Hiraeth

Shameless is back three months early! I have no idea why but I’ll take it. We rejoin the Gallaghers a month after the season six finale. What are my favorite degenerates up to?

The title is a Welsh term for being homesick. That would be Frank as he wakes up from a coma in the hospital. After lamenting that no one came looking for him (he forgot he was tossed into the river) he wheels himself to The Alibi where the “transgressions” against him come flooding back. Insulted he heads home only to get dragged out of the house when Fiona finds him there. Frank is beyond insulted that his family has exiled him for simply “telling the truth.” Always the defiant one, he manages to hole up in Fiona’s room.

Liam! He’s grown up since last season but remains mute.

Lip leaves rehab and is now on the road to getting some sort of life back on track. He was expelled from school and has no intention of going enrolling somewhere else. He rolls the dice a bit to score an internship from Prof. Youens contacts. After getting into so much trouble with alcohol, he sets up all new rules to keep safe but still enjoy a drink. Or two. He’s Frank’s son so we can all see where this is going (as seen on the faces of V, Kevin, and Svet when he outlines it all). For money, he visits Fiona at the diner and she puts him to work immediately as a dish washer.

With Sean gone, Fiona has taken over manager duties at the diner. Working all the time with all the stress and little compensation, she manages to get a dollar raise an hour from the owner (or the rep for the owners I think. Pretty sure his name is Chad). She puts forth that she’s off of dating, she’s just going to focus on herself for once. With the relationship with Sean scattered on the rocks, you can’t blame her. She’s very busy but it looks like she’s in a good place right now. She continues to be oblivious of the trials and tribulations of everyone though (not like the Gallagher’s are great about talking to each other, so it’s to be expected).

Carl is going hot and heavy with Dominique but when she reveals she’s not a fan of his foreskin, he goes into investigative mode. I guess it’s good that the only thing for him to be concerned about now is how is dick looks, he’s doing okay on the Gallagher scale. He makes a rather rash decision with his rainy day fund. “I don’t feel a thing!” “You you will.” We’ll see if his oral experiences improve for him.

Deb is in full panic with Francine. Yup, being a single teen mom sucks! She’s exhausted and is struggling every single minute of the day. After almost giving up, she goes to the park to think and see other mom’s. After getting some shade from a well off mother, she notices how nice the stroller is this mean mom has left unattended….ladies and gentlemen Deb is now a kleptomaniac. She’s flipping the baby gear for series cash on craigslist and I give her a week before she’s nabbed for it. You can’t sell the stuff you steal in the exact same neighbourhood you stole it from.

Ian is going strong as an EMT and is still with Caleb. Things are great! Wait, nope. Suspion sets in when Caleb tells him he’s been meeting an old friend. It’s a woman though, so he has nothing to worry about. Ian doesn’t buy it and enlists Lip to help him follow Caleb. That’s where they scope him making out with this woman in public. Drama ahoy!

Finally the lovely menage a trois of V, Kevin and Svetlana. These three have things figured out. Their working as unit for The Alibi, the kids and each other! Everything is scheduled out and going well. With Svetlana being awesome with math, she’s been put in charge of the bar’s books. She fixes some stuff V can’t figure out and then V asks her to look at their personal finances. Svet comes to the quick conclusion that they are doing nothing for their future. Little income, no savings, no future plans. It’s time they think ahead.

Carl’s story is the real comic relief right now along with Frank being Frank. Deb has come up with her own scheme and her lack of experience at being shady is going to shut her down quick. I like seeing the start of Fiona putting herself first, but knowing her she’s going to start paying attention to Chad simply for some relief from her exhausting family. A girl needs an escape, which judging from the previews may be more literal than figurative.

The gang is back and they brought a few gallons of blood with them. We join our main trio enjoying the hiatus from hell that Ruby granted them at the end of last season. That comes to a screeching halt when the Evil crashes their party (with gruesome results).

Turns out Ruby isn’t as powerful as she thought. She’s lost control over her demon children and they’re trying to take the Necronomicon from her. That can’t happen so she’s got to turn to Ash for help. The attack in paradise ends their agreement and Ash is none too pleased to be roped back in. But when the survival of mankind comes knocking again, he doesn’t have a choice. Being with Ash, Kelly and Pablo don’t have a choice either.

The premiere is all Evil Dead so it’s great. More Ash, more mayhem, it’s giving me what I want. It’s a tough mold to screw up and this adventure is looking promising so I’m all in again.

Sometimes I feel like I watch Fear more out of some strange sense of obligation than actual enjoyment. The show often just plods along. Being a spin-off of a zombie show, it checks the same zombie bullet points of the genre, just with a different set of characters (and location).

There seems to be more boring characters (less interesting anyway) than good ones and it’s like I’m just waiting for someone to deservedly get eaten. The writers do tend to eventually get to point and it’s enjoyable and that’s where the entertainment comes in.  I just don’t have that connection to any of the characters like I do with the main series. I wouldn’t be bothered if the whole cast got wiped out. I completely forgot about Ofelia. I don’t remember when she left the main group. So seeing her hoof it on her own sometimes gets nothing more than an “alright” out of me.

