Occupy Fiona

Ian takes his anger to a new level against Fiona. Incensed in her blocking the homeless youth shelter from renting the abandoned church, he takes a revenge plan to the streets. He rallies a bunch of the homeless kids to occupy the open space directly next to her apartment building. She’s refurbished the empty apartment and is ready to show it but a mass of screaming teens in a tent city makes $1100 rent a tough sell. Ian even goes as far as to call a fire marshall for code violations which puts her out a few hundred dollars. So, she fights back. She bribes all the kids to take off and hires some guys to clean up the lot. Ian insurgency is cut off at the knees and it makes him madder. Trever is basically over losing the church space so it’s Ian all on his own. His reaction is so volatile they wonder if he’s been taking his meds. He says he is and begrudges the insinuation that if he’s ever mad, it’s because he’s manic. To Fiona’s credit, she makes multiple efforts to bury the hatchet like adults and move on. Ian’s behavior freaks out Trevor and he ends up going with Fiona to check out another place the shelter could be set up (Fiona did all the initial legwork to find the place). Trevor is optimistic about Fiona’s efforts…Ian not so much. During their last talk, he says some disturbing things. I (and Fiona) didn’t like what he implied and he’s more or less just bottling up his anger again.

Frank gets a dose of reality when he meets the other corporate downsized men in the employment line. He’s shocked out how many there are and how hard it is to get a job (granted he’s had about a month of employment success so his resume is…light. Dejected, Frank heads to his usual place of grousing about life: The Alibi. There he meets a guy who’s being deported by the new administration in a month. He’s been tried to dodge it by getting into Canada but failed. And just like Carl, he’s stumbled into a new business. Frank the northern coyote.

Speaking of Carl, his basement detox program is coming up short. He needs a few thousand more for tuition when one of his clients, Kassidi, pitches him an idea. Make a ransom video of me and my dad will pay it. Right out of the gate, anyone with two functioning eyes and ears can tell that this girl is a problem. Carl goes along with it though and the plan works despite the father catching Carl with the ransom money. This isn’t the first time this has happened, Kassidi’s been fighting “the man” for years and her father has no idea what to do with her. He warns Carl: she’s a venus fly trap, don’t let her get in your head and ruin you. Also, tell Kassidi her mother expects to see her at a family gathering in a few days and to wear the blue dress. Carl returns home and tells her that the plan worked and she can go. Kassidi freaks out saying she can never go back to that oppressive world of the wealthy and easily convinces Carl to let her stay. He’s in trouble.

Kevin is back to sexual square one with V. V and Svetlana are popping off together like there is no tomorrow and he needs a new angle to spark his love life with V. Since his own gay affair idea didn’t work, the insight that Fiona gave V, she likes to be dominated, is his new plan of attack. He has no idea how to do it with great Shameless results. He does have a breakthrough at the end though.

Deb butts heads with a Porsche driving jerk at work. He’s about as rude and condescending as you can get and while she does her best to toe the line to keep her job at the parking garage, she ends up digging in for revenge. She welds his sports car to a dumpster. Deb is now out of a job, but she can keep her head held high.

Lip does everything he can to wrangle Brad and Professor Youens to get to court. Youens has to show up and plead his case or he’s going to jail for a long time for his fifth DUI where he drove through someone’s house. Brad is going to be a character witness. Lip goes to pick up Brad first and he’s in a pit of depression. He manages to get him dress and out the door only to find Professor blacked out on the floor in his own vomit. Lip summons an extraordinary amount of effort and composure to help the man who helped him so much and it doesn’t end well. Youens has given up and Lip learns the hard lesson that you can’t help someone who doesn’t want help. It’s one of the most heartbreaking scenes of the show with Youen’s in handcuffs on one side of the visitor’s table and Lip on the other. I hope Lip can move on from this. Brad is still in murky water but at least Lip got him pointed in the right direction. Ian is basically bobbing around in another leaking boat in Depression Bay next to Lip. Come to think of it, the Gallagher men are not doing well. The remaining episodes of the season could be really rough.

shutdown-r

The third season of Mr. Robot has come to a satisfying and utterly gripping end.

This whole season has been one of destruction. Everyone has splinted under the pressure and everything comes to a head. It’s in desperation that Elliot turns inward. He has to confront and talk to Mr. Robot instead of fighting and isolating his two sides. He goes to the Wonder Wheel at Coney island and they begin to rebuild their burned bridges. Elliot has feared Mr. Robot so his first instinct was to lock away Mr. Robot to try and keep himself whole. But they function better as one and they each hold pieces to the puzzle they are trying to solve. They can’t move forward, and save anyone, by not talking. Mr. Robot sits across from Elliot as the wheel spins and they start with the basics, what did Mr. Robot’s message about the FBI mean? What does Mr. Robot know?

