Father Frank, Full of Grace

Spoilers ahead

I’ve had my ideas for how Shameless could end for a number of years now. I like getting closure, it feels good. That’s hard to do and with a cast as big as this one, not terribly reasonable. Plus, getting definitive answers doesn’t mean you’re going to like them. Shameless could go on for many more years since most of the cast are young adults. Their stories could be continued to be told for years to come until actors want to leave or some dramatic story element takes them off. The latter part has happened a lot in this series.

Shameless, while dramatized and exaggerated at every opportunity, stuck to the basic premise that life is never perfect and requires a lot of struggle and work to get where you are going. No one really knows where they’re going, but there is constant movement. There is no such thing as an easy out on this show and there are consequences to actions. The writers kept to that ethos to the final frame. The decision to end the show was made some time ago, but the Gallagher’s aren’t over. We’re given a look at what could be next for everyone.

Frank is found comatose on the couch with the needle still in his arm. He’s still breathing with a weak pulse but since he’s in such bad health and he clearly made the decision to OD, they decide to wait and see what his body does. This isn’t the first time he’s done this and he comes back every time. This is his MO. While Frank is knocked out, Frannie uses the note he left the family to color on. In a few hours, he wakes up alone and leaves the house. Liam, as usual, is the only one who looks for him.

Kev and V’s commercial real estate agent comes to The Alibi and Kev is still anxious about selling the bar. When a prospective buyer comes around, he has no intention of keeping the space as a bar. Most likely some kind of tanning salon/health store combo. This is the worst news possible for Kermit and Tommy, and Kev gets more apprehensive. V feels the pressure as well, essentially being part of erasing part of South Side’s history and culture. They get an offer lower than they want, estimating that they’d clear about 30 grand.

Deb spends some quality time with Heidi. The normal stuff for new couples, like sex and stealing a car. It’s the kind of life mix Deb is used to and is looking for; an exciting person that will be by her side no matter what. Deb is terrified of being alone and she thinks that Heidi will be committed to her. Doing shady stuff is in her DNA so stealing stuff doesn’t scare her off. But, she doesn’t really know Heidi.

Carl settles into his current law enforcement pocket by issuing tickets to people taking handicapped parking spaces illegally. He’s sticking it to the wealthy and making the city a small fortune, so he’s doing well. Tipping swings by for a visit and Carl, having met Heidi that morning, has Tipping look her up to see if she has a record. It looks like she’s been arrested for almost everything possible. He’s not surprised Deb has found another wildcard, but this one is way beyond the others.

Lip picks up a food delivery job to help make ends meet. He rides around town and sees how others are doing (one looks like a tech incubator). On one delivery he gets a horrible tip after seriously helping out a day trader. This doesn’t help his psyche and he runs into an old friend who is looking to buy the empty lot next to the Gallagher lot. He can only offer $75k, a far cry from the $200k Lip missed out on, but it’s something. Tami comes by and they talk, before she leaves she reaffirms her commitment to their relationship…and gives the knowledge that she might be pregnant again. Two kids with no money will be an even greater strain.

Ian and Mickey work towards moving out of the Gallagher house. Since it’s obvious they now need to get furniture, that’s their first priority. They take the mattress and dresser from their room, swing by a furniture store where Ian gets into a funny fight with a woman wearing a Stop the Steal t-shirt, and stop by Kev and V’s to get first dibs on what they are selling in their yard sale. Ian wants to take the old crib and that throws Mickey for a loop. They never talked about having kids. Mickey rattles off some logistical issues but it comes down to his fear of being a terrible father. He only has Terry to go off of and he was a living nightmare so it’s an understandable fear. Ian believes in Mickey though, he knows that Mickey would steer away from being his father.

This all leads to the final, pivotal scene at The Alibi where Mickey has arranged a surprise wedding anniversary party. Ian had no idea, thinking Mickey forgot.

A lot of celebrations have gone down at The Alibi. It’s been the public hub for the series from the start and with Kev and V leaving, it looks to be likely the last one. Certainly the last for all of these people to be together in one place.

Frank has been out walking around alone for the entire day. At first, I thought it was aimless wandering but he goes to Patsy’s Pies, the diner where Fiona first worked and then managed. It’s been shut down and boarded up and upon recognizing it, he looks shocked that it’s no longer open. He looks inside and we get a final glimpse of another major location of the series. It’s in terrible condition. I think Frank went there looking for Fiona, not remembering she moved away.

