u/iceandfireman

He wasn’t REALLY doing it from the kindness of his heart or any kind of moral high ground.

The attorney begins to bring up the topic of Alby’s sexuality. This is when all of a sudden he has his morality attack and retracts his lie.

First he asks Niall about how he knew that Alby was gay, and then he asks him if he considered Alby to be a deviant.

The conversation is uncomfortably close to having to realistically talk about his own gayness and that’s when he just realizes that he’s not only making terrible things up for Ruben, but committing a crime.

It wasn’t really only some sort of great love for Alby or his conscience magically appearing, but the panic of perhaps having to talk about himself and his sexuality.

And I really lost some respect for him here.

To be clear, I have no doubt that he does love Alby, as he obviously marries him many years later, but with this spectacle played out in court for everyone to see, Alby should be having second thoughts about marrying this man.

I’m not nit picking, but being painfully honest. I certainly want Niall to succeed at the end of the series, but he was just a real coward that notorious day.

By definition, I think it’s fair to say this is accurate. Ruben bringing in that woman in that awful room to coerce Niall into penetrating her and the two of of them following through - or Niall following orders - was Ruben’s way of raping his quasi step brother without literally doing so.

I definitely think Ruben does have homosexual tendencies and his sociopathic personality and behavior only allow him to engage in sex with a man by proxy and through rape.

We obviously don’t know what’s going to happen in the next three episodes, but I see *Half Man* as an exploration by Richard of male homosexuality in both the best of ways - Niall and Alby loving each other despite what happened and even getting married -and the absolute worst.

Richard Gadd is the absolute best thing that could have happened to television, men’s issues, writing, acting and complex social issues and I can’t wait to see what he comes up with next! God bless him.