u/nascent3ch0_

T-minus 14 hours until more Half Man. What’s everyone doing to pass the time? Work will eat up ten of those hours and then I’m going to dinner with a friend wherein I plan to convince them to start watching this show.

…for my thirst is unending.

I’ve been finding it very difficult to write about episode four because of how dense the material is and how close to home a lot of the issues it deals with hit. But I think I know where we are going.

1. Ruben can only be stable in the absence of Niall because his unresolved feelings for Niall manifest as possessive violence. Those unresolved feelings, I think we can be fairly sure at this point, are love in all its forms.
2. Niall can only be stable with Ruben because as Ruben points out with such devastating accuracy in the hospital scene, he gives Niall’s life the meaning without which it wouldn’t seem worth living.
3. Ruben’s fundamental toxicity hasn’t changed much through the years, but his intellect and maturity have. He’s more strategic, and I think more aware of what he feels for Niall even if it hasn’t full surfaced or been named yet. That hug between them at the hospital was vulnerable, mutual, and a reassertion of their attachment and Ruben’s odd vulnerability during it feels like him noticing it. I think the further along we are in the timeline the more aware of it Ruben is. It feels insane to say, given that Ruben essentially raped Niall to provoke the hospital confrontation, but there’s true empathy behind Ruben’s sorry and that’s something he never could have done before.
4. The coming attractions for episode five and the trailers shown thus far give us some important clues. We know Ruben probably goes to prison between the hospital and the wedding, and we know Niall visits him there, which is how we know it wasn’t the time he spent inside for Alby.
5. We also know she, probably Mona or Lori, told Niall something Ruben didn’t want him to know, and Niall knowing provoked Ruben to storm off and do something drastic. I think Niall learned about Ruben’s childhood experience with SA (the father and stepbrother arc are unresolved) and in Ruben’s mind this challenges both his masculinity and Niall’s perception of him. That’s exactly the kind of existential identity trigger that might cause Ruben to kill his father. The father is probably abusing the new son too, because there would need to be extenuating circumstances for him to be released in under ten years to be at the wedding, and Ruben has demonstrated a deep fear of exactly that back in episode two if all the SA foreshadowing is to be believed.
6. Ruben tells Niall despite everything he’s still the one he trusts most. That includes Mona, and we know their relationship is hitting snags that likely include financial issues, because Ruben calls in his debts with Niall. I think awareness of Niall’s feelings for him and growing awareness of his feelings for Niall is what is informing that trust.
7. We know Niall and Ruben are fully entangled in each other again because he asks Niall to keep an eye on Mona. That also tells us Ruben has destabilized again whilst Niall appears much healthier. Niall trying to hug Ruben on that dark street suggests to me Niall feels stable enough to reach for Ruben. Ruben pushing him away and storming off suggests that reaching is destabilizing for him apart from the rupture which would justify the tenderness in his mind.
8. Finally, in the barn and with his shirt off, Ruben asks Niall if he loves him and to focus on the emotions not the qualifications. It’s unclear when in the barn confrontation this happens, but I suspect before the first scene in episode one. I’m unsure though it could be after the first punch but before the suffocation attempt. That Ruben would even ask this is a wild direction for his character: it’s openly addressing the elephant that’s always been in the room for both of them. That indicates a spike in Ruben’s conscious awareness of it. It’s also not the assumption of Niall’s feelings that Ruben employed in the hospital, but rather a question, and one which could have no as an answer.

Ruben goes to that wedding because he’s finally aware he loves Niall too, but also aware it’s too late. Too much has happened. Ruben even says he wants to hear Niall say he’s his brother from another lover one more time before he loses him forever. But I don’t think it’s about hurting or killing Niall for moving on, though rage does explode out of him when he hears it. I think Ruben is there to die, as a perverse expression of his love for Niall, because he’s finally mature enough to both see his feelings and what they’re doing to both of them. He thinks he’s setting Niall, and perhaps himself, free but he doesn’t understand the dynamic between them completely enough to understand a world without Ruben in it is a world where Niall can’t long survive. The tragedy is his suicide as an expression of love ends up being just as toxic as all the other forms of violence he has engaged in. Since there’s no blood on his body when it’s on the gurney, I think he puts Niall to sleep during the suffocation attempt only to hang himself in the barn while Niall is asleep. Niall then wakes up to that. Alternatively it could be intentional suicide by self defense but if he’s grown enough to ask Niall if he loves him I don’t think Ruben would choose to force Niall to kill him.

Anywho I’m done rambling for now.

Half Man is a show where all of the main characters are simultaneously abusers and victims. Alby is no different, and his toxicity was established before he even met Niall and Ruben. After being outed and abused in boarding school Alby fell into a cliché defense mechanism queer people of a certain generation (myself included) should instantly recognize; he made his victimhood his entire personality. He defines himself by what he has endured, and he thinks himself morally superior for having endured it. His objection to shaking hands with people is a manifestation of that defensive arrogance dressed up as intellectual principle.
 
