Sleep Well My Prince for Tomorrow You Shall Be King

We check in with Ian in prison and things are a little rough with Mickey. They’re together so much that they aren’t driving each other crazy along with everyone near them who can hear their nonstop arguments. The start of this storyline is all laughs, the mayonnaise in particular, and it makes me wonder if we’ll get anything more out of these two in jail together. Ian and Mickey are fan favorites so it’ll be interesting to see where this goes. The audience has expectations.

Tami is recovering from surgery so that leaves Lip alone to take care of baby Freddy (“It’s the first name that came to me. I hope Tami likes it”). And when he turns to everyone for help, he gets a polite smile and a “welcome to parenthood” line of encouragement. Another funny line is from Liam who asks him why he’s so stressed out about Freddy since he has so much experience with raising kids. “I guess I wasn’t so worried if any of you died.”

Liam continues to struggle with his lack of identity. Since he’s the only dark-skinned person in the family, he feels like an other. His siblings say his skin color isn’t important, he’s a Gallagher, and he rightfully says I’m only seen as a Gallagher in this house, anywhere else I’m black and treated differently. He wants to get a DNA test to find out his ancestry and at the end of the episode, he asks Frank about the family history, how could he be born black and no one else? Frank says that one of Monica’s grandfathers had a mistress. “And she was black?” “She is black.” “What?” “She lives down the street.” They go to the house and when a man sees Frank, they are scared away with a gun. Liam has found his roots, he just needs to figure out how to get close to them.

Mikey is none too pleased with the fact that Deb is calling the shots in Frank’s home and works to shift the power levels. He follows her to her secret stash and extorts her to give up control. She gets the boys ATM cards, effectively giving them a $100 a week allowance (she’s not about to let what money they have disappear in 2 weeks) and tells Frank he can “take over” if she wants. Expect the house to turn into a toilet by the end of the weekend and Deb being asked to take the reins again.

Deb also hits her first “return the merch!” problem. She gets caught in the “I didn’t wear these $800 shoes” and the guy blackmails her to return the shoes. She ends up not doing the favor (which I didn’t find believable at all) but he end result is that she has to be way more careful with the merch. One thing is to not wait until the 30th return day as that is the first red flag.

Frank’s not the only one trying to make moves for himself. With a wrap on his military career, Carl has to go back to the rat race and heads right back to the shrimp joint where he’s welcomed back with open arms by his boss who loves him. While he was gone, a young woman (Hello, Anne!) was hired to take his place. It doesn’t take long for him to notice her drug side hustle. She’s selling vape pens with meals and Carl swoops in, bringing Liam in for the action. She pulls in the Hispanic kids, Carl the white kids, and Liam the black kids. By expanding the product and market place, they’ll make a ton of money.

Kev has given up his basketball dreams and packs up his new shoes to return them. A delivery guy comes in to pick it up and asks for a beer and a shot before running into the bathroom. A little later a patron finds the guy dead on the floor of the bathroom, due to some sort of stroke emergency. Miffed by the driver’s attitude of drinking on the (driving) job and doing something stupid in her bar, V agrees with everyone to raid his truck. They have a great time of going through the trucks and Kev takes it one step further, driving around the truck to pick up the returns on his route and selling that stuff on their own. When times are tough the people will take any advantage they can.

Of the plot lines going on, I’m the most interested in Liam and Lip. Lip’s stuff I’m sure won’t break any new ground but he’s one of my favorite characters. Liam’s story is just starting and they could go anywhere with it, so that’s the most exciting.