Down Like The Titanic
Fiona is sitting in a ditch and it’s Deb who finds her and gives her a hand to help get her out.
It’s been a while since Fiona has been truly down and out (the drug incident with Liam being the big one a few years ago). Career and personal life both imploded at the same time so it’s not surprising we find her laying on the floor of her bedroom in a what can only be described as a hot mess. But it’s Deb who puts the effort into finding her MIA sister and immediately gets to work on putting the Gallagher keystone back together. With a rather large mound of problems to tackle, Deb figures she can help with the car first. Upon seeing the wrecked RAV4 Deb is shocked to find out what happened and hooks Fiona up with her first connect: her co-worker welder who’s got the hook up at a junkyard. Striping the car for parts will net Fiona a quick $600 in cash and pulling some insurance fraud will get Fiona clear of the lease. That still leaves her doomed on her property investment. Max, her investment partner shows up at the apartment open house looking for her $25k. Unable to lie anymore, she admits she’s broke. In a rather hair-raising discussion (I don’t really trust Max, the opportunities for Max to take advantage of her countless) they come to the verbal agreement that Max will get the apartment building for the exact amount of money she owes the bank. The upside: this means she’s going to get out from under the wreckage without being crushed to death. The downside: she’s left with nothing and still owes him the 25k (with interest) he’s going to cover for her to get out of their property deal. The other upside for Fiona is her revenge on Ford that Deb sets up for her. The solider of the season award goes to Deb.
With Ian out of the Gallagher nest, Carl is excited to get his own room, with a door that locks, for the first time in his 17 years of life. Kelly shows up with a stack of West Point admission material and forces him to put his nose to the grindstone to make sure he gets in. Now, any fan of the show can tell you that Carl and school never went together well. He bombs everything (some of the greatest Carl lines came out of this), even with Liam’s help, so Kelly pivots to plan B: use your sob story to get in. With Carl’s past, he racks up the pity points as she asks him questions. Not only was this whole section funny, but Carl also finds out he is Kelly’s boyfriend and their reactions to the public admission is adorable.
While Fiona is in the dumps, Lip has a great day! He runs into that trainwreck of a bridesmaid he hooked up with earlier this season and they hit it off! A night of vigorous nude gymnastics leaves Lip so happy he literally skips down the street.
Frank has wormed his way close to Ingrid again and he parties down with her like it’s 1999 at her place. Medical marijuana, staircase tabogganing, shaving, and more! Frank is head over heels for her and they continue their freak fest at her office. Ingrid’s ex-husband Randy warns Frank that he doesn’t know what he’s getting to and with Ingrid off her meds, it’s only a matter of hours until she completely loses it. He’s been her guardian for 19 years, picking her up and putting her back together everytime it happens. Frank, with his decades of experience in debauchery, waves the warning off. He’s confident he can handle Ingrid until the time comes where Ingrid forces Frank to eat food with broken glass in it at knifepoint. That’s a bit much for Frank and he sprints to The Alibi until things “settle down.” That settling down happens and it’s all thanks to Ingrid’s ex. True to his word, he swept in to pick up the pieces. Frank, being the selfish douche he is, sees Randy as a problem and an opportunity. He begins his manipulation to keep himself close to Ingrid.
After cleaning up all their adult toys, V comes to realize that they have a mountain of baby stuff that’s taking up room in their small home. With the twins now 4 years old, and them done having kids, she bags it all up for a friend. When Kev sees it all in the living room he gets upset on two fronts: first, you’re just getting rid of all this sentimental stuff and second: we’re done having kids? The subject has come up over the years and the discussion of having more kids was always kicked down the road by V. That, according to V was code for “We’re not having any more kids.” We rarely see Kev and V fight and this is the biggest domestic issue they’ve had in a while, Most of their problems have been from external forces but this one is deep and personal. I thought this was a great subject to bring up for the couple and Kev’s response to this coming to light was a good example of his tender heart. I’m actually disappointed that they resolved the problem so fast. There’s a lot to the issue and it felt rushed how it all shook out in two or three scenes. V doesn’t want to physically have any more kids (a great reason) and she throws out adoption to appease Kev pretty quickly. They didn’t even go into the obvious from Kev’s perspective: yes it’ll be a financial hardship but the way V first shot him down made it sound like she didn’t want to have more kids with him. It sounded like a major wrinkle in their relationship and by knocking the issue off the table so fast I feel like we missed out on something much more interesting for Kev and V, the long-running co-stars who always seem to be stuck on the fringe of every story. I love these two and would like to see them get more meaningful screen time.
What really bothers me is this episode was the mid-season finale. So what does that mean? The show is off until January 20th! Three months! Shameless has never broken up a season and I hate this whole concept. The show is on a roll and now it all comes to a screeching halt! Boo Showtime! I say boo to you!