Uncle Carl

Great episode, this one had it all. A rough one for all the Gallagher’s, but a bit of light at the end of the tunnel.

I didn’t think Svetlana would have a positive impact on Kevin and V’s relationship, but she did manage to be the first one to get through to her. While she does go on a date with the old flame, that lasted all of 2 minutes before she called it off. Kevin on the other hand is going to be in so much trouble.

Fiona, still in the dog house with Gus and when the chips are down she puts a real effort to put things back together. Very few happy endings on Shameless, so it didn’t work (and for good reason).

Lip is another one struggling, but with the help of Kevin, made some extra scratch for tuition and managed to plead his case for more time to extend the due date.

Now my favorite part of this episode was all the story threads that came together in the last half. Starting with Ian who comes home in bad shape, his mind is still reeling and he insisted on denying the Monica diagnosis. He thankfully got the will to flush his meds instead of ODing, but that put Debbie into a frantic shame spiral. She had some the best scenes of the night, trying everything she could think of to get Ian more meds. The talk Fiona and Ian have in the backyard was so good. Ian made a hell of a case for himself (reoccurring theme this week: hypocrites have a hard time making a stand).

Carl’s adventures of drug dealing comes to ahead as Frank uses him in a hail-mary-don’t-do-this plan to try to get rid of Sammi. Carl uses Chuckie to smuggle heroin to Michigan and gets caught almost right away. Sammi rightfully flips out and turns the cops on Carl. Carl has done a lot over the years and dodged a few bullets, but this is some next level trouble he’s in.

The end of the episode contained some of my favorite stuff from this show. Frank going off to The Alibi to be Frank while the others deal with fallout. Everyone else is at the police precinct waiting for Carl. The Gallagher kids totally pulled together, I loved it. Ian turns a corner, Fiona relates to him and they all manage to laugh about how life keeps shoving them all down. They coral around Carl to support him in his biggest time of need. Finally, Mickey comes back from his pit to Ian (helped a lot by Debbie’s great talk).

With all the sharp writing and intense scenarios coming together, Uncle Carl has turned out to be one of my favorite episodes of the series.