He then walks into a church, confused about where–and when–he is. He runs into the back thinking he’s back in his altar boy days and he gets dressed and looks for matches to light the candles before mass. The father in charge is kind to Frank, goes along with what Frank wants, and calls for an ambulance instead of the police. On the way to the hospital, the creeping suspicion that Frank, like Patsy’s Pies, is beyond repair cannot be ignored.

Since Frank’s liver transplant in season 4, I’ve thought that the series would end with Frank’s death. He is the nuclear reactor that everyone navigates around. I also thought he’d die away from any family members. With how he’s lived his entire life, it’s hard to predict anything else.

My biggest hope for this season was for Emmy Rossum to come back. Fiona was my favorite character and her appearing in at least one episode felt necessary to bookend the finale of the Gallagher story. She was the parent to her 5 siblings for most of their life and part of almost every major plotline. Due to covid protocols for traveling and the many disruptions to the final season’s shooting schedule., it became impossible for Emmy to come back. While I didn’t get my wish and that’s disappointing, she was shown in a meaningful and beautiful way.

In the ER, he’s getting a bunch of tests done to figure out what’s wrong with him. He doesn’t have an ID so no one knows who he is until one of the doctors recognizes him as their most frequent patient. Frank is in haze from his dementia and what turns out to be covid, taking him in and out of consciousness. When he wakes up, he thinks the nurse attending to him is Fiona. He compliments her, happy to have found his eldest. He blanks out again and sees Fiona at her best from his memories, happy and healthy. If I don’t get to see Fiona come back, seeing how much she meant to Frank is a gift I will gladly take and remember forever.

As he slips in and of consciousness, he thinks about all of his kids. What we’re shown is the kids in the early seasons of the show, what I perceive as Frank going back to when he was happiest. Monica was still alive, his kids much less opinionated; aka less of a pain in the ass and easier for him to get his way.

The Do Not Resuscitate tattoo does what Frank wants, no extra measures are taken to save his life. Frank dies without any family near him, the nurse whom he thinks is Fiona holding his hand as he passes. She turns off the monitors, lays his bed down flat and the hustle and bustle of a hospital ER with everyone covered in PPE continues without pause.

Frank ODed with no one home and left the house without seeing anyone. In a touching narrative, as Frank’s body gives out, his spirit goes to The Alibi where he sits on his stool at the bar and watches everyone he cares about celebrating Ian and Mickey’s anniversary. He’s in his element: drinks, a party, celebration. He even enjoys a drink…something he’s wanted since the last one he tried made him vomit. When he puts the glass down, it refills on its own and he smiles. The show ends as it started, with Frank’s narration giving a lecture on life while everyone has a good time around a burning car. No one may have read his farewell message but the audience is given that closure as Frank’s last words to us is what he wrote to his family. He gives his honest opinion of everyone, in the most Frank way possible.

In The Alibi we get to see everyone together for the last time and the possibilities of what could come are left on the table. With Kev and V’s uncertainty on selling the bar, Carl and Tipping come up with the idea of pooling their money to buy it. They’ll keep it as is, make it a cop bar to get more regulars. Kev and V may have struggled to always make a profit but this could work. I can’t see Carl ever leaving South Side so I think this is a perfect fit. I like where we got to see Carl go. He was a juvenile delinquent and he still has a lot of issues. But the writers didn’t take him down the obvious path of a criminal for life. He’s done time, he’s done a lot of shady stuff, and he’s clearly not the smartest one in the family. He makes mistakes all the time. But he does have a positive moral compass. He’s loyal to his family and he wants to make the world better. There’s hope and promise in his future.

While Carl knows how off the wall Heidi is, he doesn’t tell Deb. He thinks it’s best to let it play out and he’s probably right. Telling her to ditch Heidi may push her further into her. Deb is the biggest wildcard of the family. She, as Frank says, is most like her mother. She’s just as crazy as Carl but she goes through life with more of a romantic view of the world. Heidi invites her to run off out of state. Take Frannie along, you can find some work repairing stuff while I do some business with my friend. It’s a terrible idea because Deb doesn’t know the extent of how nuts Heidi is so the idea of being with her new girlfriend, being asked to go, kid and all, is something new to her. Heidi is legit into Deb so that’s really enticing. I can’t see her going as she’s so phobic to change, but if she does go I think she’d end up coming back pretty soon after Frannie’s life is put in danger. There is no way that wouldn’t happen. I can see Deb going from one dysfunctional relationship to the next for the rest of her life.

This was a reassuring episode for Tami. She commits to Lip whole heartily. He’s been in a bad place for a long time and she supports him through everything. She likes that he’s picked up a job hates to make ends meet because it means he’s trying. She knows it’s temporary and he’ll be able to move back into the career that makes him happy in time. They’ll make decisions together for their family. And if she is pregnant, they’ll make it work. Lip has grown up a lot too. The younger Lip would have done something really terrible to the day trader. The most likely immediate future for Lip is starting his own motorcycle shop.

