Black-Haired Ginger

So far this is the best episode of the season. A lot of plots make a turn and a few Gallaghers get into trouble. Classic Shameless dark humor that’s been missing this year makes a triumphant return.

Without Xan, Lip has started to drift. Lip isn’t good at taking care of himself, he needs to watch/take care of someone else to keep himself busy and to keep his addictions from taking over. So his life now is basically to go to work and then come home. When he gets a rare moment to be with himself, a sort of vacation really, he doesn’t take long for him to start climbing the walls. So he turns to exercise first and when he’s tempted with alcohol, he buys every brand of cigarette to give him something to do since alcohol is his poison but nicotine is more like a safer hobby to him. While looking for something to do, Lip stumbles across two new interests. First is a new business: a sober coach. A client would hire him to keep them sober because something very important is coming up (think athlete and court-ordered drug tests). This is a perfect fit for him as he already has plenty of experience with this. The second is motorcycle street racing. It’s dangerous and more importantly a ton of fun. I think we can all expect that this massive adrenaline dump will become an addiction.

Deb looks for more advice on the path to understanding who she is. The falling out with Alex has crushed her and she doesn’t know what to do. So she turns to the only lesbians she knows, the couple that live in Fiona’s apartment building. They manage to help her out, in essence giving her the basic philosophy of “you like what you like.” Hopefully, she drops every gay stereotype she picked up in order to “fit in” now. She also drops Alex once she realizes that her issue with Alex isn’t one of sexuality per say, it’s that they are a terrible couple. Deb wisely moves on, where she ends up is anyones guess but it looks like she’s on the path to finding who she is.

Carl is pushing on to get to West Point. He meets a well connected wild girl at a West Point mixer and it starts out well until it swerves into disaster. When she looks into Carl a bit more she sees that he isn’t a scumbag (I mean, he is a Gallagher so there is a lot there) and they move past their awkward first meeting.

In other wild girl news, Liam gets sucked into a crazy vortex with the school bully that forced him to get a body guard. She catches him alone in the hallway and pulls him into a closet. Something happens in there, Liam thinks they had sex, but he’s not sure (he’s like, 10 years old). So when he gets home, he tells Lip who’s shocked and then later on she shows up at the house with a ton of crap in tow. When he asks what she’s doing there she dumps even more crap on him: I’m moving in with you because you’re the father of my kid. Since Liam isn’t sure what she did to him earlier that day, he has no clue about what’s going on now. When Deb and Carl come home they pow wow with Liam about what this monsterous girl is doing there. Luckly Deb has motherhood experience and knows this is a shame (Carl thinks she’s full of it too, but confers with Deb about now being able to know you’re pregnant the day you have sex). The siblings team up to get the trouble maker out of the house. Liam is far and away my favorite character this year. The stuff the writers have been throwing at him since last season has been some of the best and Christian Isaiah is a great young actor.

It’s been a few years since Frank’s liver had enough of the abuse and packed up shop. I’ve been wondering for a while about when his health was going to take another dive and it happened this week. When you’re urine resembles maple syrup, you got a problem. So he winds up in the hospital and gets the great news that his anti-rejection meds have stopped working. After 5 years, he now needs to switch meds but the name brand stuff costs a fortune since he doesn’t have insurance. He can swing the generic but the side effects are a gauntlet of horros. In typical Frank mentality, he doesn’t think much of the potential misery (to be fair he doesn’t have a choice) but one does catch his ear: erectile dysfunction. On the way home with Kev and V, they pass by a longerie shop and he freaks out when he finds that he gets no reaction to the models in the window display. This starts his panic spiral that his life is truely over. If there is one thing Frank holds dear on this mortal coil, it’s his libido. And in typical Frank fashion, when he gets slighted in anyway he defaults his rage to The Man. The government, the healthcare industry, big pharma, it’s all rigged to screw over the comman man (and again, to be fair, he brings up some good points). Upon leaving the hospital for the second time after trying to shock his member back into working order, a sour and now cinged Frank is trolling for painkillers (one of the funniest scenes in the series happens here) when he stumbles upon a like minded damsel in distress. She steamrolls him and Frank is awakened! I hope that guest star shows up again, it would be amazing.

Ian and Fiona’s stories cross this week. Faced with a tons of jail time or less jail time with an insanity plea, Ian isn’t sure what to do. Fiona is totally sure what to do and goes with him to see his lawyer to push for the insanity plea. The woman in charge of the Gay Jesus movement insists that Ian go to trial because the movement is way too important to potentially let the whole thing get undermined by that admission that Ian is bi-polar. Fiona isn’t having any of that and when they leave, Ian tells her to take a hike and leave him alone. Fiona doesn’t know why and Ford, Lip, and Deb tell her to let him go when he disappears after getting advice from Mr. Malkovich about prison time (another One of the Greatest Shameless Scenes). She’s baffled by everyone being so calus about Ian skipping bail but they all say that he’s an adult and he’s making his own decisions. Ford is adamant that Ian isn’t her responsibility any more, her concerns should be focused on her and their relationship. While trying to track down Ian, she misses an event she and Ford have been planning for months and Ford is annoyed. The good news is that Ian comes back to face the music and goes for the plea deal. The whole ordeal turns into a positive moment with Fiona and Ford.

While everyone else is making life altering choices, Kev and V continue down the Vagina Safe initative. Their work at The Alibi has gotten them a lot of positive attention from the local activists and that brings Kev into the trenches with the women who have been deeply traumatised by sexual assault and human trafficing. His efforts with the bar pale in comparison and he wants to retreat to the sidelines so those directly affected can be the ones heard most.