Face It, You’re Gorgeous!

By going for the plea deal, Ian gets sentenced to 2 years in prison. It’s not long before he has to report to the prison and Ian wants to have a relaxing last day at home before he has to live most of his days watching his back. Everyone has something to do so his family is in and out as Ian kicks it around the house.

Carl spends most of the day with Ian and Kelly comes over to teach Carl some advanced self-defense moves. Watching the two throw each other around, Ian asks for some tips and Kelly happily obliges.

Frank is the first to leave the house off to meet his latest muse, Ingrid, at the psychiatric center. Her mandatory 72 hour detainment is up and Frank wants to whisk her away from there so they can start their new life together. Frank brings Liam as support and to check out his “new mom.” The whirlwind first meeting of Ingrid left an impression on Frank, he sees her as his new Monica. Frank doesn’t get what he wants as Ingrid is now no longer in a manic state and her ex-husband came to take care of her.

Lip is out for the day too, taking over babysitting duty for the actress Jen Wagner (Courtney Cox!). She’s got a presentation tomorrow for her biggest sponsorship and if she shows up drunk, she’s in trouble. Lip is really good at his job as he chases her around town and thwarts her attempts at getting a drink. They end up hanging out at the Gallagher household for Ian’s final dinner at home: White Castle. Deb has a very small role this week, more or less getting advice from Jen.

Fiona is handling business all day and right from the start it goes south and spirals out of control. She’s at the start of her investment career, meaning she has very little capital to work with. The 100k she put into the empty lot to turn into a senior living facility has hit a wall of red tape. At her first meeting with her fellow partners, she’s asked for another 25k to keep the process moving. Fiona was expecting a quick turn around on her investment and now she’s looking at years of delay and with no way to get her money. She runs around looking for more money and ends up scrounging through the safe at the restaurant. She’s overleveraged on everything and her stake in the property is at risk  Ford pushed her to get their own place together, a 3k a month rental, so her entire financial world has come to a screeching halt. When she tells Ford they need to back out of the agreement, he takes it as she doesn’t want to live with him and storms off. Later that night, she kisses a co-worker, comes home to an empty apartment and tracks Ford’s phone to find him at…his wife’s home. Cur Fiona’s mind imploding. She races away, crashing her car and stumbling off into the night.

Kev and V are confronted with a rather shocking show and tell. Sister Frances stops by to show them the dildo that Amy brought to school to share with the other kids how her parents show love. Kev and V are brought in to talk with Father D’Amico and it turns out he’s more of a freak than they are. Still, they are moved (shamed) to get rid of all their toys.

This brings us to the next morning where the family is together with Ian ready for Fiona to drive him to the prison. She’s MIA and Kev drives him instead. Once there, the only ones who came to see him off are his family who gives him a tearful goodbye. Like they say, when you go to the hospital or prison, you’ll find out who your real friends are.

This is the last we are going to be seeing Ian for a while. Locked up and fearing the worst for his well being, we’re given a final bit of fan service to see Ian off. Mickey, after snitching on a cartel in Mexico, is locked up in the same prison.

In the original UK version of Shameless, almost everytime an actor left the show, the character just disappeared with a nonsense reason at the start of the season. Cameron Monaghan is the first Gallagher to leave the show and it’s great to see that he wasn’t killed off or simply disappears. We know where he is and he’s not alone. But with reuniting Ian with Mickey, arguably Shameless fans most beloved couple, it shows everyone a plot that they’d want to follow. Knowing we aren’t going to see that is a bit of a rip-off.

So now this raises a big question, where is the show going from here? Emmy Rossum is leaving in a few episodes too and Fiona is the biggest character next to Frank. How much time is left for Shameless?

The cast is still robust enough to keep going. Ian’s plots got thinner and thinner since Mickey skipped town so him being gone isn’t the biggest loss. It’s also set up that his absence is temporary. He can come back in a few seasons with all sorts of new angles to explore after prison and it could be possible to get Mickey out at the same time. But will the show stay in production long enough for that to happen? Fiona has been the rock that the family has leaned on from the start. With the kids now all adults (almost) her role as matriarch has diminished. In the past few years, they are rarely all together and they can go a long time without seeing each other (especially Fiona as she had sworn of bailing out everyone every time they screw up some time ago). So her moving on (I’ve been thinking she’s going to find huge success in real estate and move away to a better part of town, now I’m not so sure) makes sense. She’s not as needed as she once was and with her gone could mean bigger and more important stories for the other Gallaghers. Kev and V might get more integration.

It’ll be interesting to see where this goes.