Lip tells Ian about the potential sale of the house–for way less money. Ian puts his confidence in Lip making the right decision for them and Lip wonders why. “You’ve basically been our father,” Ian answers. That nearly killed me. It was so honest (and true) and it embarrassed Lip a little. Lip is the smartest one in the family, he’s the betting favorite for being the most successful of all of them. The tight bond between Lip and Ian goes all the way back to the start, when they were smoking cigarettes in the busted car in the backyard and Lip was the first person Ian told he’s gay. They’ll be close no matter what happens in the future.

Ian and Mickey share something special. It’s amazing that not only did Mickey remember their anniversary but he organized a surprise party for it. That’s probably the biggest change of a character in the entire series. It’s safe to say Ian will continue to shave off Mickey’s rough edges. The biggest being getting Mickey to be less aggro about everything. It’s hard to imagine them apart, lord knows Mickey would never be happy with anyone else. Still, the possibility of going back to prison, Mickey at least, is pretty high. With Lip’s hesitancy of having another kid, it’s not out of the realm for these two to take on a large role in a future Gallagher’s life.

Liam proves to be Frank’s final friend. He’s the only one worried about Frank when he goes missing. It isn’t because everyone else doesn’t care or love Frank, it’s that they are numbed by years of this cycle. He’s the youngest of the original 6 and has the fewest memories of all the times Frank has gone on a bender. He has no memory of Monica, he didn’t experience what she put them through. At the start of the show, it was Deb who would fret over Frank the most, her older siblings have become numb to it. It didn’t take much longer for her to join their frustration of helping someone who doesn’t want help. Lip talks to Liam about this and tells him they just have to wait for him to show up again. He always does. When Liam gets to the bar for the party, he’s disappointed that Frank’s not sitting on his favorite bar stool.

As Frank passes, Liam senses that Frank has done so. A calmness comes over him as he looks at the empty barstool and then looks up before joining everyone outside to enjoy the Tesla that’s caught fire. A wealthy schmuck watching his money go up in flames, it’s something Frank would have loved.

I can see Liam going far. I think if he lives with Tami in Lip that’ll give him the best environment to do well in school. As a young Black male, he knows he faces a different world than his family. While they have all struggled he’s going to have to push even harder to get equal footing. He wants to achieve more than he’s seen them do and I think he’ll be able to do it. I can see him being an entrepreneur right out of college.

So the show ends with possibilities, not closure. Three days after the finale has aired, I feel like that’s the best way to end the series. The Gallagher kids are moving on, just more independently from each other than they have before. More kids will be born (I can see Lip and Tami having 6!) and all of their lives will be wild and memorable. There are a lot of questions we can ask. How will they react to Frank’s death? Will Lip sell the house? Where will Deb go? Fiona hasn’t been mentioned since the start of season 10 so how she is doing and what she’s doing is completely up in the air. Fiona’s void in this ending is my biggest disappointment. If that’s the biggest one for 11 seasons and one due to a bat shit crazy pandemic, it’s not so bad. But, that’s life. There are no easy answers and nothing has a black or white solution. It’s up to you to fill in the blanks. You can pull a lot from what was and wasn’t said in the finale (like Frank leaving Fiona out of the note contrasted with how he remembers her). I am happy that they managed to give Frank one final funny gag fitting for his legacy.

I’m going to miss checking in on the Gallaghers 12 times every year. A void has been created. We watched half of the cast literally grow up. I’m attached to everyone, even Frank, a degenerate who caused more pain to those around him than anything else. I can’t even count how many people left South Side to get away from him. Still, I was wrecked by his death.

It’s the power of storytelling and the people creative and brave enough to make it.

The Fickle Lady Is Calling It Quits

Everybody is moving at warp speed and it’s getting tough for anybody to hang on.

Kev and V quickly sell their house for more than it’s worth to a developer that slipped a flyer in their mail. This puts The Alibi on the fast track to be sold, shocking Kermit, Tommy, and Deb. Cleaning up The Alibi makes Kev nostalgic and any second thoughts from V end when the money (minus paying off the house) shows up in their account. When Lip finds out about the sale he’s taken back by losing his lifelong neighbors and the shock that their house was sold with no effort.