Santiago is the Dark Army’s FBI mole. They go to his apartment and look for clues until Irving shows up and asks them (Elliot actually. I’ve fallen completely into the narrative of the show that Mr. Robot and Elliot are two people) to come with him.

The cat is out of the bag for Santiago. Dom finally catches him in a lie he can’t get out of and he physically strikes to keep moving. When Dom confronts Santiago in the car with Darlene, Santiago is at his wit’s end. She condemns him for being a traitor and his panicked reply is that she has no idea what the Dark Army has put him through and now he has no choice but to bring her to them. The meeting place is the property where they hid Tyrell.

It’s basically a horrible Mr. Robot reunion with Elliot, Leon, Dom, Santiago, Irving, and Darlene in a barn. Santiago takes charge first, pissed that he seemingly has to clean everything up. He wants the Dark Army to settles this one by turning Dom into a new mole. Irving takes Santiago and Dom outside and Dom quickly sticks to her ethical guns. Stopping in front of the stump with the ax in it changes the mood considerably, though. And it turns out Irving has had enough as well. He kills Santiago with the ax and makes it very clear to Dom that she has no choice but to take over Santiago’s role. When Dom comes back shell-shocked and sprayed with blood, Mr. Robot goes on red alert. Leon calmly lays down a hint at how this organization works: “She’s been initiated.” I think it’s safe to say at some point Santiago was put through a very similar ordeal that Dom just witnessed. Mr. Robot is panicked for a way out but Elliot sees a different scenario unfolding. He notes the security camera watching them from above and he deduces that they are fine, for now anyway and that someone important is coming.

Enter Grant. Irving has cleaned himself up and meets Grant and his security detail outside of the barn. After he states that now that he’s killed Santiago in favor of Dom, he’s taking off for some much-needed R and R. With his new found power, Grant flexes on Irving to pull rank and Irving defies him. “I was once you, many years ago.” A rare glimpse into Irving’s past, we now know that Irving’s been with Whiterose for a long time and he clearly feels like he’s paid his dues. Irving takes off leaving Grant to deal with things.

And we’re plunged into another life or death ultimate situation. Leon pulls a gun on Darlene to force Elliot to make his final move. Grant, on a mission to kill Elliot, wants to know of a single reason why he should spare his life, how is he any different the legionsn of capable people in the Dark Army. Elliot says he’s better than all of them. That he’s gained access to the Dark Army infrastructure and he rattles off a list of things they have done and can be exposed for. Grant shrugs it off, they’ll be able to survive a leak. With one card left to play, Elliot says he’s come up with a way to move the Washington Township plant to the Congo. He came up with a way to do it in a day where Grant and the rest of the DA have been idling for weeks. This is exactly what Whiterose wanted to here. Elliot figured out the one thing that no one else could offer her. Grant moves in for the kill when the phone rings and Whiterose speaks to Grant from her bathtub as she watches them all on a monitor. “It’s your jealousy that blinded you from seeing the value of Mr. Alderson.” She’s bet on Elliot for a lot, this guy that everyone thinks is simply unhinged and it’s paid off again. Grant gets made to look like a fool again and Elliot isn’t even doing it on purpose. Grant has framed this kid in his mind as his arch enemy and Elliot just found out Grant exists.

Whiterose is in control of everything! Pushing the pieces around to suit her needs, using every single person as she sees fit. Suddenly, Leon shoots every Dark Army guy and leaves Grant standing. Grant will not be allowed to kill Elliot. He’s shocked. And then she says “Know that I will find you as soon as our project is complete. But for the here and now, our time has come to an end.” She then says she loves him in Chinese and Grant says something to Elliot in Chinese just before he kills himself. With her last remarks, I thought she was just giving Grant the order to stand down so I was shocked when he shot himself. Whether she wanted him dead seems unlikely to me, but his anger and resentment must have pushed him over the edge. If he pulled on Elliot, Leon would have shot him before he could have pulled the trigger and knowing he’s second banana to Elliot must have felt insufferable to Grant.

Elliot comes through with his plan and the Congo move is put back in motion.

