'Main character syndrome'?

Baby Reindeer (Miniseries, E1-7; 2024)
Director: Weronika Tofilska & Josephine Bornebusch

(Based on the autobiography of Richard Ladd) 

I learned a new term today: main character syndrome. In a world where only I, me and myself, which people really care about, it is logical for people to think that they are indeed at the centre of the Universe. The sun and all the planets revolve around them. They naturally become the main characters in a story they narrate. Even though the story is their point of view, it looks like the other characters are just there to fill up space without giving any substance to the story.

This is what the other characters in this true story are saying.

This story is about a shy Scottish lad, Donny, who wants to be a comedian. It is an autobiography, actually. To sustain himself, he works as a bartender. In the course of his work, he meets a friendly lawyer whom he finds interesting.

He is not much of a comedian, really. He is not funny. Nobody laughs at his gigs. A TV scriptwriter takes Donny under his wing and promises to make him a star. The scriptwriter turns out to be a pervert who drugs him and rapes him.

Meanwhile, the lawyer he met at the bar turns out to be a stalker who goes to great lengths to make Donny's life a living hell. Donny has a transexual person for his girlfriend. The whole story is about how Donny emerges from the shadow of his past and handles his stalker to try to make something of his life. The trouble is that Donny appears drawn back to his past as if he enjoys the pain and lives to dwell in negativity.

Even though the storyteller tries to empathise with the stalker and the abuser, in biopics like these, the aggrieved party will have his own account of the whole event. So now, the stalker and the said abuser, which netizens can easily find out with all their wisdom, are thinking of taking legal action against Netflix for screening such a film. Unable to tell her version of what actually transpired during the whole fiasco, she accuses that writer of suffering from 'main character syndrome'.

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Justifying your wrongdoings?

You (Season 1-4; 2018-23)
Miniseries

In 'Crime and Punishment', Dostoevsky writes, "If he has a conscience, he will suffer for his mistake; that will be punishment — as well as the prison." The only escape from this personal punishment, then, is to ask forgiveness of mankind and of God.

Therein lies the conundrum. If there was no God or Man refuses to believe in the presence of a Higher Being, he has to carry all the guilt of his actions or inactions. As there are no means of cleaning his slate via redemption, his plate will always be full of regret and shame. This burden may be too overwhelming that it may affect his psychological well-being. Religion gives an exit clause option. He can convince himself that he is flawed and carrying his ancestors' sins. In other instances, he tells himself that God forgives. Another door is open when one is shut.

Depending on an individual's mental makeup, the wrongdoer may also be reliving the events of his wrong-doings and suffer from various complexes and ailments, physical or psychological.

Like Frederich Nietzsche's Ubermensch theory, whether God falls in the equation, some people feel they have the right to perform such vigilante actions as murdering an unscrupulous pawnbroker for the greater good, arguing multiple times that murder is okay if done in the pursuit of the greater good.​ They may invoke God's name to carry out His work. Alternatively, Man's action is for the good of humanity, not of any divine plan. And he justifies his crime. He carries plundering, killing and lying without an iota of guilt.

This miniseries is addictive. You go on a binge, enjoying the antics of a serial killer in his quest to find true love and remove all obstacles that fall on his path. He sometimes has to kill off some annoying nuisance like his beau's boyfriends and even his ex-girlfriends when they lose flavour to win his love.

As the serial killer is a bibliophile and a bookshop manager, the series is peppered with many quotations from classic books to keep the interest going. The protagonist, who is not an anti-hero anymore, grows on you. Growing up in foster homes after killing an abusive stepfather, Joe Goldberg is adopted by a strict bookshop owner. All through the seasons, he stalks his beaus, hacks into social media profiles, gatecrashes into their daily lives and eliminates whatever obstacles that come his way. In the second season, he calls himself Will after leaving his New York base after replanting himself in California. His dark past follows him and recoils into his wayward ways. In the 4th season, the setting moves to London. He rebrands himself as an academic, Jonathan Moore. He moves along the London high society, and his evil past again follows him.

Through the season, we can compare and contrast the mannerism and mindsets of people in these different regions. There is a general feeling that people have a herd mentality and a generally predictable one. The show also mocks society and its many idiosyncrasies. It is worth binging into its 40 episodes, each lasting about an hour.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.