Lip jumps at the chance to talk to the developer, who is looking to buy 3 houses on the block for a new development. Lip can stop putting time and money into the house and end most of his stress. With the Ball house and the Milkovich house sold, Lip is in prime position to make the last sale to the developer and asks for $275k. While he waits for a response, he’s over the moon and decides to sell the new stuff he put into the house to get more of his money back. Tami is shocked to hear their fortune has turned but she’s skeptical that Lip should be so happy until the paper work is done. In Shameless fashion, it doesn’t work. The developer goes the other way down the block and buys the house to the left of the Ball’s for $200k. Lip accidentally priced himself out. It was a good idea but he rushed into it, not considering any competition. Frustrated, he goes to the Ball house to talk to Kevin after he blew him off earlier when he found out about the developer from V.

Deb’s feelings of abandonment spiral further down as she goes to Tami for relationship advice. She gives her some real talk, saying it’s not her fault she hasn’t had a healthy relationship, her parents were so dysfunctional she had no chance. This turns Deb on Frank and she jumps him at the Alibi and he gives her some parting Frank advice: find a bigger loser than you and they won’t leave you. Later in the day, Deb runs into (accosted is the better word) a woman named Heidi. There’s a good chance this woman won’t leave Deb for anything, but there’s a good chance Heidi will get her killed. Deb’s level of desperation will be tested.

Carl continues to rage against the machine and gets himself demoted to meter maid. Turns out he likes cruising the streets but getting disrespected for being a meter maid left and right isn’t a perk. He turns his job into a moral positive though, giving tickets only to wealthy people. He runs into Tish and they have a good talk. Impressive considering how things were left between them. She’s also super pregnant and Carl asks her if he’s the father and she doesn’t answer him. With his career in question, what can we make of a possible surprise…would Carl be a good father?

Mickey is having a hard time fitting in at the West Side apartment. Ian bops about looking to make friends and settle in and Mickey is like a dog after a cross-country move. The changes are so great he can’t handle anything. Everything feels foreign to him, he hates everyone he meets and it bubbles over into a hilarious fight at the pool. Ian, champion of being an understanding adult, is able to eventually talk his husband down from his anxieties. Mickey is a lucky guy, it’s hard to believe he could find another person who would be able to care for him so deeply.

Frank’s day starts on a rough brown note and once again Liam is there for him. They go out and do fun Frank stuff; scamming people out of money and then spending it. After his rough encounter with Deb at The Alibi, Frank can’t handle any booze and it tilts him. The time we’ve seen Liam and Frank together has been meaningful. Liam represents a lot to Frank and the show at large. Liam accepts Frank as Frank and that’s probably the most Frank has ever wanted in life. The end of the episode sees Frank writing a note to his family and shoot a life-ending amount of heroin from a secret stash into his arm.

One episode left and I’m dreading it, I hope it’s as satisfying as I want it to be.

DNR

While Deb acquiesced to Lip’s demands to sell the house, she isn’t doing anything to help him fix the place to be put on the market. No one else is either as they go about thinking about their immediate future. They also have the matter of a very famous and expensive stolen painting to deal with.

Lip is doing everything he can to keep his head above water. Tami and Fred are staying with her parents while he fixes the Gallagher house. There’s a surprise gas leak so that means even more time and money to put in. He manages to sell his Indian project bike to the guy buying his rental but for thousands less than it’s worth. He now has $9k more than he did the day before but it’s a hit to his self-worth. He checks in with job applications and the only positive bite he gets is for $15 an hour with no benefits. There’s no release to the pressure on Lip in the foreseeable future.

Deb takes Frankie on an across-town quest to find a place to live. She immediately starts to panic when she can’t fight the feeling that she can’t function alone. She’s lived in chaos her entire life and anything less than that isn’t normal. She and Mickey remain pissed at Lip for putting them out for looking for a new place to live.

Liam is on a mission to get into a STEM school and he needs to talk to his main competition for one of the few spots available to give him an edge. No one wants to deal with Frank so Liam remains the good Gallagher and brings him along for the trip. This is the best part of the episode with some of the best writing. Liam and Frank’s relationship has always been unique and a bright side of the show since Liam aged up to a speaking character. Liam does everything he can to keep his ailing father on track but when he ruins Liam’s plans he’s not sure what he can do. In the scene of the episode, the two are sitting on the house stoop at the end of the day. Liam says “I can’t do this” and Frank answers “Do what?” “Take care of you.” “You don’t have to do that.” And then Liam has to tell him-again-that he has dementia. Frank doesn’t believe him and he tells him to look at the notes written on his arm. This-temporarily-centers Frank again and he feels bad for Liam. These two spend the most time together by far and Frank never shies away from giving his youngest son all the wisdom he’s gained over the decades. Most of it is horrible but still, it’s meaningful. Frank admits he’s lived his life the way he’s wanted to and that’s important to him. So when it’s time to go, he’ll be happy enough to go because he’s done everything by his rules. Their arc for the episode ends with getting Do Not Resuscitate tattooed on his chest.

