‘Half Man’ Director on the ‘Bodily’ Connection of Niall & Ruben in That Wedding Scene

Perhaps the most chilling aspect of Half Man‘s second episode is not what’s said or done but what is wordlessly communicated between its two leads. And that, according to director Alexandria Brodski, is by design. Warning: The following post contains spoilers about Half Man Episode 2.

The episode opens with Ruben (Richard Gadd) arriving with fire in his eyes at the most inopportune time: just as Niall (Jamie Bell) is suited up to marry Alby, who, as the ’90s flashback reveals, is young Niall’s (Mitchell Robertson) former college flatmate and friend … before things take a stunningly violent turn.

In the episode, young Niall struggles to adjust to college life away from his mother. Though his new peers welcome him with open arms (and vodka), he’s still lonely without Ruben (Stuart Campbell) and calls for him to come. From there, they enjoy the “birds,” as Ruben calls the girls in the building, and adventures on the town. All the while, though, Niall becomes enticed by young Alby, who recognizes that he is gay and, after the two share a kiss, insists he come clean to his “brother” Ruben about his true self.

Niall is unable to do as much, though; when he returns to Alby and reports that he has come out to his brother and everything is well, he is lying through his teeth. So when Ruben enters, and Alby praises him for his acceptance, Ruben is confused and, eventually, frustrated by his words. Alby, realizing what has happened, begins to taunt Niall with cryptic asides, and Ruben is even more incensed. Then, Alby threatens to reveal the truth to Ruben, and Niall desperately shoves him and covers his mouth, prompting Alby to push him into a cabinet, accidentally knocking him out. As Niall begins to drift into unconsciousness, he’s helpless to stop Ruben from mercilessly beating Alby. Next thing we know, Alby’s being carted off in a stretcher, and Ruben is being arrested. The fingerguns he gives to Niall at this moment are oddly friendly. As he uses them in the present day, though, it reads more like a warning.

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The episode ends with Niall walking down the aisle with regret in his eyes as an equally rattled Alby waits for him at the altar. Still, Alby says, “I do,” when prompted. When it’s Niall’s turn, though, he looks to Ruben in the crowd, and their eyes lock for an uncomfortably extended time before Ruben offers a slight nod, and Niall snaps back to attention to say his own, “I do.”

This silent but completely loaded exchange between them is intense and bewildering, and the director intended it as such.

“I think one of the things which are really nice about the script is that it has obviously this really precise, beautiful, complicated dialogue, but there’s also so much going on which is not dialogue and which is a physical experience of these two characters… where they’re nearly bodily connected,” Brodski told TV Insider. “These kinds of gazes at each other work because we loaded them in the previous episodes and Episode 2, so they have carried so much meaning. And certainly, they can talk to each other telepathically across the room… The fact that this is effective is the work which has been done before that pays this moment off.”

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We’ll have to wait to find out more about why Niall is so bitterly petrified and yet magnetically drawn to Ruben here as the remaining episodes unfold. For now, it’s becoming clearer and clearer that the title of this series, Half Man, has several possible interpretations. And, according to Richard Gadd, it’s meant to be.

When we suggested perhaps the second part of “Half Man” is “Half Monster,” based on Ruben’s actions in this and other moments in the series, or that the title indicates Ruben and Niall are incomplete without one another, he said with a smirk, “I think that those are great possibilities. And I want the possibilities around the title to be endless. I sometimes feel like — this isn’t me avoiding the question — it just thrills me to know… No one’s ever said, ‘half man, half monster’ before. And so therefore, if I was to say, ‘Oh, oh no wait, hold on, it’s not ‘half man, half monster’ because of this, I feel it takes away a beautiful kind of interpretation that you landed on in your own right. So I’ve heard about four or five different interpretations on the title. I kind of know what it is, but I think it speaks to a myriad of things. I don’t think it’s any one thing. I think ‘half man’ could potentially, hypothetically, speak to the fact they just need one another to feel complete in themselves…. and they just feel such a great loss of pain within them that they don’t feel all as human beings. There are lines in the show which hint at the title. I think it’s all of those things and none of those things all at once. And, ultimately, I think it’s up to the viewer to decide what it is.”

Half Man, Thursdays, 9/8c, HBO & HBO Max