Angela thought she was being brought to Whiterose but it’s Price who picked her up. At his mansion, we get another big reveal: Price is Angela’s biological father. A lot of pieces came together right here and a broken Angela gets no better. He initially hired Angela to drop her case against the plant and he slowly watched Whiterose get her hooks into his daughter (that he stayed away from for 32 years). Seeing her so shattered, he felt he had to finally do something. In telling Angela Whiterose’s true motives, she pleads for a reason. Why were the deaths of all the people she was complicit to, necessary? What was the goal? And as Price found out a few weeks ago: spite. Nothing more. In the first line of fatherly dialog out of his mouth, Price tries to console and advise his daughter: “Find a way to live with what you did.” Well what now, she asks? Nothing from Price as he’s given up. It looks like Angela will spend some time at the mansion but will she pack it up too?

And that’s the question for everyone. As they leave the barn, Darlene tries to apologize to Dom and Dom lets her have it. Dom is now trapped by the Dark Army, her entire family a marked for death if she doesn’t fall in line. Darlene is an awful person and she’s taken everything from her. Dom’s life is upside down and ruined.

Dom gives Elliot access to Sentinal in order to try and get the keys that Romero backed up with the keylogger. He finds the material from Romero’s computer on the server and because he knew Romero (and the FBI didn’t) he’s able to figure out the password to get in. He finds a dead end though. The keys to decrypt E Corps backups isn’t there. Someone exported them to another location and it wasn’t Romero. They keyloggers weren’t his doing.

Once back in the city, Darlene and Elliot are able to talk on the subway where we get another reveal: Elliot’s dad didn’t push him out of the window. Elliot was having some kind of manic episode and jumped out the window himself. Elliot doesn’t remember it that way at all. Darlene answers that she’s here to remember for him. To be his back up. Just like Trenton did, Darlene trusts her brother. The siblings are back as a team.

This leaves Elliot alone with Mr. Robot. After 10 episodes of destruction, the finale ends with reconciliation. They have an honest talk about how their life works together. The guilt of the hack (not just Stage 2) is eating Elliot alive and he can’t handle the guilt anymore. Mr. Robot wants to hold off to somehow wait for some way to trap Whiterose, but Elliot simply wants to undo 5/9 as a start. For his own sanity.

Pulling from their Wonder Wheel conversation earlier, Mr. Robot admits that just like a piece of Mr. Robot is in Elliot, part of Elliot makes up Mr. Robot. When Elliot asks Mr. Robot if he knew he jumped out of the window, we don’t hear the answer because a subway train goes by. As frustrating that is for us, I get some comfort in knowing that Elliot got an answer.

Now that makes you wonder when Elliot created Mr. Robot. Clearly, he wasn’t well before his father was sick. Was that his first mental break? Did jumping create Mr. Robot as a coping mechanism beyond grief? Angela went through a similar ordeal with losing her mother because of E Corp (Whiterose) and ger mind navigated it differently (which at this point looks like she just hid the emotional damage longer, only to be exploited).

What Mr. Robot can answer, is that it was he who put the keyloggers on the fsociety HQ computers and exported them off the premises. And he did that because of the Elliot directive: what if 5/9 was a mistake and they were wrong? Having a way to undo it, a way to go back in time to change a mistake would be valuable. Mr. Robot sent the keys to their server at their apartment and burned them to an unmarked CD for safe keeping. Elliot is able to start the healing process.

Mr. Robot feeds brilliantly into the modern zeitgeist of the conspiracies of who really runs the world. Forget the Illuminati, the Stone Masons, and the Lizard People, it’s Whiterose. A mortal acting like God, pulling the political and economic strings of the world. Tech and politics whipped together in the darkest and most secretive ways possible. The finale accomplishes a lot. The motif of mistakes and the desire to go back in time to fix them (Angela’s bereavement and manipulation over her mother’s death, the Back to the Future and Superman references) came to a head. We witness both sides of Elliot being revealed as a source of good even if their methods have been mired in ethical peril and personal danger. He’s becoming whole again, as much as that’s possible for Elliot. It also resets the show to the beginning.

When we first met Elliot he was a white hat hacker using his expertise the go after the bad guys that no else could see. The 5/9 hack was initially created to recenter the balance back to the people and away from evil corporations. Now with one major problem fixed by getting the recovery files back in order, Elliot has a clear target. Whiterose is THE problem that needs to be solved. He now has a physical head to hunt for, someone who without a doubt does no good for the world. While resetting the world’s finances was a shot in the dark to change the world for the better, going after the creator of many of the world’s ills is a goal that will get results. Elliot has some measure of purpose and reason again. Something Angela needs too.