Mickey and Ian travel to the Westside to look at apartments that are shockingly cheap. Brand new construction in a cut off at the knees market by Covid. If you can prove you can pay the rent, the place with amazing amenities is yours. Ian loves it and Mickey loves the pool. It’s a massive upgrade and Ian is all for the potential of moving up in life but Mickey can’t handle the change. He’s just like Deb, born, raised, bred to live in the scrappy world of Southside Chicago. Leaving his neighborhood feels like a betrayal to everything he knows and who he is. Ian makes the executive decision to sign the lease and this causes Mickey to dig in like Deb and ends up getting into a fist fight with Lip about moving. Mickey is a hilarious from start to finish. He finds everything distasteful about the Westside and every observation he has had me cracking up. “Why are you running when no one is chasing you?!”

With each work assignment, Carl’s ethics have been put to the test. He goes on eviction duty with Tipping and Carl has hit his breaking point. Everything is so stacked in the favor of the wealthy that Carl can’t keep putting his down while the people he lives with get stepped on every day. He ends up arresting the wealthy vulture doing the eviction and gets read the riot act by his boss. If Carl flames out of being a cop, likely quitting because it’s so hard to get fired, I don’t know what he’s going to do. He truly wants to help his neighborhood but I don’t see him getting into activism on his own. The only possibility is that he meets a person that becomes his mentor and leads him into a profession he never considered (or knew about) before.

Kev and V have a breakout day in Kentucky. They both get offered jobs that have the potential to boost their income up at least two tax brackets. It’s hard to believe they will stay in Chicago now. They are discovering too many benefits to stay put.

Survivors

Turns out the writers decided to take the shortcut. After building up that Brad is likely going to crack under pressure with the police, they just jump ahead with Brad and Lip going to Born Free to sign off on the final paperwork for the sale of the shop. They close the problem they wrote by simply saying that the police did their investigation and didn’t find anything so they’re in the clear. That’s really disappointing (and lazy) but time is of the essence as they have to wrap everything up in 4 episodes.

So, the new wrinkle is that Born Free was bought by a Chicago crime family and they’re pulling some insurance fraud, claiming that what was stolen is worth double what it actually is. Stealing from the mob tends to be dangerous. Things get sketchy when they notice they are being followed. Things work out for the best as the mob boss was told that Lip and Brad can fix anything and he needs a birthday present for his kid to be assembled correctly. They manage to put it together and with the scam going on the parts, Lip figures they’re completely in the clear now. I wonder if this is going to turn into a job offer for Lip. Why go out of the way to introduce mob boss Baggio like this if you aren’t going to do anything with it? Baggio probably owns a ton of cars or owns a few garages where he could use another mechanic. Helping him with his kid in a pinch is a good first impression.

The big problem is the battle for the house. Lip has a timer over his head for his home being taken out from under him and moving back to the Gallagher house or Tami’s parents isn’t a solution. With his share of the sale, he has a down payment. Liam and Deb are convinced if the house is sold, the family is basically done. So Deb digs in further, Lip is furious, and Liam runs around looking for a place for him to live in case the house is sold. His journey takes him all over the place. This and Frank’s day highlight how the Gallagher’s rarely talk to each other anymore. Talking at someone rarely does anything.

There’s basically nothing they can do about Frank, he’s drunk himself into pickling his brain so everyone goes on with their lives ignoring him like they always do. Frank, reminded that the house may be up for sale, pulls at an old heist plan that he’s kept in case of emergency. He’ll get the money to buy the house by stealing some expensive art. He goes around town looking for his old partners and crime to find that everyone is either too old to do some crazy theft or dead. It’s a bad day for Frank (which has some really funny lines).

V goes to Kentucky to help her mother unpack convince her mother to move back to Chicago. This leaves Kevin with the twins and that turns into not a good idea, which many people predict. V’s trip does have a surprise turn: while sightseeing with her mom, it ends up showing her a lot of reasons to leave Chicago with her family. Her mom never says anything about it, so there’s no annoyance or outside pressure for V to get mad at. On her own, she starts thinking about the upgrades they could afford just by moving to another state. This may mean the character I never thought would leave Southside, could.

Since Carl piledrived another department into a ditch, he gets reassigned once more and he gets his first partner back, Officer Tipping. He’s in great spirits which is shocking considering where we last left him. His spirituality has really opened up and he’s not irritatingly positive. His desire to make work as easy as possible and go eat hasn’t changed.

