‘Half Man’s Richard Gadd Unpacks Why Ruben’s Empire ‘Crumbles’

If you were somewhat sympathetic to Niall Kennedy (Jamie Bell) in the first four episodes of Half Man, Thursday’s (May 21) fifth installment will likely disabuse you of that feeling. As horrendous as Ruben’s (Richard Gadd) violent acts are, Niall’s button-pushing techniques prove second to none in this exceedingly discomfiting installment. Warning: There are spoilers ahead about Half Man Episode 5.

The episode begins with another all-too-brief snapshot of the final wedding collision between Niall and Ruben. This time, Ruben’s playing the part of an everyday guest, chatting with strangers about his lifelong connection to Niall, before the latter interrupts and demands to know why he has come. That’s when Ruben invites him to take the conversation somewhere more private: the barn (which, as we’ve seen in the Episode 4 closer, will have at least one body come out of it — Ruben’s).

We then flash back in time to Niall and his apparent girlfriend-slash-benefactor, Ava (Anjli Mohindra), who has gotten pregnant through one of the few times they’ve copulated in their relationship. Their mostly platonic connection is the exact opposite of what Ruben has with Mona (Amy Manson), as the two overdo the PDA during a quaint outdoor dinner at his fancy home.

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Things get a bit tense after, as Ruben tells Niall he’ll need his money back, and the latter admits that not only does he not have it, but Ava’s father gave him the funds to pay him back, and he instead spent it on himself. Ruben is visibly angry but doesn’t divulge this information to Ava…. yet.

Niall takes Ruben out for lunch to discuss things in private, and Ruben rants about his displeasure that Mona is planning to teach dance classes. Still, Ruben is calm enough to agree to a deal with Niall that will involve him doing household chores as partial payment. This puts Niall much too near to Mona’s orbit, though, and things take a terrible turn in short order.

First, Niall (perhaps purposefully) encourages Mona to pursue her passion with dance, noting that she always looked “free” when she danced in their younger days. This, expectably, angers Ruben, who confronts him about this affront with his misogynistic flag flying high — after Niall suggests Mona should “flaunt it if she’s got it,” Ruben snaps back with, “She hasn’t got it. We’re married. I f***ing got it. It’s not hers to flaunt. It’s mine to keep.” He then demands Niall go to her classes and watch over her — urging him to keep her from drinking and “spill[ing] her guts.”

Then, what does Niall do? Why, he takes her out drinking! There, Mona shares that Ruben has become mentally wrecked as a result of his infertility. Armed with that information, Niall decides he’s ready to become a father with Ava after all. Of course, Niall’s mother isn’t buying it, and in baby preparedness class, he’s completely zoned out. But it’s clear why he has chosen this course… simply because his “brother from a lover” can’t.

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Later, Ruben confronts Niall to find out what he saw at Mona’s class, and Niall reveals that there was a hug with the guy Ruben’s been so worried about: Benji. To pour salt on the already gaping wound, Niall chooses this moment to tell Ruben about Ava’s pregnancy, and Ruben reacts in the unhinged way one would expect from him. Things only get worse from here.

After Ruben has ostensibly left for his job on the oil rig, Niall is cleaning at Mona’s house, and she invites him to use her computer to read off a piece of his newest writing. So, of course, he chooses a passage that is very obviously about Mona, and the air becomes intensely erotic between them. When Niall returns home, he finds Ruben speaking to Ava. As Niall fears, Ruben is really there to reveal his secret debts. Niall then pointedly asks if this is all about the baby, revealing that Mona has shared his sterility news.

Is this the two volleying paybacks with one another? Oh yes. As Richard Gadd explained to TV Insider, “At this point, [Ruben’s] plan is very built into the damage that he’s experienced. He’s going to bring up a kid, the exact opposite to the way [he was raised]. He’s going to be that moral father, he’s going to have the family, he’s going to have the wife, he’s got the nice house, and that’s the character that he’s told himself his life is going to be, and that will be what mends the past. Obviously, that’s kind of drunk thinking in a lot of ways, but he wants a kid so badly, and then his whole life is turned upside-down. And this is why they’re so different in a lot of ways, the two Rubens. The Ruben that shares Mona [in the past] and that one suddenly doesn’t want her to do anything. It’s not so much about that as the fact that he has insecurities as a man. He thinks he’s disparaged as a man, and that makes him latch onto control any which way he can get it as his empire crumbles. And yeah, I think when he asked for the debt, he’s certainly reacting in a way to the way to walk into the information Niall has given to him.”