The stinger at the end of the credits reveal a personal monster of Elliot returning next season and I cannot wait to see how it unfolds.

Icarus Fell and Rusty Ate Him

This episode was more or less about each storyline treading water. I think some stories hit their plateau and we’re about to see a lot transition into their next phase.

Carl took a back seat this week as his biggest role was helping Lip. He’s still hustling to make tuition and when Lip asks for his help he’s quick to join his brother. Everyone has given up on Brad, Lip’s sponsor. He’s disappeared on a bender and Lip is the only one willing to look for him. When he gets a lead he tracks Brad’s wild night and ultimately finds him. Through the whole treasure hunt, everyone tries to talk to Lip into essentially abandoning Brad. “This guy doesn’t matter” and “a drunk will always be a drunk” the go-to reasoning. But it’s not that simple for Lip. He’s tied the success of his own sobriety to the mentorship that Brad has given him and seeing his hero crash and burn makes Lip scared for his own life. He shoulders a lot of grief and comes out on the side, I’m really proud of Lip, he’s showing a lot of character. While he gets Brad to stand up and walk forward again, Brad doesn’t get a happy ending just for showing up. I like the dose of reality the show sticks with.

Fiona goes to talk to Ian about the shelter to try and reason with him. She gives good reasons for undercutting the shelter (and why it all shook out the way it did) but Ian isn’t having it. He’s furious and says “I don’t know who you are anymore.” For now, the siblings will remain at odds. Fiona’s shut in tenant springs a water leak in her apartment and that forces Fiona to enter the apartment for the first time. This woman has pushed Fiona’s patience (more than a month past due for rent) and she’s greeted by piles of stuff and…a dead body. The woman died a few days ago, leaving her tiny dog to nibble on her body for survival. While cleaning up the apartment, the idea of turning out like this woman creeps up on Fiona. She finds some pictures in the apartment and manages to piece some parts of this lost life. It looks like she was at least happy a few decades ago. A niece shows up to take over the clean up and she ends up tossing everything in there. A whole life is thrown into a dumpster. Fiona, a similar soul watches on in distress. She ends up salvaging some pictures and takes in the woman’s little dog.  He might have eaten some human flesh but everyone is forced into bad situations.

Kevin becomes jealous of V and Svetlana’s sexual chemistry. Incensed at V’s “spaz-gasms” he claims it’s now his prerogative to explore his sexuality. V and Svetlana don’t object and let him go on his mission without saying much. He first asks Ian how/when he knew he was gay and from there, Kev keeps his eyes and ears open to catching homosexual vibes. This journey leads him to an experience with a gay man and he quickly cements his true feelings: he’s straight. He goes home to a not surprised V and she welcomes her husband home.

Debbie, like Brad, comes to the end of her weekend bender. Except she had unprotected sex with her buddy and that sends her into a panic to get the morning after pill. It doesn’t go too well. Probably the funniest storyline of the episode, Deb really Gallaghers it up.

Frank is riding high, getting his first (non-fraudulent) credit card. He buys a car with it and happily takes Liam to school in it. He cruises into work and gets a nasty shock: he’s out of a job. In another first, it’s not his fault. The entire garden center chain is closing down. Frank’s streak of success has hit its first obstacle and while his initial reaction is to stay positive, this is Frank we’re talking about. Debatury isn’t far away.

Stage 3

With the devastation of Stage 2 done, the only way to try and turn things around is to make a new plan of attack. Elliot and Mr. Robot take two different roads to the same (or maybe similar) destination.

The episode starts with Elliot regaining consciousness in his bathroom. Mr. Robot used a bar of soap to write a message to him on the mirror before he lost control. “They own the FBI.” Elliot doesn’t know what the means exactly. Who is “they” and how did Mr. Robot get the information he did? He has no idea what Mr. Robot did last night. The only clues are what’s left open on his PC: an article about Tyrell being released. So back we go.

For his part, Elliot talks to Darlene about the message Trenton left him. If it’s true, they have a shot of undoing Five Nine, expose the architects and benefactors of the hacks. But getting to that info that Romero secretly stored is a monumental challenge. Darlene has an in with the FBI, Dom, and she thinks that’s the only exploit the have to get access to the offline system that’s storing Romero’s hardware. She goes off on her mission and Elliot works on his own.

First, he tracks down Irving to set up a face to face with Whiterose. He drops a term to stoke Irving into motion: “Stage 3.” In a smart move by Elliot, he wants to spook the Dark Army into talking to him, insinuating that he’s had something planned that they don’t know about and it’s something they want to be involved with. Then he goes to see Angela.