Mickey and Ian spend their day finalizing Terry’s burial plans. In his stuff, they find a box that’s labeled for a mysterious woman named Rachel. This is the best story of the episode as Mickey is torn in every direction. He’s hilarious and the moments they go through are super awkward. Terry’s background is something else and we find out why he was such a miserable person. This thread has come to an end.

When Lip swings by the house at the end of the day, progress actually happens. After he and Deb fight again they do something long overdue. They talk. She tells him she wants to keep the house because she wants to keep the family together. Family is everything to Deb. They might have had a brutal childhood but she had her siblings through all of it. She wants Franny to be close to her family like she was and she’s terrified that this will break them up for good. She tells him Liam basically thinks the same thing. Lip assures her that they are all going to live nearby. It’ll take more effort to see each other (real talk: they barely see each other as it is) but they’ll put the work in. Having a weekly family dinner is his first solution. I would have liked to see them talk more about this (Deb should have brought up Fiona, for example) but it’s a good start. Lip then talks to Liam and Liam admits his fears too. Lip apologizes for making him feel like he’d be abandoned and offers for him to move in with him and Tami. Liam is so happy he gives Lip the biggest and greatest hug. It was really touching to see.

The stinger for the episode is a good one: Frank managed to steal a painting on his own.

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.

Two at a Biker Bar, One in the Lake

The debate to sell the Gallagher home roils the siblings into sides with Liam and Carl being on the fence about selling. Ian is against it along with Deb and Lip is pushing for the sale. The day starts with a fight in the kitchen (Deb goes hard on everyone against her) and everyone splits up (except for Liam, he’s hiding at the Ball’s) for the day. 

Deb and Lip call Carl and Liam to swing their vote to their side and neither one of them picks up because they know why they are calling and don’t want to deal with it.

Liam doesn’t want to sell because he doesn’t know where he’ll go if the house is sold. He’s always the odd man out of the family as no one seems to pay attention to him unless they need something. He goes to the polling place with V and she tries her best to talk up the young black man to make his voice heard. He sticks with not wanting to sell the house

Carl has a full day of work to do, going to an elementary school to talk to a class about stranger danger. His co-worker tells Carl that he went through a similar thing that he’s going through with Tish. With one conversation Carl is convinced that Tish is trying to trap him by getting pregnant. As the hours go by, he panics more and ends up confronting her. When you assume everything, it’s easy to be wrong about everything and Carl embarrasses himself.

In the light-hearted story of the episode, Ian and Mickey take the day to find gay friends. They don’t have any friends and realize it’s probably best to interact with people outside of the family. Plus, if the house is sold, they are going to need people to actually interact with. Ian is pretty defensive about their living situation. It’s not ideal, but he’s used to and comfortable living with everyone. Sure they fight but that’s normal for him. They have a funny and fun day out and when they come home, Ian wants to sell so he and Mickey can live independently. This puts Carl as the deciding vote.

Kevin is storing the bikes that Lip and Brad stole and he gets the dumb idea to take one of them for a ride. Can’t say I blame him, but man is it stupid. He gets pulled over by a motorcycle cop and she insists on swinging by his gym to talk to the owner of the bike to buy it. Kev is the second character to panic this episode. He comes up with stupid ideas to hide the bikes, it makes things worse which means Brad and Lip are left with nothing. Brad’s medical bills just got much bigger and now there is no way Lip can afford a down payment to move. This shoves him into applying for a job at a Amazon warehouse (he hasn’t heard anything back from the mechanic positions he’s applied for) and having to move into Tami’s parent’s house.

Tami isn’t putting up with Lip’s moonshots. Her parents aren’t as bad as being homeless, so when Lip’s efforts for the day fail (she doesn’t know about the Kevin disaster) she says, I gave you your chance and now we have to be practical. Lip walks out of the house angry. I’m on Tami’s side on this one. She’s being the adult, as hard as that is for him. Everything is spiraling out of his control which is something he’s never been able to handle.

Sandy is like an onion. She’s got a lot of layers. Many of those layers no one knows about. This week’s exposed layer: she had a son with Royal. And he’s like, 9 years old. Deb is stunned to say the least. And she’s mad that Sandy could abandon her kid. Deb has been doing her best with Frannie and can’t understand why Sandy can’t stick by to family. She even thinks Royal isn’t so bad. Sandy has a very different perspective on getting pregnant at 15 by a 30 year old man. Deb, continuing her “adult” assertive attitude proclaims that she’s going to talk to Royal about getting shared custody of Prince. Deb will co-parent with Sandy. This sends Sandy out the door even faster. In their argument, Sandy picks up on something. Deb’s controlling behavior is from her abandonment issues from her mother, Monica. Deb does not like hearing that and it shuts her down, forced to think about how she feels instead of projecting her pain on others.