Gadd continued, “I always saw their relationship in Episode 5 as you know when there’s too much hurt between two people, but they decide to give it another go, but they just can’t shake off the damage of the past, and so it comes out in these little kind of things, and eventually it spills over again to what we’re like, ‘We should never have even tried that’? And that was kind of the kind of thinking behind 5, this almost tit for tat that gets into a very dark place.”

Though Ruben still has a bone to pick with Niall about the money, he has deftly diverted Ruben’s ire to Mona. He then storms home and begins to throw Mona out in dramatic fashion, and when a neighbor interferes, he very nearly gets violent with him. Niall talks Ruben down, and he leaves in a hurry; after, Niall helps Mona clean up the mess that has been made inside by Ruben, literally playing the part of a sweeping hero as he encourages her to leave him. It’s not long before the two are having sex on the floor. It’s only after that that they each seem to realize what they’ve just done, exchanging expressions of pure horror. Niall then returns home and apologizes to Ava and says he spent the money taking conversion therapy classes. Ava tells him that she knows about his sexuality and is fine with it. All of the secrecy — and the consequences thereof — have been for naught.

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Soon, Niall returns to speak to Mona, somehow riding on a high horse because she doesn’t seem to feel badly enough about what happened between them. She had sex with his brother, he insists. Mona, in so many words, reveals that it’s not the first time she’s been with someone else, and Niall is angry that Ruben’s suspicions about her and Benji have been correct the whole time.

After an even worse display of immaturity at the second baby class, Ava gives Niall a final chance with her. He then calls Ruben’s phone but gets no answer and tracks his workplace down, only to find that Ruben hasn’t worked there in months. He’s been staying with a friend. Ruben is humiliated to see Niall arrive at the house he’s been staying at to keep up the ruse and makes him promise not to tell Mona. “After all that we’ve been through, I still trust you more than anyone,” he says. After, Niall finally feels the weight of his betrayal and cries.

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For Gadd, who created the show and its characters, it’s moments like these that prove Niall to be a “cautionary tale.” When asked who Niall sabotages more, Ruben or himself, Gadd said, “It’s hard. Both all at once… Niall, I think he represses himself to such a degree that he almost can’t do it anymore, and his behavior and his life spiral out of control to become such a destructive presence in his life and everyone else’s life. And I suppose as a result, people are pulled into his force field because not only does he destroy Ruben’s life — or deeply impacts Ruben’s life — there’s Ava, there’s Mona, there’s all these other people. I think he is the kind of center of the tornado in a lot of ways of which everyone’s dragged in, and nobody’s dragged in bigger, really, than Ruben, and there’s a lot of damage that he kind of causes both big and small all the way through life. And I think he’s a cautionary tale in that respect. I think his desperate need for secrecy and repression and lack of communication, in the end, corrupts his spirit to the point where everyone else in his life is corrupted as well.”

After, Niall engages in sex with a male prostitute and immediately admits it to Ava. Then, Ruben shows up to talk to him. He’s heard the voicemails and wants to know what Niall intended to tell him before. He says he’s found a dressing gown in his house that smells of another man. Niall has no choice but to implicate Benji, and that’s when Ruben storms off in another fiery fit of rage, smashing Benji’s head into a pulp before Niall can stop him. After he’s done, Niall collapses.

The episode ends, of course, in the present day, as Ruben bolts the barn door shut.

Up until now, the real reason for the fatal fracture between Niall and Ruben has been unclear, but this episode completely crystallizes it. Ruben, who’d seemed to have it so together in the last episode, has fallen completely apart. Is it because of Niall that he lost the life of success and love that he found so hard for?

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“I suppose it goes to the heart of whether someone can change. It’s that age-old thing, whether somebody is capable of change. Are people capable of fundamental, 180[-degree] change in their lives?” Gadd said of the question. “I do believe in redemption for people, for human beings. And I think there is a great tragedy in the fact that maybe, just maybe, Ruben would have turned his life on slowly, lived this really content life with Mona, had Niall not re-entered his world. But I guess it’s all speculation. I think fundamentally at the heart of Ruben, which I suppose speaks to the great tragedy of his journey, is that he does have a desire to be good. He does have a desire to have a child and look after that child, and bring it up correctly. I think he does, fundamentally, for all of his faults. At the heart of his struggle is someone with a desire to be a provider and look after people. And I think that motivation could have maybe carried him all the way through his life in a very happy way. But sadly, these two characters didn’t escape one another.”

Just one more episode to go to find out how this experiential tragedy ends. (Before then, read back on the cast’s comments on Episodes 1, 2, 3, and 4.)

Half Man, Thursdays, 9/8c, HBO

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