That same superiority reflex erodes his empathy in ways I’m surprised don’t get more attention. When Niall, who at this point in the story is essentially a baby gay spinning out in the midst of his gay awakening, isn’t ready come out and be with him openly yet he takes it personally and tries to tell Ruben. Alby would by this point be aware Ruben is dangerous, even if he doesn’t know yet just how dangerous, so this is a direct attack on Niall’s wellbeing and safety motivated by pain and selfishness. Later he actually does out Niall to Joanna, and while this is somewhat more understandable given what Ruben did and that Niall is leading Joanna on, it’s still a line he’s not justified in crossing until Niall actually perjures himself.
 
Then there’s the decision to get back with Niall later on and eventually marry him. Admittedly, episodes 4-6 have not aired yet and may contextualize this decision, it is remarkably self-destructive on multiple levels. Alby was almost killed by Niall’s brother and later almost framed as a rapist by both of them. It’s difficult to imagine a healthy person, let alone one who is defined by trauma, being able to integrate the emotions inherent in that reality to the point where they can truly forgive (let alone forget). Certainly not in a healthy way. Especially if that person remains exposed and in close proximity to their abuser. The cherry on top of this fucked up Sunday is his reaction to Ruben’s presence at the wedding. Alby’s very first concern is that Ruben is there to finish the job vis-a-vis him. While this is perhaps understandable, it shows no concern for Niall own wellbeing, especially if Alby is as aware of Niall and Ruben’s bond as he claimed to be back in college.
 
All this leads me to believe that Alby is still defining himself through his victimhood, and in a way longs for this. He keeps choosing this in much the same way Niall keeps choosing Ruben: compulsively, and like a moth directly to the flame.

EDIT FOR TEAM ALBY:

This is not an attack on Alby, nor is it an endorsement of Ruben or Niall. This is an analysis of Alby as a complexly written and layered character. It doesn’t dance around what he’s suffered through, and takes that seriously. It’s certainly not about blame. If you can’t separate sympathy from analysis you’re flattening the character and missing half his story. This show was written to evoke passionate discussion, and I welcome all your opinions, but please remain civil.

I think Ruben and Niall’s attachment is both separate from and contiguous with their repressed sexuality. I also think as time goes on their polarity shifts as well: Ruben being more brother than repressed lover earlier on. Ruben needs to frame it as brotherhood to integrate it at all. As others have noted, Ruben being an SA victim himself is heavily hinted at. After Alby’s bashing that dynamic is thrown in reverse, with Ruben becoming gradually more consciously aware of the sexuality dimension of their connection. This is driven by Niall’s reaction to the assault itself and by Niall’s attempts to withdraw from their bond using distance in the years that follow.

As Celeste points out Ruben needs a head and Niall needs a body, but that’s also an oversimplification because Ruben isn’t stupid. He’s highly emotionally intelligent, as survivors of trauma often have to be, and he recalls Niall was hiding something the day he bashed Alby, arrives at what that secret was indirectly via the ‘cockhungry’ comment he attributes to Lori, and engages with Niall’s theatrical performances on a literary level. Granted, in the case of Niall’s play performances he twists the plot points to suit his narrative with Niall, but does anyone seriously think Ruben is a thespian? Let’s also not forget he has consistently showed the ability to intuit Niall’s emotional states, if not understand them.

So here’s my theory:

Im unsure of the exact form this will take. I think Ruben goes through some imperfect growth while in prison for bashing Alby. I think he figures out, or is told about, what Alby meant to Niall and it brings to partial awareness their shared romantic and sexual tension but importantly not the myriad deeper dimensions of their dysfunctional bond. This becomes a new framework independent of brotherhood that Ruben has no choice but to consider while fixating on Niall from inside. In his own very imperfect and incomplete way I think he starts to accept this.

When he gets out of prison, after the initial shock and bother of dealing with Niall’s unresolved betrayal in court, Ruben makes an earnest effort to change their dynamic to reflect that new framework and Niall rejects it. His rejection is not for lack of desire, but as a function of his own imperfect growth. This wouldn’t be just the rejection of a brother, friend, and partner but also an existential identity annihilation threat for Ruben. An identify he would see as already bending over backwards to meet Niall where he is by trying in the first place. I think this is the seed that eventually grows into the act of attempted murder at the wedding. I say attempted because as we know, Niall is armed. Niall is going to be forced to kill or seriously injure Ruben to survive, and we know he knows how from all his gallows humor involving ways out and ventricles when Lori gives him the knife. I think Ruben’s last words (if it’s kill and not injure) will be pride in Niall for killing him, relief that Niall will be okay without him, and show ends with the audience sitting in Niall’s reality: that he can never fix things with or let go of Ruben.

I’m not sure how articulate I’m being but I’m writing this under my desk at work because that’s how much this show has taken over my thoughts!