With all of this going on, no one thinks twice about where Frank is. We first see him ranting in a bar and when the camera pans back, we see it’s not at The Alibi. Frank doesn’t know how he got there or what bar he’s in. Even worse, he ordered five beers and didn’t touch them. That’s really weird. His dementia is getting exponentially worse. He’s losing chunks of time that seem to be something like an hour long. He gets lost and struggles to find his way home…the Gallagher house he can’t even remember the address to. With night fallen, Frank is walking down the sidewalk in total despair. He actually cries out to his kids for help–he says Fiona first, which broke my heart–and suddenly Lip shouts for him to get out of the way. As Lip storms into the house with a sledgehammer, Frank is relieved to have finally found home.

Lip went right from his house to the Gallagher home and in a manic rage he announces renovations to sell the house are starting and starts hitting a wall with the sledgehammer to make “the open floor plan!” Deb is beside herself in anger as everyone else just stands there watching Lip tear down a wall. She runs out of the house crying and runs into two police officers looking to talk to Lip about a robbery in his former place of employment…

This was another really good episode. V is losing hope about her home (her mom is leaving the state) and everything is pointing to the Gallagher family splitting up. There are two major issues.

1) No one knows about Frank yet. With how bad he is in this episode, I don’t think it’s possible for them not to notice it anymore. How will they deal with it? There are a lot of complicated questions from here. I think this will make Deb dig her heels in more; they can’t split up with Frank in this condition. She’s going to want to take care of him.

2) Is Lip going to be able to dodge punishment for stealing the bikes? The evidence is largely gone, I don’t know if the cops will be able to connect the dots to him and Brad well enough to charge them. If he’s locked up, that changes a lot.

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good… Eh, Screw It 

This marks the halfway point in the season and two major events came to pass which will likely steer the end of the show.

Liam is in a personal crisis for accidentally shooting Terry Milkovich and goes around asking for advice. When he comes around to Carl, and admits to what he did, Carl doesn’t care. He says no one else will either because Terry is a POS. The police didn’t do anything to look into the “drive by” so he just needs to keep quiet and get rid of the gun (that Carl gave him). Terry isn’t in the hospital for long and is sent home in a wheel chair, unable to do anything by himself. It’s a big change for one of the biggest monsters in the neighborhood. Liam is still racked with guilt.

Deb’s story stays firmly about her relationship with Sandy. As Sandy is the only high functioning adult in the Milkovich family, she’s dealing with Terry’s situation so she doesn’t respond at all to Deb’s questions about what’s going on between them. Deb finds a new girl (maybe) but Sandy ends up talking to her at the end about when and why she got married and that seems to make some kind of progress in their relationship. With no answers from Sandy, Deb was quick to quit her, but her emotional attachment isn’t gone so she’s open to making amends.

Lip is in the financial crunch of his life. Fencing the motorcycles and the parts he stole with Brad turns out to be harder than he thought. The two decided to rob the garage at the drop of that hat so nothing was planned out now Lip is now paying for it. He has to give up a lot of profit to others to keep the theft a secret because he has no place to store the bikes. It’s not long before Tami finds out and she’s pissed. When he explains why he did it (I understand it) Tami asks what they are going to do about their future. He refuses to move into her parent’s place but their back is to the wall with very little money coming in and time is running out until they are kicked out of their home. He comes up with an idea. What if they go with the gentrification? Sell the Gallagher home, split the money with the family and they all…move on?

Carl is eager to spend his paychecks now and starts to move into the basement. While shopping, he meets a girl and they end up hooking up but it goes in a direction he didn’t want. She doesn’t want to use a condom, she rushes him into it and doesn’t move off him when he finishes. Deb says that’s rape and Carl isn’t sure. He ends up reporting it though.

Ian and Mickey work their rounds with their protection gig as Mickey works through his feelings of his dad being all but killed. They’ve warred for years (that’s putting it nicely) and Mickey has little more than spite towards Terry. Seeing him as an invalid gives him mixed feelings. He’s hated his dad for so long that the idea of pity, remorse, empathy is foreign to him. Ian feels bad for Terry right away and he tries to guide his husband through what he’s feeling as best as he can. Feelings and Mickey don’t go well together.

Kev keeps up his hustle keeping The Alibi going and V goes to school with their twins as class parent. She sits in with her kids and it’s an eye opening experience. At first there’s some sad humor (counting the amount of books in the classroom and coming up with a total of 4) and then the school shooter drill shocks V into getting something done. The principle basically dismisses her concerns so V has to work from the outside in.