She’s a mess. Elliot’s been our unreliable narrator since the start and now we can add Angela to the list of paranoid and delusional characters. She’s a pale image of her former self. Unkept, wide-eyed, and twitchy. She has probably 6 locks on her door. Elliot goes to see her to talk about what she knows about Whiterose and he manages to convince her to leave her place for his. She sees Whiterose as her center of the universe so it’ll take some sensitive and careful talking to keep her trust and get her to talk. Elliot doesn’t get the chance to as Leon is waiting for him at his apartment. This freaks Angela out, swears never to trust Elliot again and takes off for home. At her place, she packs her things up like a crazy cat lady and as she’s walking down the street (I think she intended to go to where ever she thought Whiterose was) a white van with well-dressed men stops to pick her up. I have no idea where she’s headed now but Angela didn’t seem concerned about this usually-how-kidnapping-happens scenario.

Leon has come to deliver Elliot to his requested meeting…he comes face to face with Whiterose’s right-hand man, Grant, instead. Elliot drops a little more nuggets about his Stage 3 plans as the Dark Army copies data off of his laptop. He’s told Whiterose has no intentions of meeting him ever again and Elliot counters that Stage 3 is something they want to be a part of. “Are you in or are you out?” E Corp’s E Coin payment system is his new target. With that, the meeting is done and sometime after this, Elliot becomes Mr. Robot.

Angela goes to work on Dom. They meet at a bar and when a tech attempt to steal the access codes off of Dom’s security clearance ID fails, Angela decides to go the old-fashioned way: seduction. Dom is self proclaimed to be terrible on the social side of things so this seems like a decent enough plan B. Dom isn’t dumb though and catches Darlene stealing her ID card. So now Darlene is brought in and up to her eyeballs in trouble. She has no choice but to tip her hand about the info Trenton left, why she was trying to steal access to get into the countries highest level security. Santiago is there in the interrogation room so this puts him on red alert. Dom is once again gung-ho on the lead as they have nothing to lose. If Darlene is lying, they lock her up, if she’s telling the truth the case is cracked wide open. Again, Santiago scuttles what Dom wants to do and Dom becomes more suspicious. I want Dom to get Santiago so bad I can barely contain myself. His reactions have become more and more off and Dom is noticing, she just needs something to push her over the edge on him being on the wrong side of this.

And now for Mr. Robot. It turns out he went to Tyrell’s home to talk some sense into him. Mr. Robot is furious about what happened to his revolution and probably just as mad that Tyrell doesn’t see that he’s been manipulated this whole time. Tyrell blames Mr. Robot for his families destruction and Mr. Robot is having none of that nonsense. As they fight, Price comes knocking. They all sit down and Price isn’t surprised to see Elliot (Mr. Robot). So as Price tells Tyrell that he’s has been named E Corp’s new CTO, Mr. Robot comes to realize that his revolution was never a secret. The people in power knew about it from that start and let it happen. After the drubbing Price got from Whiterose in the previous episode, he’s rather comatose about the entire thing. It’s acceptance of his new world order. His power has been demoted, he lost to Whiterose. He makes it clear to Tyrell that his new title is in name only, he has no power.

So this brings Tyrell back to reality. He’s gained nothing and lost everything. He’s a puppet and locked into his own apartment by himself only to be used by others in whatever way they see fit. Mr. Robot now has a talented man back on his side though.

With all the little birds in the world listening for Whiterose, he quickly finds out about what’s happening from Grant. The plans for Congo are delayed because the entire world is on edge. The US is under martial law and all the people the Dark Army has paid off can’t help them move things through the restrictions that the cyber attacks caused. Santiago has sent word about Darlene and that sends Whiterose into a rage about an exploit in her plan she never thought of. Grant’s talk with Elliot disturbed him and it’s forcing his hand. He confronts Whiterose about her actions. He’s questioned her choices before and this time he’s not backing down. The problems that have come up are because of Whiterose’s decisions. Her revenge on Price changed the plan for the worse. Sticking with Elliot has been a problem that should have and could have been stopped a long time ago. And now that Grant knows about Darlene, he thinks Elliot lied to him at their meeting. He isn’t going for E Coin, it’s going to be them. Grant proposes that it’s time to send off Elliot like they did his father. Whiterose agrees.

