This article contains spoilers.
There’s a devastating, slow-blinking irony to the climactic moment in the season finale of “Half Man.” The HBO Max limited series, which was written and created by Richard Gadd (“Baby Reindeer”), is about the perilously close relationship between two brothers, one of whom finally comes out to the other after a lifetime of closeted queerness.
For most of the series it seems as though queerness is the unspoken point of contention between the two. Their relationship is peppered with violent altercations that are sexually implicit, and sometimes explicit. There are gay slurs and endless gibes on what it means to be a man. And yet, in the show’s big twist, this revelation actually brings them closer — at least momentarily.
The scene is beautifully performed: Maintaining a steady push-pull of emotional tension the actors move through vulnerability to laughter and love, and eventually circle back to rage and fear. In a series often hard to watch for the ways its men are trapped in a prison of masculinity, where violence, dominance and misogyny are the shared vocabulary, the few moments of open, unashamed tenderness “Half Man” allows between its men are the show’s most memorable offerings.
Niall Kennedy and Ruben Pallister aren’t blood brothers but, as they put it, “brothers from another lover,” because their families came together as a result of their mothers’ romantic relationship. They’re polar opposites who nevertheless cling to each other. “It’s like one needs a head and the other needs a body,” one character observes, perfectly capturing the symbiotic dynamic between the two.
Niall (Mitchell Robertson as teen Niall, Jamie Bell as an adult) is nebbish, awkward and closeted, while Ruben (Stuart Campbell as young Ruben, Gadd as an adult) is brutal and full of rage. He’s terrifying yet charming, in equal measure. The show starts with Niall’s wedding day, which Ruben crashes, appearing like an ominous storm cloud over the celebrations.
The two have what we later find out will be a fatal altercation in a barn away from the wedding guests; the rest of the show tracks their relationship over several decades leading up to this climactic wedding day fight. So we have two scenes that define the show — a moment of emotional confession and acceptance, followed by an outburst of irreparable violence. It makes sense for a series that uses its two characters as a way of showing the duality of men in our current cultural moment.
Niall and Ruben represent a generation of men caught at a pivotal time of political change when it comes to ideas about gender and gender performance. There are the traditional, stringent views of masculinity, and there’s a more liberal view allowing space for male sensitivity. This battle has played out onscreen many times lately and it’s telling that in one major trope in these stories, where one or both men dare to show some vulnerability, both won’t make it out alive.
One of the great flaws in this often beautifully written and seductively acted show is that it flashes its ideas in bold print. Sometimes there’s a bit of theater in the way characters speak to one another — a bit too obviously, a bit too knowingly, with flawless eloquence. And the duality of Niall and Ruben is mimicked throughout in the storytelling, for better or for worse: snatches of repeat dialogue bookend an episode, scenes are twinned for emphasis or contrast, each moment of gentleness exactly precedes or succeeds a moment of brutality. Catharsis, then violence: This is the show’s modus operandi, and the pattern appears elsewhere too.
Of the new male buddies in “DTF St. Louis,” it’s the sensitive, loving Floyd who meets his demise. Of the rookie crime duo in “Dog Day Afternoon,” now on Broadway, it’s the gruff, trigger-happy Sal, so afraid the media will mistake him as gay like his fellow robber.
“Half Man” ends with the deaths of both Niall and Ruben. The double fatality is almost Shakespearean, inevitable given how thoroughly the two men are attached to each other. And yet it also feels like a cop-out, that after witnessing the grueling dynamic between these two over so many years, we see their saga concluded so abruptly and simplistically.
This could be deemed a failure of imagination on the part of the writers, that every tale of male friendship in which one or both men dares to express love or vulnerability ends in disaster. But it’s probably more accurate to say that this is a failure of our societal imagination, that we are living at a time when, even in our fictional narratives about masculinity, any show of softness must then be eradicated. It’s so much easier to imagine than a world in which men choose to be open and vulnerable, even in the face of toxic masculine stereotypes, and must simply get on with their lives.
Maya Phillips is an arts and culture critic for The Times.
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