Citizen Carl

This week, Carl finds a new purpose in life. While waiting for a bus at night, he has a friendly chat with an old woman. She comments on how long the street lights in the neighborhood have been out and when Carl’s bus comes, he offers to stay with her since the bus stop is in such a sketchy area. She politely declines and as the bus pulls away, Carl witnesses her get mugged. The bus driver won’t stop and Carl can’t do anything to help her. This woman’s death pushes Carl to make a difference. First, he calls the city to get the lights fixed and is told it’ll be fixed in 3 years or so. Dejected he tries the media who shoots him down because no one cares about an old black woman killed in the South Side of Chicago. Incensed, Carl makes a plan to force the public to notice. He finds Kelly and enlists her to get one of her wealthiest softball teammates to that same spot at night. He fakes robbing them (“Is that a real gun?!”) and the live Instagram story Kelly set up goes viral and the city swoops in to fix the streetlights the next day. Watching the change he made unfold on TV gives Carl a sense of pride he hasn’t had in a while.

Deb’s plan to dupe Pepa with a fake hellion daughter works like a charm. Pepa drops the kid off early, along with the rest of the military death money. The rest of the family is rather bewildered by what Deb’s been up to but Deb’s financial problems are over…for now. Megan spooks her by telling her she’s got to set up her next scam so that she never runs out of money. Megan is living the glorious life of child support payments, so she takes Deb to her sugar daddy stomping grounds to snag an old man with money. Deb isn’t feeling it and bails on Megan’s plan by using a woman at the bar as a distraction. The two hit it off and Deb goes up to Claudia’s room. In the morning, Claudia has left an envelope of money (I counted $600) and Deb takes it. She basically sprints out of the room and Deb has inadvertently become a prostitute. Deb’s got a new series of moral questions to ask herself.

Liam doesn’t do too much in this episode. We watch him work his management skills on the phone for a bit and then he’s hanging out with Stella, the older psychopath sister of Bella, Frannie’s evil stand-in for Deb’s Pepa grift. Stella acts way above her age and Frank gives Liam some wildly inappropriate advice that thankfully doesn’t pan out.

Lip navigates the RV life with Tami, with stinky results. The main take away from this episode is that the two are managing to work together to solve their problems.

Kev and V get a sudden cash-flow problem at The Alibi when their best customer dies (not a good look when you don’t notice someone sitting at your bar when you close up). This spurs them into bringing in new customers and they get a horrible idea: go to an AA meeting. The two fumble through a pretty blatant promotional pitch and it works when two or three women come to bar. It’s not until they show up that V realizes how trashy their idea is and Kev cuts her protest off by serving their new customers.

Another event at The Alibi unfolds with Frank. He’s quick to pilfer the belongings of the dead man and when he comes back to the bar to drink so more, a rather striking woman walks in. Frank turns on the charm. they start drinking together and he offers to cut off the boot on her car. Her car is a Rolls Royce and Faye is living in it. The story behind this one is going to be good.

Mickey is now working security in the mall and watching him chase down a shoplifter in khaki shorts and a pink polo shirt is hilarious. While not ideal, Mickey has resigned himself to this life while he’s on parole. It is better than prison after all. Ian is going through the motions too until his parole officer–Paula–ganks his entire paycheck to “make up for” the commission she missed out on when Ian actually helped someone in need last week. This infuriates Ian who floats the idea of killing her to Mickey. Mickey tells him to calm down…until Paula shows up with the news that she is now Mickey’s PO. She immediately puts Mickey on a manhunt for one of her other parolees whos been MIA. Mickey ends up throwing the guy out of a window by her request (demand? She really liked it). As the guy is carted away in an ambulance, Mickey agrees that they have a serious problem on their backs. This plotline just got a whole lot more interesting.

Probably the best episode of the season. Really funny and a lot of stories took fun turns that I didn’t see coming. Plus, a new Milkovich has been introduced! Sandy, a cousin. Probably not too distant? Deb catches her eye so I’m sure she’ll be back next week to stir the pot. So far the baby kidnapping plot has disappeared, which isn’t unusual for Shameless. They do something crazy and then never mention it again when they don’t know what to do with it any longer. Realistically, Randy will have to show up again for anything to happen as that trade-off to Frank was far from official in any way. I’m excited for the next episode to see what happens.