And now Frank. He goes about his day first starting with watching his kids argue and enjoying it. Then he gives some Frank advice to Liam and goes to pick up some product at the laundromat. The owner says they are square, Frank didn’t put an order in, and after he questions his memory for all of 5 seconds he’s convinced she’s scamming him. He gets punched in the face and knocked out. He comes to at the hospital and the doctor who is stitching him up asks him questions. Seeing some memory lapses, she holds on to him for some more tests.

I think this is the best episode of the season so far. Everyone is involved and there is a lot of interaction with each other. For example, Deb is helping Ian and Mickey convert the ambulance they stole into an armored vehicle for the protection gig for a discount…and they have to listen to her rant about Sandy (and Mickey talking about his family is always funny). Ian and Mickey also help Lip with the merchandise he stole (for an additional cut, Mickey helped them steal it all). Kev also gets involved with hiding the merchandise (for a cut).

The environment is affecting everyone and their lives are now constantly crossing paths. Yeah, they want to help each other but that help isn’t always for free. Money is a huge issue for everyone (it always is in this community but it’s at it’s worst because of Covid) so they are all looking out for their own best interests. They are supporting each other.

Along those lines, Ian sticks close to Mickey as he navigates the new circumstance with Terry and Mickey ends up helping his father up the stairs (which Ian also helps with). Mickey’s action doesn’t happen out of the blue either, it’s a natural progression through a few conversations the two have. Mickey and Ian’s relationship has been a fan favorite since it started ages ago and seeing them go through something like this is a rewarding experience.

One of my favorite scenes is the one with Frank and Terry. Frank comes home for the day and sees Terry left on the front stoop of his house. The two go back decades, heads of the generations long Milkovich and Gallagher rivalry. Terry more or less just listens to Frank lament about their past but it’s a fantastic taste of the history of the show. It’s classic Shameless material as Terry wishes he’s dead, Frank considers helping him out and deciding that no, that’s the cowards way out. Plus, as ancient rivals, Frank doesn’t like Terry enough to “help” him end his life.

With Kev and V, we’ve been getting the business and political side of the world. With V’s canvassing work, we’ve seen how far the gentrification of the South Side has come. Kev has exploited the yuppies with his gym and that’s who they sell most of their cannabis to. Now with the school shooting drill, V is going to try and get her political contacts involved. V is doing everything she can to keep her and her people in their homes and make it safer for them as well. I like how her story arc is coming together, it wasn’t an idea to get her onto the PTA or something. This could have major consequences for South Side and the Ball’s future.

Lip bringing the idea of selling the family home to his siblings is massive. It shows how much is changing. It shows the other side of what V is doing. She’s holding on and he’s ready to let go. That conflict is now in the Gallagher home. When Lip drops the bomb on everyone, Frank is in the background and all he does is listen (much like he did when he watched his kids argue at the top of the episode). He doesn’t butt in like he usually does when something alarming happens that directly affects him. He watches to see if he needs to intervene. The room is dead quiet after Lip brings it up. It’s a pregnant pause and I held my breath through it.

Deb drops the hammer first saying it’s a crazy idea to sell the Gallagher home. Frank smiles and leaves to sit on the front stoop. As the kids argue, we find out what the hospital tests results were for Frank. When he opens the paper it isn’t clear if he’s looking at it for the first time or he forgot what it said. He freaks out when he reads that he has early stage alcoholic dementia. Bomb #2.

This puts the Gallagher’s in the Milkovich’s shoes. Minutes ago Frank felt he had outlasted Terry for the win. The patriarchs of each family are now in terrible health and will be sidelined until they die. Frank’s life time of drug abuse now has now given him something he can’t dodge. He almost died of kidney failure years ago but he Franked his way through that. He’s going to need extensive care and how will that be done?

They’ll never have the money to get outside help. Will the Gallagher family be physically broken up by selling the only home they’ve known? Would they (or some of them) stay together for Frank? Will Frank tell them to sway keeping the house and therefore someone to help him? How long will he be able to keep hiding his mental degradation? I think Kevin is the only one who has noticed anything with him so far.

When Lip told Tami of the idea of selling the family home, I saw that as a clear path to end the show. The Gallagher unit would be broken up as we the audience left them. The Gallagher siblings would be seeing each other less as their lives progressed to being more separate adults. We got to see the start of the drastic family dynamic change with Mickey and Terry. Now we’ll see how the Gallagher’s go through this with Frank. It’s complicated.