Cancelled

I was right about Frank. But first:

After the mega argument with Sandy, Deb decides to go AWOL. She crashes with the bar owner she met a few weeks (days?) ago and spends the day with her. This leaves Franny at the house and Carl takes her to school. With a serious case of the “walls are closing in on me” emotional state, Deb dives into day drinking and ends up hooking up with a married man. She freaks out and runs away from the scene and while she works on sobering up, she gets a call from Franny’s school that no one has picked her up. Deb races to her daughter. At the end of the day, Sandy comes over to talk to Deb. It turns into another argument and Deb lays it all out, she doesn’t think she and Sandy are compatible. This time, despite the irresponsibility of the day, Deb is making a mature decision about one of her relationships.

Ian and Mickey have to take over care for Terry. The rest of the family is useless and Ian and Mickey work all day, so they need to get him an at home nurse because he can’t do anything himself. Terry, being the racist bigot, sends every nurse heading for the hills in a matter of minutes. The final nurse is a retired nun. She’s white, so Terry is okay with that part of her, and she clearly has the fortitude to put up with Terry and put him in his place when needed. Ian and Terry take off for work confident they have this problem sorted out. In a huge twist, the nurse does what countless people have wanted to do to Terry for decades: turns out she’s an angel of death!

Terry has always been a side character, brought in like a tornado in Mickey’s life every so often so I was shocked the writers went anywhere in this direction to finish Terry’s story on the show. Ian and Mickey are stunned and it’s safe to say they aren’t going to do anything about the nurse. I would expect to see Mickey processing his father’s death. He was the leader of that cesspool for ages so it would be interesting to see what happens with the family dynamic now that he’s gone. Of course, the dysfunction in the Milkovich family is off the charts so everyone will just keep doing what they’re doing like Terry just went out for a pack of smokes and never came back. He’s probably done that a dozen times. I do believe this means the family has no claim to that house as they now can’t say Terry is dating the owner. The block could soon turn back to being better but the odds of increased gentrification just went up.

After putting a hole in the wall, Lip gets brought in for questioning about the robbery. He handles it like a champ, knowing that since they haven’t arrested him, they have no proof that he had anything to do with ripping off the motorcycle shop. While he is let go easily, the cops don’t give up and get a warrant to search his house. In a panic, thanks to a tip from Carl, he calls Tami to get rid of the boxes of merch he has stored in the garage. He gets home moments before the police do, but they find nothing because Tami brought everything to her parent’s house. The two bond over the cover-up and all seems well until the loose thread emerges: Brad gets called in for questioning and the new crime duo race to get to Brad before he walks into the police station. Brad can’t handle any kind of questioning, he’ll give everything up after 2 questions. They need to figure out a solution. Brad is such a bundle of nerves, I have no idea how they can manage this. They can’t keep him away from the police forever…they’ll come to him the next day.

V is upset that her mother is moving out of state. She feels this huge loss coming but her mother is excited beyond words. If V is going to do nothing but mope about it, her mom doesn’t want her around if all V is going to do is make her feel guilty. Kevin gets good news at least and arranges a small and special meeting at The Alibi. The courthouse has resumed marriages over teleconference and he slots them a time. Kevin and V are finally, officially husband and wife.

Carl gets assigned to a vice squad and these two guys seem like the coolest people on the planet. Carl soon finds out that these two are also crooked as hell. In a really funny moment, after Carl finally grasps their scam, he asks them why they chose him to ride with them. It turns out that in Carl’s file, it says that he’s a person who is really easy to convince to do just about anything. In his eagerness to please and follow others, it doesn’t take much for a superior to go along with what they want to do. Carl seems to understand what that means, going “oh” and then he quickly smiles and says “okay” and runs off to do their shady errand. What the two cops don’t know is, Carl is also really loyal. The Alibi is on their list to set up and shut down and Carl can’t go along with that. He hatches a quick idea to sabotage the raid and it looks like it’ll keep this vice squad sidelined for a while.

Now for Frank. At the start of the episode, he finds out that Liam’s middle school (which he and all of his kids have attended) is renaming the school because the guy it’s named after now is a convicted pedophile. Frank think it’s stupid cancel culture plowing through his life. The guy did a lot of good elsewhere and his whole sexual predator crimes should just be ignored. So he gets into wanting to name the school. If he can’t get them to keep the name, he’ll pick on that he’s happy with. His solution: name the school after him. Let’s just hope no one knows about his extensive arrest record, right?

For most of this day, Frank does well. But just before he goes to the meeting with Liam at the school, Frank has a bad episode. He talks to Liam about naming the school, says he has to go the bathroom, and complains that there is no toilet paper. So he comes out, grabs a roll of paper towels and then repeats his plan with Liam. Liam is confused and Frank goes back to the bathroom where he says again, there’s no toilet paper. Liam looks at the paper towels Frank left on the counter. Then, at the meeting, Frank gets even worse. For the whole day he was able to remember about what he wanted to name the school and he forgets. It quickly goes down hill from there and Carl has to jump in to keep Frank from getting arrested. He gets Frank to the ER and the kids find out that Frank has alcohol induced dementia. Standing there, Frank has no short term memory. The kids are stunned and the episode ends.

For the first time in…ever? There is no in-credits stinger. It’s just credits. There’s no where to goofily bounce to after Frank’s health reveal to the family. We’re left with two major plot lines that affect all of the Gallagher’s: the sale of the house and Frank’s health. Both are tied together on how/if/what parts of the immediate family stick together. I do wonder what Liam will do, no matter what happens. With Terry gone, that does give him some kind of pressure release. Side pieces that could and do have a lot of importance: fallout from Terry’s death and Lip staying out of jail.

Only 4 episodes remaining.