last week\u2019s episode<\/a> concerned Ruben\u2019s infertility. This turns out to be the real spark for Ruben\u2019s raging ire at the wedding. The \u201cmiracle child\u201d\u2014who stirred such pride in his manhood\u2014is not his.<\/p>\nAlthough Mona\u2019s motherhood is unsurprising, her scenes in this episode are some of the best. She\u2019s a ticking bomb strapped to Niall\u2019s chest, bound to explode and take him out. Early on, he warns her to stop drinking and stop visiting Ruben in prison, lest she get sloppy and spill their secret. Instead, she spends even more time with Ruben to spite Niall, whom she\u2019s come to despise. Sure enough, when Ruben gets a temporary release from jail to go to his mother\u2019s funeral, he walks in on Niall and Mona in heated conversation and he gets violently jealous at what he presumes is an ongoing romantic relationship. Mona realizes immediately that she\u2019s pushed things too far.<\/p>\n
This episode\u2019s other big highlights involve the return of Alby to Niall\u2019s life\u2014finally connecting the flashbacks to the wedding. They meet again under embarrassing circumstances. Alby has become a nurse, and works at a clinic Niall visits when his habit of taking drugs and having unprotected sex gives him syphilis and chlamydia.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m on record as finding Niall\u2019s hesitancy about his sexuality unconvincing, when nearly everyone he cares about already knows. But his weird hangup does lead to some sweet scenes with Alby, who is amused to see that Niall puts down on his intake form that he sleeps with ladies. (\u201cI\u2019m bi,\u201d Niall insists. \u201cHave you told yourself?\u201d Alby asks.) The chemistry between these two is every bit as strong as when they were college kids, which is nice, given that Niall is rarely so likable as when he\u2019s bantering with a man he clearly loves.<\/p>\n
Alas, Niall\u2019s baser nature always wins out. Even though he promises Alby that he\u2019s done with dope and dalliances, he soon finds himself back at a bathhouse, where he gets arrested after tweaking out and crashing his car into a lamppost. The whole spectacle is witnessed by a journalist, who threatens to out Niall\u2014forcing him, at last, to come out to Ruben.<\/p>\n
This big moment\u2014something the whole miniseries has been building to\u2014is initially handled well, as have most of the one-on-one scenes between Gadd and Jamie Bell. Ruben, of course, has long-suspected the truth about Niall, and berates him for taking so long to admit it. Niall tries to blame Ruben for his spending so long in the closet, noting all the times he tossed anti-gay slurs around. They\u2019re \u201cjust words,\u201d Ruben shrugs, adding, \u201cThis is all your shit, son. Got nothing to do with me.\u201d<\/p>\n
The conversation then takes a turn, with Ruben telling the story about his dad and Niall confessing that he impregnated Mona. It\u2019s during this scene that Ruben drops the series\u2019 title, saying that being taken advantage of sexually \u201cmakes you a half-man.\u201d As an actor, Gadd admirably commits to every difficult second of this conversation. But as a writer, he\u2019s doing way too much underlining. He also could\u2019ve done without the overt sexual overtones of the show\u2019s ending, in which Ruben\u2019s grunting and gasping while wrestling with Niall and a knife makes it sound like he\u2019s ejaculating. It\u2019s all too much.<\/p>\n
And it\u2019s disappointing, because at times this show was capable of being more slyly ambiguous. Niall\u2019s addiction to dangerous anonymous sex, even after coupling up with Alby, makes one wonder whether their marriage would\u2019ve been a happy one. Ruben gives a speech at Maura\u2019s funeral about how he should\u2019ve worked harder on their mother-son bond, and for a moment he seems unusually aware of the responsibility he bears for his wasted life. Killing off these characters at the end of Half Man, rather than leaving them to stew in who they are and why\u2026 Well, like I said, it\u2019s cheap. I\u2019d even go so far as to call it corny.<\/p>\n
At its most exciting, Half Man wasn\u2019t making broad, heavy-handed observations about masculinity per se. The show was more about these two men specifically, and what each provided to the other that they lacked on their own. For Niall, Ruben was his muscle and his bank. Ruben, meanwhile, needed Niall to get him through school and to father his son. One man couldn\u2019t tamp down his violent rage. The other couldn\u2019t escape his habitual lying and sexual compulsions. No, they didn\u2019t make one functioning human together. But they did combine into one complicated man. That\u2019s the person the Half Man ending betrays.<\/p>\n
Stray observations<\/p>\n
\u2022 Gadd\u2019s roots are in comedy\u2014of the conceptual, confrontational, Edinburgh Fringe Festival variety\u2014and there are moments in the Half Man finale that suggest a different, funnier version of the show. One of my favorites: After a sickly, doped up Niall spews all over Maura\u2019s dying body and ends up going to the hospital alongside her, Lori sardonically commends him for sharing an ambulance and helping out \u201ca stretched NHS.\u201d
\n\u2022 Here\u2019s another good joke: After Maura dies, Niall delivers the news to Ruben, and when Ruben asks if his mother passed quickly, Niall reminds him, \u201cShe was diagnosed 20 years ago,\u201d adding, \u201cFactor in the last few years of considerable decline\u2026.\u201d
\n\u2022 Another good joke: After Niall\u2019s arrest, the cops give him a blood test and tell him they found evidence he used meth and crack cocaine, to which an astonished Niall replies, \u201cDidn\u2019t know about the second one.\u201d
\n\u2022 One last joke: At a press conference for Niall\u2019s novel, he waves off questions about his inspirations, saying, \u201cA good writer never reveals his sources,\u201d to which some wag in the back of the room shouts, \u201cReveal your sources then!\u201d
\n\u2022 That\u2019s a wrap on Half Man, a miniseries that showed some early promise, and which featured some outstanding performances and memorable moments. It was also overlong, repetitive, predictable and too self-serious. But Richard Gadd remains a writer and actor worth following, and I\u2019ll be interested in whatever he does next. An actual comedy, maybe?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Half Man is such a loaded title, isn\u2019t it? It\u2019s so provocative, raising confrontational questions. What constitutes a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":700989,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[49,48,75,348],"class_list":["post-700988","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\/700988","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=700988"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/700988\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/700989"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=700988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=700988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=700988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}