Freshman year of college is often a huge reset for some kids\u2014a chance to meet new people, explore new interests, and maybe try out a new personality. All of that is on the table for Niall when he arrives at Glasgow West University at the start of Half Man\u2019s second episode. In fact, his mom practically begs him to take advantage of this opportunity when she drops him off. Be bold. Have fun. And please\u2014please\u2014get away from Ruben.<\/p>\n
But who does Niall want to be? That\u2019s the question that stymies him. On his first day at uni, he meets his two female flatmates\u2014the sexually voracious Celeste (Philippine Velge) and the peppy Joanna (Julie Cullen)\u2014who both pick on him for being shy, comparing him to their other flatmate, Alby (Bilal Hasna), who is obviously gay. As soon as Niall hears that being introverted reads as \u201chomosexual,\u201d he turns on a dime into a party animal, drinking and flirting with both ladies.<\/p>\n
And yet! When Niall meets Alby, their connection is so immediate that it\u2019s undeniable, even for the skittish Niall. He tries to pretend otherwise, telling Alby that he picked Glasgow for college for \u201cthe music, the nightlife, the women.\u201d But Alby can tell. He describes Niall as \u201ca performer\u201d who should be majoring in theater. Then when Niall gets so drunk that he pees his pants, it\u2019s Alby who gets him home and cleans him up.<\/p>\n
The whole experience rattles Niall so much that he calls Ruben and asks him to visit. (\u201cI just don\u2019t feel like myself here,\u201d he sobs.) And it\u2019s here\u2014for the first time in Half Man\u2014that I said to myself, \u201cI don\u2019t buy it.\u201d There\u2019s a lot to recommend about this episode; don\u2019t get me wrong. But while Richard Gadd<\/a> makes some plotting choices that pay off well by the end of the hour, he makes one big decision that leaves a yawning gap in the story.<\/p>\n I\u2019m speaking here of the way Half Man leaps ahead a few years in its extended flashback. The time jump means we miss out on a lot of Niall\/Ruben bonding. Seeing them become closer might\u2019ve helped explain why Niall invites such a destructive force back into his life after only a couple of days in Glasgow. We do hear Lori describe their relationship, lamenting how her son seemed in thrall to Ruben back home. (\u201cYou strut around town like you\u2019ll never pay taxes,\u201d she says. That\u2019s a good line.) But outside of that strange erotic encounter between the two boys and Mona in Half Man\u2018s premiere<\/a>, we\u2019ve really only ever seen the Niall\/Ruben dynamic in one mode: Ruben acting scary, and Niall feeling scared.<\/p>\n That\u2019s more or less how things play out after Niall asks Ruben to come to Glasgow. At first, it seems like Ruben might do what Niall apparently hoped he\u2019d do: make Niall look cooler. They do a little boxing practice while Celeste and Joanna watch, and then the ladies dress their wounds. Celeste is hot for Niall and Joanna is excited about Ruben, so when all four of them play spin the bottle together, it looks like they\u2019re about to have a sweet, sexy time together.<\/p>\n But it all goes sour. First, Ruben makes the game extra uncomfortable by smooching Celeste at length while Joanna fumes and then by demanding a reluctant Alby join the game\u2014and kiss Niall. Later, they all go to a students-only pub\/disco, where Ruben does cocaine with Celeste and sneaks in through the roof, causing a scene. (\u201cHow did we get from hunter-gatherers to student unions?\u201d he sneers.) At the club he spits in Joanna\u2019s face before heading off to have sex with Celeste. Later, Niall comes home from class to find Ruben and Celeste on acid, surrounded by broken dishes. When Niall invites him to lunch for what Ruben derisively calls \u201cone of his wee chats,\u201d Ruben defiantly declares he\u2019s not leaving Glasgow any time soon. (\u201cWe share everything,\u201d he hisses. \u201cWhy should you get all this for free?\u201d)\u00a0<\/p>\n Aside from the way it ends\u2014which I\u2019ll get to shortly\u2014there\u2019s an obviousness to the way the Ruben story plays out. Of course his visit brings chaos. We only spent around 20 minutes with him in the first Half Man, but that was enough to see what kind of troublemaker he is. Surely Niall must\u2019ve known how this was all going to go?<\/p>\n Maybe that\u2019s what he wanted. Maybe Niall\u2019s more comfortable in chaos. Honestly, we haven\u2019t seen enough of him to make that determination. We do hear him explain to Alby that he needs Ruben around because \u201cwe\u2019re practically the same person.\u201d (\u201cYou\u2019re not remotely,\u201d a stunned Alby replies.) So maybe Ruben represents how Niall would like to see himself\u2026that is, if he didn\u2019t already know, deep down, that he\u2019s gay.