Here’s a question I get a lot these days: Have you watched Baby Reindeer? Until recently the answer had been no. I’d started it and turned it off. Twice. The bartender looked like a sweaty addict and the stalker acted so desperate it gave me anxiety. But when an old college friend asked—after my hairdresser, tattooer and personal training clients had inquired—I finally decided to watch it all the way through. I was going to commit, dammit. Plus I’d been assured it grew more disturbing as it progressed. So with my penchant for true crime stories, I dove in.
(Bonus: the video linked below is the most disturbing true crime story I’ve heard in a while. Please to enjoy. 🤢)
If you haven’t seen Baby Reindeer and hate spoilers, this post may not be for you. That’s your spoiler alert.
It took me a day to watch all seven episodes. Um, yeah.
Anyway, I got over the desperation and sweatiness soon enough and found myself immersed in the story of Richard Gadd, played by Richard Gadd, as he relived a few traumatizing years of his real life, getting stalked by “Martha” and raped repeatedly by a successful TV writer named “Darrien.” Then dutifully I watched the hour-long interview the real Martha did with Piers Morgan, and after that I watched YouTube’s finest commentators, behavioral experts and psychologists analyze the Fiona Harvey interview. Because I was hooked, not on the show, but on Fiona Muir Harvey and what a deluded, unaware, haughty lunatic she is. I love a good psychological car crash in human form. It fills me with wonder and terrifies me at the same time.
I gave YouTube loads of thumbs ups while the Netflix series garnered a thumbs down in the end. As the credits rolled after episode 7, a hollowness settled inside me, not because of all that vomited trauma but because of two things no one seems to be talking about:
Deception. Baby Reindeer includes two odious villains—the stalker and the raper. And it has two heroes—Richard Gadd and his would be girlfriend, a “trans woman.” I put that in quotes because after a couple years down this rabbit hole, I can’t bring myself to casually say the phrase. I could say “trans-identified man,” and I will.
Anyway.
In order to make the show work, since it’s based on real life, Gadd has to sink himself to the level of his abusers because to make himself blameless would come off as dishonest. After all, he’s the one who kept going back. But in lowering himself, he didn’t become any more sympathetic, as a hero typically is, to keep the audience rooting for him. Maybe it’s because civilization as we know it has deteriorated so much that the only heroes we’re worthy of are the wretched anti ones. Instead of rescuing damsels or cats, today’s heroes degrade themselves and glorify trans people. Gadd highlights so many personal failings that it comes off (ironically) as almost a brag about how aware he is that he’s a piece of shit. He details his numerous gritty flaws in episode six to a large audience who came to see him perform standup. Instead they got cringe-a-palooza.Virtue signaling. It turns out that Gadd did indeed date a trans woman IRL like he did in the show, though at first I suspected it was a required DEI add-on.
“Teri” is played by a real trans-identified actor because natch. Like I said in my previous point, Teri plays the second hero in Baby Reindeer. And Teri is a hero in the conventional sense, even though he too never saves a cat. Of course these days every trans character gets automatic hero status, because it’s stunning and brave simply to exist while trans.
Teri embodies integrity, stability and healthy choices in a way no other character in the show does. In one scene he accuses Gadd of bringing too much disorder into his life and I laughed out loud. Here was a man with fake tits, in a fuzzy pink cropped sweater, veins pulsing with estrogen, telling another man that he needed to get his shit together. And it made me think, you know what? This whole series is like one giant sleight-of-hand to normalize trans-identified people even more than society has been trying to do since they rewrote the DSM in 2013. And no one is making YouTube videos about that. They’re busy with Fiona, because look over there! It’s the crazy stalker lady!
Is the show worth watching? I think it is for another two reasons.
Grooming. Episode 4, smack in the middle of the series, details Gadd’s sexual abuse at the hands of a TV writer he idolizes. It shows how a victim will return to his abuser despite knowing the harms. That’s valuable information, laid out graphically and convincingly, from love-bombing to penetration. In light of the grooming that takes place with kids all over the western world when it comes to gender identity ideology, it’s useful to see it unfold.
I also found it striking because the same thing happened with one of Kevin Spacey’s victims. Personally I think Kevin Spacey is guilty AF regardless of his cross-pond acquittals, while my hero Douglas Murray believes the opposite. This is the first time I’ve disagreed with Murray’s take on anything, and I do find it a tiny bit alarming because I respect the shit out of that man’s brain, and look to it often for wisdom and insight. One of the reasons Murray cites for Stacey’s innocence is this repeat victim, ergo Spacey must not have assaulted these men because why would someone go back for more? So Baby Reindeer, with a side of Spacey Unmasked is my recommendation for double-feature viewing that will leave you wondering if the human race ever has a chance to redeem itself.Intel. If you’re a Mrs. Miller subscriber you probably agree that trans is not normal, so watching it get depicted as more normal than the actual norm is unsettling, right down to the sex scenes. Please to share my frustration. Watch as every non-dysphoric character is portrayed as unhinged and depraved while the trans character is the estrogen-elevated voice of all that is reasonable, healthful, righteous and good.
While scarfing my fill of Fiona on YouTube, I came across two videos by male detransitoners that emphasized how pretending your way through life is neither good nor healthy. The first is from a man named LaRell, who admits—after getting his penis and testicles amputated—that trans is nothing more than a tightly held belief—a delusion. Powerful stuff. Even more articulate and illustrative is this video, by a man named Sam, who explains how years of neglect and abuse led him to the mistaken conclusion that he was a woman trapped in a man’s body. Over time he realized he was simply a man trapped by his own disordered thinking, which can happen to anyone, like Richard Gadd or Kevin Spacey or Fiona Harvey. But unlike gender dysphoria, ordinary disordered thinking doesn’t come with board certified genital mutilation.
Not that it’s a competition or anything.
🏆
Ok, my trans ID’ed kid said she had watched this and found it disturbing and told her dad not to watch it, and then talked about how disturbing it was for several days. I had no idea what any of this was about … great. More trans virtue signaling and normalizing. Wtf is going on with Netflix these days, anyway? I catch my husband watching ‘documentaries’ that are so slanted and bias it’s cringy. And when I point this out, he shrugs. American’s critical thinking skills are at rock bottom and getting lower.
I’m a film snob so I’ve seen and tolerated plenty of darkness and violence, but after episode 5 my wife and I had to stop watching Baby Reindeer. the last 2-3 episodes we watched left us both with a visceral feeling of disgust and unease. as I said before, we’ve both seen worse, but the way the story was told, from the script, to the editing, to the direction seemed…intentionally disgusting? we hadn’t been subscribed to Netflix for a couple of years, but when we went back I was shocked at the tone and theme of most of their programming. what the Hell happened?
ironically, the trans stuff was the least disturbing part of the whole thing, haha…