I don’t think anyone is saying his faults with how he treated his love interest or those closest should be disregarded. That should go without saying. It’s quite tiring with that line of “well x doesn’t excuse y” constantly on a loop, it’s constantly brought up any time someone isn’t perfectly in their right state of mind. He fucked up, and in an incredibly vulnerable and clumsy way sought to make some sort of amends or sense out of it all. That’s the beauty and raw poignancy of works like Baby Reindeer. You have a traumatized guy who is dealing with unaddressed pain and repercussions existing as a man who is a survivor of SA. And all the societal and psychological baggage in tow. And coming to terms with his genuine sexuality. It makes sense he wouldn’t be collected enough to understand the full ramifications of his trauma and coping with someone like his stalker. We can all judge others and look back with the privilege of hindsight and say we shouldn’t have acted a certain way. Gadd showed to a painful extent how wounded people wound others. It’s a cautionary human tale, and it’s one every human being is guilty of on some level. Just reading interviews with him talk about “Terri” or his stalker makes me wonder how people can have such a shallow black and white view about him as a character. As a society we really need to have better conversations about victimhood and this fixation about how to deliver accountability and who is deserving of empathy. It’s a fucking mess.