This brings us back to the beginning with Elliot. He’s alone in his apartment and cleans off Mr. Robot’s message from the mirror. It’s time to get to work on Stage 3. He knew that the Dark Army would copy his data so he made his own spyware to get into their system when they copied the USB stick to their computer network. So the good news is that he seemingly has access to the guts of the Dark Army. The bad news is that he doesn’t know about Darlene. His plan is compromised and when talking to Grant, it sounded like Whiterose anticipated Elliot trying to do something like this eventually. So is the Dark Army actually prepared for this infiltration? I’m not sure Elliot is going to be able to do what he wants behind the scenes. He might end up being led to believe he is as a trap.

There is a ton of set up for next week’s season finale. It should be nuts.

The (Mis)Education of Liam Fergus Beircheart Gallagher

I think this is the longest stretch Frank has ever had with good behavior. He takes Liam to school I think everyday and he’s still employed at the garden center. He’s been getting job promotions too which is something to be celebrated but none of the kids acknowledge his achievements. An entire lifetime of cutting and running and other wise scamming will ingrain that in those around you I guess. When Liam gets a bad grade on a standardized test, Frank is quick to defend his son on account of culturally bias (“Foyer? How he is suppose to know what a ‘foyer’ is?”) Not only does that work but it further raises his status in the liberal elite libido game. Frank is firing on all cylinders.

While Lip remains in his own rather aggressive sexual relationship his sponsor, Brad, falls off the wagon. His newborn son pushes him to the limits of stress and sleep deprivation and ends up at a bar. Lip rushes to his side but a drunk Brad fights back and Lip loses control and track of him. It’s a big blow to Lip, who at first felt uneasy when Brad gave him a list of other full time sponsors who could help Lip in any future time of need because he’d be too busy. Brad is more than a mentor to Lip and seeing him crash like this is depressing. It’s a big loss of hope as it asks the question: if someone who’s been following the steps so well and for so long (and preaches that advise to me) can succumb like this, what chance do I have?

Carl has come up with his own detox plan for the purple heart thief he caught. Cut him off from the heroine cold turkey and keep up the positive reinforcement until the guy can think clearly. In the middle of his project, he finds out this his Army grant has been cut off and he needs to come up with $12,000 by August to go back. With his vigilant determination, Carl hits the pavement and does everything (legal) he can think of to come up with the money. He needs to make a small fortune fast and it isn’t looking good after a full day in the “gig” economy. He does let the junkie go though, 4 days of detox and Carl thinks he’s good to go. Unsure of what he’s going to do for money, Carl hits a windfall. The junkie comes back with his passed out girlfriend and the guy swears that what Carl did was better than any rehab he’s ever done. He gives thousands of dollars in cash to Carl from his parents and says his girlfriend’s parents will give him $2,500 if he can do the same for her. Carl just started a business.

Deb is also hustling. She’s at a high mark at the beginning of episode, her classes are going great, she’s got a major test coming up that could solidify her future, Frannie is happy and healthy, and she’s got some great friends from going to welding school. She aces her test and when she asks Frannie’s grandmother to babysit for a few days so she can go on a celebratory weekend trip, she gets a shock to the system. Derek is home. With his girlfriend, who is holding Frannie. Deb understandably goes on the defensive. Never mind the trip! She quickly grabs Frannie and says gotta go and bolts out the door. Awkward doesn’t do the scene justice. Does this mean Derek is “grown up” now and is going to try to co-parent? Good luck cutting through the rage made by abandoning Deb and your infant daughter, dude.

The Alibi is doing terrible. Only when Svet is working does the place make a profit. This makes cutting paychecks dicey (V and Kev say it should be split in thirds, Svet says 50/50) and V remains furious that Svet stole the bar away from them. V and Kev are clearly terrible business owners and Svet also has another upper hand on them: her sexual wiles on V are overwhelming. Svet is slowly making things go back to the way they were.

If Ian isn’t working as an EMT, he’s with Trevor. The youth shelter needs to expand and the abandoned church turned crack den could be a great space if it’s fixed up. Ian works with a donor (in the dark ways of Shameless) that Trevor knows in order to shore up funding. Fiona, unknowingly, is on the other side of the equation. The church is about 2 blocks from her apartment building and doesn’t want a homeless shelter going up there. It isn’t good for property value. She works her tail of to get 2 artists re-interested in the property and when it comes out that she and Ian are competing with each other, it doesn’t go well. Fiona stands her ground in siding with the art studio in spite of the good that could be done for the kids Ian knows and Trevor works for. Lines in the sand have been drawn and while I support them both for their reasoning, I don’t know who to side with. I also don’t know how this is going to shake out.