The drink on the bar wasn’t the primary time Donny had mirrored Martha in Child Reindeer. Parallels are drawn between them by way of the eyes of his ex-girlfriends Keeley and Teri. After Martha is convicted, Donny continues to obsessively catalogue her messages to him, telling Keeley “you actually do get a way of how mad she was,” whereas coming throughout each bit as unhinged. In an earlier episode, Teri had described Martha as “a fantasist who’s constructed a whole id for herself” – the dramatic irony being that she didn’t know Donny had performed precisely the identical by posing as a builder named Tony on the relationship app the place they met.
There’s outstanding empathy in Child Reindeer’s selection to indicate the place Donny and Martha overlap, and noteworthy frankness within the scene that precedes that remaining second. Earlier than Donny walks into that bar, he’s at a particularly low ebb and so chooses to take heed to a playlist of Martha’s voicemails tagged as ‘complimentary’. By his earphones, he hears his now-convicted stalker – the lady who violently attacked his girlfriend, harassed his household and sexually assaulted him – inform him how engaging, gifted, particular and humorous he’s. At his lowest level, Donny finds consolation in Martha telling him that he shines.
It doesn’t matter whether or not or not Gadd pressed play on these messages in actual life; it’s a neat TV technique to specific how his broken psyche finds validation from his stalker’s consideration.
Confronting Darien O’Connor
Donny wants bolstering in these remaining scenes as a result of he’s simply visited the person who, years earlier, drugged and sexually assaulted him over a collection of assaults that culminated in rape. After publicly sharing his expertise of abuse in an unplanned monologue at a comedy competitors (in actuality, Gadd wrote and carried out a celebrated Edinburgh present about it), Donny goes to his attacker’s flat. Contemporary from glimpsing the violent revenge fantasies he’s scrawled on notes posted round his bed room wall, we anticipate a confrontation. Is Donny about to essentially lay into this piece of shit? Will he expunge all the fashion, self-hatred and doubt he’s suffered because the assaults, and are available away a brand new man?
No, is Child Reindeer‘s gut-twistingly sincere reply. Donny marches in to his rapist’s flat… and does nothing. He finds himself proper again in the identical screwed-up energy dynamic from years earlier and behaves simply as he did again then. He doesn’t castrate the person, he accepts a drink and a proposal of labor from him, and even apologises for having disappeared from his life. Even when his rapist comes near acknowledging the assaults when he describes Donny’s confessional viral video as “very courageous”, and guarantees that their new enterprise “received’t be like final time”, Donny is unable to do or say a factor. He leaves the flat and breaks down on the street outdoors.
It’s crushing, for Donny and for us, but it surely’s additionally one of the truthful scenes on display screen in regards to the toxic energy sexual abusers proceed to carry over their victims. A cathartic confrontation between Donny and his rapist may need been the anticipated TV model of occasions, however this frozen regression is the sincere one.
