last week\u2019s episode<\/a>, this week\u2019s doesn\u2019t feel like a jarring lurch forward. Niall\u2019s relationship with Ruben makes sense again. (In short: He\u2019s terrified of the guy, even as he still feels some fraternal connection.) No, what keeps this episode from hitting as hard as it should is that there\u2019s not really enough going on in it to fill 55 minutes. It can be rewarding to spend an hour a week in Half Man\u2019s world, because Richard Gadd has such a keen sense of suspense and he\u2019s so willing to push into uncomfortable places. But this show is never going to be an easy watch, so it could use more plot than we\u2019ve seen so far. (Or shorter running times. Most of Baby Reindeer\u2019s episodes were around 30 minutes.)<\/p>\nThis week\u2019s story does take some dramatic turns toward the end of the episode, due to its two central questions. 1. Is Niall going to perjure himself and betray Alby to save Ruben? 2. Has Ruben really changed? Because if Ruben is still Ruben, Niall will be doing society a disservice by keeping him out of jail.<\/p>\n
There is definitely a softness to Ruben when Niall sees him around the kids at the community center. The youngsters love him, and he looks happy to see them. Ruben also seems more optimistic about his future. His juvenile criminal record was expunged when he turned 16. (\u201cMakes me wish I did more before the cut-off point,\u201d he\u2026 jokes?) And no one he works with seems overly concerned about the current charges he\u2019s facing, because they\u2019re \u201cas outraged as I am\u201d at the thought of some swishy foreigner groping him.<\/p>\n
That last remark does make Niall flinch. But he still seems inclined to cut Ruben a break\u2014especially when Lori tells him that Ruben\u2019s mother Maura is dying of cancer. The way Lori sees it, Niall\u2019s about to disappear into academia in England, so he should at least make sure that Ruben can take care of his mum.<\/p>\n
Three people end up complicating the \u201cNiall corroborates Ruben\u2019s statement\u201d plan. The first is Joanna, Niall\u2019s college flatmate, who has been crushing on him since the day he arrived at uni. Niall treats Joanna very shabbily in this episode, by giving her false hope. Every time someone in Niall\u2019s family makes an offhanded comment that suggests he might be gay, he responds by cozying up to Joanna, even going so far as to parade her in front of Lori as his girlfriend. This aspect of Niall\u2019s personality\u2014overreacting to having his sexuality challenged\u2014hasn\u2019t exactly been handled subtly in this series, but I do appreciate that it just consistently happens, without comment.<\/p>\n
Joanna loves the attention from Niall, until she learns why it\u2019s happening. As much as she wants to be with him, she can\u2019t get behind the whole Pallister-Kennedy perjury scheme. She\u2019s still friends with Alby. Also, when she visits Alby, he outs Niall. Joanna, who seemed so fragile and flighty when we first met her, proves to be quite strong when it matters. She tells Niall, \u201cWhat you are is okay.\u201d And she says of Ruben, \u201cSnakes can shed their skin\u2026 but they\u2019ll always crawl on their bellies.\u201d<\/p>\n
Which brings us to the second person who bollixes the plan: Ruben Pallister himself. If there\u2019s one argument to be made for this episode running so long, it\u2019s that Gadd and director Alexandra Brodski want to show how Ruben slowly cracks under the pressure of having to play nice. The more he senses that Niall isn\u2019t wholly committed to the \u201cself-defense\u201d testimony\u2014and especially after Niall says that the story doesn\u2019t even make sense, given that Ruben has been in plenty of fights without beating someone into a coma\u2014the more Ruben starts to frazzle. This is where this week\u2019s story finally starts to pick up some momentum, beginning with a scene where Ruben gets so mad that he wrecks the center\u2019s van.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Alby is the third person to complicate the plan. It\u2019s easy in theory for Niall to stand up in court and say that Ruben was reacting to Alby\u2019s sexual aggression. It gets harder when he has to do it in front of Alby. It becomes impossible when Ruben\u2019s defense attorney pushes past the simple \u201cyes, Ruben is telling the truth\u201d statement Niall thought he was going to be making, by asking questions like, \u201cWould you say he was a sexual deviant, Mr. Kennedy?\u201d To his credit, Niall ultimately flips on the stand, admitting that Ruben is lying\u2014which then causes Ruben to doom himself when the jury sees him fly into a violent rage.<\/p>\n
This episode is redeemed by those scenes at the end, so fraught with tension. I also liked one of the less obvious insights that Gadd offers into the Niall-Ruben dynamic, which is that when you start doing favors for a bully, the demands never end. It\u2019s not enough to do what he asks; you also have to like it, and to believe in it.<\/p>\n
In one of this episode\u2019s other finely crafted scenes, Niall brings Joanna over to Lori and Maura\u2019s home for dinner\u2014days before the trial\u2014and Maura pulls him aside to acknowledge what he\u2019s about to do. She says, \u201cI waited the best part of six years for you to do something for me and all I had to do was get cancer.\u201d But as we know from episode one<\/a>, Niall went out of his way to help Ruben pass his big exam. Has Maura forgotten?<\/p>\nThe point is: You can never do enough for the Pallisters. Those family ties are binding.<\/p>\n
Stray observations<\/p>\n
The framing device this week doesn\u2019t offer much to talk about\u2026 yet. The opening scene has Niall and Alby discussing the Ruben situation at the wedding. In the final scene, Ruben rises at the reception to give a toast, beginning, \u201cI\u2019m gonna tell you about Niall Kennedy.\u201d We\u2019ll have to wait until next week, presumably, to see how that plays out. (Maybe next week we\u2019ll also move on to Niall and Ruben\u2019s adult years? Mitchell Robertson and Stuart Campbell have been excellent but I\u2019m ready to see more of Jamie Bell and Richard Gadd.)
\nRemember how Alby assumed Niall was a theater major? Well, while he finished his degree in English, he did also lead his college\u2019s dramatic society. (Or, as Ruben puts it, \u201cYou did all those gay plays.\u201d)
\nLori exacerbates Niall\u2019s self-serving cruelty toward Joanna by treating her like a future daughter-in-law, saying, \u201cCall me mum.\u201d (Niall: \u201cShe doesn\u2019t have a mum, so that\u2019s gonna make everything worse.\u201d)
\nThere\u2019s some story we haven\u2019t been told yet about Ruben and his dad. This week Ruben says the only time he ever cried was when he was 8 years old and his father had a heart attack. But it wasn\u2019t his dad nearly dying that rattled him, but rather when his dad came home and\u2026 what? He leaves that anecdote incomplete. I hate to say it, but I wonder if this has anything to with Ruben\u2019s all-too-knowing rant to Niall about how sexual assault attacks \u201cyour fucking soul, who you are as a man.\u201d
\nInteresting comment from Lori, who says to Niall, \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of you in Ruben.\u201d Thus far, this series seems to be focused on the reverse, showing how Niall lets Ruben be his dark and aggressive side. I\u2019m very curious to see what may be revealed in the show\u2019s second half.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Even under the best of circumstances, families can be a pain. The tradeoff for being lucky enough to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":431057,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[146,85,46,411],"class_list":["post-431056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=431056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431056\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/431057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=431056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=431056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=431056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}