<\/p>\n The other major mark against this episode is how it handles the conversation Niall has with Alby about homosexuality. He talks about his feelings\u2014and about having a gay mom\u2014with a bluntness that feels like Gadd transcribing his notes on Niall\u2019s character directly into the script. \u201cIt\u2019s different with men; it\u2019s more shameful,\u201d Niall admits to Alby, before awkwardly adding, \u201cBy society\u2019s standards, I mean.\u201d<\/p>\n Aside from that exchange, though, the scenes with Niall and Alby are among Half Man\u2019s best, introducing some much-needed levity and human connection to a series that can be awfully bleak. This is the first time we\u2019ve really seen Niall just be chill around another person, cracking jokes and expressing himself. He does a charming Freddie Mercury impression for Alby and has a playful argument about whether The Great Escape or E.T. is a more perfect film. Niall is even refreshingly clear about his boundaries when it comes to physical affection, confessing that he\u2019s still not sure he\u2019s ready to kiss a man\u2014no matter how much he really, really wants to.<\/p>\n All of this makes the final minutes of the episode more shocking. After he catches Niall lying to him about coming out, Alby starts to tell Ruben the truth. When Niall physically tries to restrain him, Alby\u2019s instinctive violent reaction sets Ruben off. He punches and stomps Alby\u2019s head repeatedly, in a scene horrifying to behold. (Stuart Campbell, playing Young Ruben, conveys uncontrollable rage very convincingly here.)<\/p>\n That\u2019s not where the episode ends, though. As with the series premiere, this week\u2019s chapter features framing scenes from Niall\u2019s wedding\u2014both of them set shortly before what we saw in episode one. We open with Niall and his mother talking about how hard relationships can be, as Niall frets about getting married. Then Lori warns that the uninvited Ruben is coming to the wedding. He arrives minutes later, clad in black and riding a black motorcycle\u2014a visually striking harbinger of doom.<\/p>\n We close the episode with the wedding itself, which delivers two surprises. The first: Niall, so ashamed of his sexuality as a teen, is getting married to a man. The second: That man is Albert Franklin Safadi. In other words: It\u2019s Alby (played by Charlie De Melo as an adult), still bearing scars from Ruben\u2019s stomping.<\/p>\n Clearly, a lot has changed over the decades\u2014except for one thing. Before Niall says \u201cI do,\u201d he waits for Ruben to give him the nod of approval. It\u2019s not easy to make sense of Ruben\u2019s dark hold on Niall. But the hold is clearly real. And Gadd still has four more episodes left to explain why.<\/p>\n Stray observations<\/p>\n \u2022 Joanna is so openly excited about the possibility of Celeste and Niall having sex that Celeste mocks her, saying she\u2019s \u201clike having subtext around.\u201d That\u2019s pretty ironic, given how often the subtext becomes the text in this episode. Noel Murray is a contributor to The A.V. Club.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Freshman year of college is often a huge reset for some kids\u2014a chance to meet new people, explore…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":640179,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[49,48,75,348],"class_list":["post-640178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=640178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640178\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/640179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=640178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=640178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=640178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n\u2022 Speaking of Joanna, once again I must note that the credits call her \u201cYoung Joanna.\u201d We\u2019ll see her again.
\n\u2022 Celeste, who is French, is quite keen to have sex with a Scotsman, because her idea of Scottish men has been formed by the burly cartoon mascot<\/a> on a box of porridge. She even calls Niall \u201cporridge man\u201d\u2014which takes on added layer of meaning later when she gropes his crotch and he remains flaccid.
\n\u2022 Lori\u2019s \u201cfirst day of college\u201d gift for Niall is a mug that says \u201cSTUDENT.\u201d She explains that it doesn\u2019t say \u201cNUMBER ONE STUDENT\u201d because the engraving cost 20 pence a letter. Also, Niall still has a lot to prove. (That the mug later gets smashed during Ruben\u2019s acid-fueled tirade justifies his mother\u2019s caution.)
\n\u2022 Our Half Man Scottish signifier of the week is Irn-Bru<\/a>, the non-alcoholic beverage that the teetotaling Alby drinks at the student union, earning some gentle mockery from Niall.
\n\u2022 Our Half Man song of the week is The Boomtown Rats\u2019 epic, Springsteenesque \u201cRat Trap<\/a>,\u201d easily my favorite song of theirs. (Alby, though, is not a fan. \u201cGeldof\u2019s a wanker,\u201d he says.)<\/p>\n