Half Man: Toxic Masculinity and the “Mean Girl”

June 2026

 

Richard Gadd is a strange-looking Scotsman...

Who looks like he just wandered over from a battle scene in Braveheart...

 

But he is someone to keep an eye on...

Because he gave not one... but two... riveting performances...

In Baby Reindeer and now Half Man...

 

Two series that he also wrote...

 

And even though his oeuvre appears to be stories set in a dark world

Of self- loathing, sexual repression, abuse... and violence...

 

With disturbing characters who drive the plot...

 

Which ...if you have seen Filth...

Would seem to be a Scottish specialty...

 

Gadd has a real talent for storytelling...

And character development....

 

As well as acting...

 

Because his Donny Dunn in Baby Reindeer...

Couldn’t be more different from Ruben in Half Man...

 

And not just because of the physical transformation Gadd undergoes...

Donny is skinny, vulnerable... and massively insecure...

In essence, he is prey...

 

Whereas, Ruben is a force of nature...

Bulked up, charismatic, confident...

 

And very dangerous...

 

Gadd tackles the concept of masculinity in both series...

Although more directly in Half Man...

 

Which many will see as an exploration of toxic masculinity...

With its dichotomy between hypermasculine Ruben...

And his small, weak, bullied “brother,” Niall...

 

But the story is a bit more complicated...

Than it might first appear...

 

Now Baby Reindeer is a story about a stalker...

Played to perfection by Jessica Gunning...

 

As a saggy marshmallow of a woman with a foul mouth, a problem with spelling... And a creepy laugh...

 

Who will not be ignored...

 

But blessed with a seasoned intelligence about how to torment someone...

 

Martha preys upon poor Donny...

Whose natural empathy makes him an easy mark...

By switching back and forth between compliments and cruelty...

 

But she and Donny are two sides of the same coin...

Both desperate for attention...

And so Donny has a hard time walking away from Martha...

Because she is giving him something he desperately desires...

 

Donny is a self-loathing comic...

Who struggles to come to terms with his homosexuality...

And is so desperate for affirmation...

That Martha is not the only one who abuses him...

 

But the catharsis that comes at the end of Baby Reindeer...

 

And Gadd is big on showy cathartic denouements...

 

Is a false resolution... as Donny returns to one of his abusers...

And you can see the cycle begin again...

 

Now Baby Reindeer shares many of the same themes with Half Man...

Repressed homosexuality, self-loathing, self-sabotage, a history of sexual abuse...

And lots of drugs...

 

But also Gadd’s ability to project humanity on the screen...

Which complicates the trope of the Toxic Masculinity and the Self Loathing Homosexual in Half Man...

 

And there has never been a better title for a series...

 

For Half Man is the story of Niall and Ruben...

Who are thrown together as teenagers when their mothers move in together...

And so become tied together in a dysfunctional Gordian knot of “brotherhood”

That neither can quit ...

Even though their relationship brings each of them great pain...

 

They are two very different halves of a whole...

In so many ways...

 

Ruben is big, confident in his heterosexuality...

A bully with a hair trigger temper...

That leads to explosive acts of violence...

 

And he is very working class...

 

As well as in and out of prison...

 

Niall, played by Jamie Bell, is smaller, rat like in appearance...

Bullied, unable to come to terms with his homosexuality..

With an inflated sense of his talent as a writer...

 

And much as Donny saw himself as a comic with a future...

Niall feels entitled to what he feels is a life ...

That is his right by virtue of his “talent”...

And the education Ruben would never have been capable of acquiring...

 

This allows Niall to feel physically overpowered by Ruben...

But intellectually superior to him...

 

And although Niall is terrified of Ruben...

For good reason...

He turns out to be the more ruthless of the two...

 

Because Ruben is all Id..

And Niall Ego...

 

But this complicates the message about toxic masculinity so many are going to see in this series...

 

Now these two are drawn to each other...

And over the decades covered in this story

Neither can break free...

 

And there is an element of sexual tension in their relationship...

But it is the emotional bond... at least for Ruben...

That binds them together...

 

But for Niall.. it is what he can get from proximity to Ruben...

He fears him, but he also admires him ...

And sometimes he just wants to bask in the aura that surrounds his far more charismatic “brother”...

 

Ruben may be the bully who beats people up...

Because he lives by a code that requires he respond physically when challenged...

Or whenever his masculinity is threatened by some violation of the man code...

 

Which is why he is in and out of prison...

 

But Ruben also sees himself as a provider and protector...

And it’s Ruben who supports Niall when he is flailing...

Because Niall can’t seem to get his act together...

And refuses to work at jobs he feels are beneath him...

 

And this is why Niall’s mother is actually more sympathetic to Ruben than she is to Niall....

For she sees right through her son...

And the picture isn’t pretty...

 

And she recognizes that Ruben’s masculinity has two sides...

A destructive and dangerous one...

And protective one...

 

Whereas Niall is not only a coward...

But jealous, narcissistic...

And he does awful things to almost anyone who cares about him...

He is selfish, self loathing, vengeful...

As well as callous and calculating...

 

He is, in essence, a “mean girl”...

 

And so he surreptitiously sets out to hurt Ruben...

 

So although Ruben physically threatens Niall routinely...

It is actually Niall who is cruel...

And shows not a shred ...to anyone..

Of the empathy....

That occasionally surfaces in Ruben’s behavior...

Toward his “brother”....

 

Their complicated history unfolds slowly in this series...

With many moments of catharsis...

 

And although Gadd has written a story that probes the psychology of these two characters with great skill...

 

Men don’t talk to each other in the way they do in this series...

 

So some of the dialogue sounds more like what one would hear in a therapist’s office...

Rather than what two men would say to each other while they are in the middle of a physical confrontation...

 

But that is small beer...

 

For the story of Ruben and Niall...

 

Is a tragedy that is well told ...

 

With fine performances all around...

 

And Gadd is riveting...

 

So although I can’t wait to see what he does next... because the man is obviously talented...

 

I do worry he might have the Cheryl Strayed problem...

Because Strayed could only write one story... about a mother...

( See Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail and Tiny Beautiful Things)

 

And to date both of Gladd’s series have tapped into the same themes...

Self- loathing, repressed homosexuality, the legacy of abuse, violence, and self sabotage...

 

So I hope he has some other stories to tell...

 

But to his credit...

 

Although Half Man looks like a standard story of toxic masculinity....

With all the expected tropes in play...

 

Gadd has written something far more complicated...and interesting

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