards several months and, lo and behold, Ellison is suddenly back in his office as CEO. There is one mention in the episode that Bradley effectively helped Ellison get his job back by threatening to quit.

There are a few issues with this:

1. Show, don’t tell – The show breaks one key writing rule which is show, don’t tell. It’s a lot more effective to see something as opposed to simply being told something. If we’d seen Bradley defend Cory in the first place, and threaten to quit, it would’ve been much more of a compelling development.
2. The lack of details – I’m halfway through Season 2 currently and there really hasn’t been many details provided as to the meeting Bradley had with the board members. Now, of course, you could just say, “well, Max, what is there to tell? She threatened to quit and they caved.” You’d be correct but the writers have made it feel so throwaway that it’s almost like they don’t want us to think about it too much.
3. Undermining dramatic tension – Here’s my main issue with it – if you have a storyline that threatens or builds towards certain fallout or consequences, by not following through with it, it undermines the storyline as a whole. The Hannah interview storyline was built up through Season 1 and, literally as Season 2 is starting, any ramifications of it seem to be swept under the carpet. It turns from a great storyline to one that doesn’t fully stick the landing.

Now, there are, of course, worse things than retconning and I understand that the writers clearly didn’t want Crudup to leave the show (they shouldn’t want that, he’s great in the role.) The problem, however, is that by building a dramatic storyline, the viewer expects some ramifications from it. In having Cory already have his place back at UBA, it begs the question of why those particular stakes were raised in the first place.

The writers could have simply not included the firing scene at the beginning of the episode. Why include it if you’re just going to go against it in ten minutes’ time? The answer is simple – it’s because they knew, logically, that Cory would have to fall on his sword but didn’t want to deal with actual consequences of that. They wanted to have their cake and eat it too.

Such writing techniques as the retcon can undermine your storylines and characters, leading to your writing losing some of its dramatic weight. My advice would be to not use such a device whenever you can. You don’t want to sell your reader or audience short. Always remember: like life, in writing, actions have consequences and you need to fully commit to them if you want to create a compelling world that people will want to come back to.