The last two episodes of this season were far and away the best. Chris’ story with his dad completed and turned out well. Significant character changes and it led to quite a bit of carnage and threw everything into the air again.

The laziness creeps up in this show too much. Those moments where they need something to happen (namely action) just for something to happen and it’s done all wrong. In this season, the random bad guys who show up to shoot a small horde on a wide empty road. Despite having long range guns and plenty of room to back up (or just get out of the way) they all die. Literally just stood there for the walkers to get to them. Brain dead stuff.

I keep telling myself to dump the show because I don’t think I’m going to miss anything. I never go through with it. Considering I liked the finale, I’m in for next years premiere. We’ll see how it goes.

If you notice the station logo, yes, FX has brought us more greatness.

Atlanta– The star and initial draw of the show is Donald Glover. The greatness extends much farther than him, though. Earnest is a college drop out doing his best to provide for himself and his daughter (the mother has little faith in him). When he finds out his cousin Alfred (who he rarely talks to) has made a name for himself in the rap game, Earn reaches out to him to be his manager. Atlanta is a unique show, I’m not sure if there is another show like it on. It’s a slow burn that takes its time in every scene. There’s no rush to get to the end. With Glover as the creator and star of the show, you’d think Earn would be the main focal point. He’s not and that gives Alfred and his friend Darius their own time to be full characters that Earn works his way into. The main three guys are fantastic actors. Keith Stanfield as Darius often steals scenes. Often getting the best lines, Darius is a clear presence in every scene he’s in despite being a dope. He can hold his own though so he’s not a waste of time and he makes things happen. I’m often surprised by each episode. I feel like I’m a silent observer to three real people, waiting to see if they fail or succeed with each step they take.

Better Things– The easiest way to describe this is the other side of Louie. Switch coasts, and instead of a single dad who’s a stand-up comedian, it’s a single mom who’s an actor. Co-created by Louie CK with star Pamela Aldon (she had a great run in Louie), Pam is getting her chance to talk about her life as Sam. Aldon has been in the game for a long time, she’s done a ton of voice work (look at her resume and you’ll definitely see she’s been in something you’ve watched), I know her best from Californication. I like her a lot so seeing her get her own show was all I needed. It’s shot much like Louie so it feels similar that way too. But, the perspective is different and her world is lived in by different characters (look out for her mother). That makes me want to tune in every week, I’m all in on seeing Sam hustle from gig to gig while maintaining some grasp of sanity.

Sam Esmail brings her in for a landing! After what I consider a rocky penultimate episode last week, the season finale was a lot of fun and the end is just ripe to pick for next year. Let’s dive in, quite a bit went down.

As we saw, it has been confirmed. Cisco was killed in the diner. Dom knows Darlene is her only chance at closing this case. After some back in forth, Dom decides to go all in and show Darlene her hand. By being more forward with Darlene (whom Dom relates to), she figures she can break through. We all get some new info here. First, Romero wasn’t killed by The Dark Army. It was a dumb stray bullet from his neighbor. The initial panic was over nothing. Dom has quite a bit on Darlene, but it’s mostly circumstantial. It is some concerning stuff, though. Then we get to see the spider web Dom has been working on. At the center: Elliot and Tyrell. Darlene gets a shock from that one.

We find out who’s been calling and tormenting Joanne, who’s at that address Elliot found in episode 10. It’s Scott, the husband of the wife that Tyrell killed last year. He’s been stirring the pot for some semblance of revenge and Joanne goads him into attacking her. Without a husband, but now with a new mission, she takes a whooping to finish off Scott. The last we see, Joanne is convincing her boyfriend to retaliate. She is a delicious level of twisted.

Tyrell (is it?) brings Elliot to the hideout The Dark Army set up. It has all the gear they need to go ahead with Stage 2. At this point, Elliot still doesn’t know what that is. He looks at what’s on their computer for some more puzzle pieces when Tyrell points out a building that’s just down the block. E Corp is bringing all their physical records to this location to rebuild the database. They don’t have to attack a bunch of remote locations to shutter E Corp for good. It’s just one and it’s next door. It all rushes to Elliot. Mr. Robot has been in control of this plan from the start with The Dark Army and working with Tyrell. He’s kept Elliot on a need to know basis to keep him from “overreacting.” Mr. Robot is a complete split personality from Elliot that can and does work autonomously. fsociety was never Elliot’s. With brownouts rolling through the city, the building is stuffed with UPSs to keep the database from shutting down while it’s rebuilt. With the backdoor and malware that Elliot wrote, they have full access inside the building and the means to level it.

Elliot panics and says no, this isn’t going to happen. He’s been completely blindsided and betrayed by his other half. No matter what he’s done he can’t get an advantage. He got himself lockup, Mr. Robot got them out. He tried ODing to get rid of him and that didn’t work.There was no truce, just a shell game to keep him in the dark while Mr. Robot worked. Elliot puts his foot down and sits down to work on removing the backdoor and delete the malware. Convinced that Tyrell is another construct of his mind that Mr. Robot uses to control him, he doesn’t back down when Tyrell pulls a gun on him. He rolls the dice that he’s right, Tyrell is really gone. Much to his surprise (and Joanne next season I assume), Tyrell shoots him in the stomach. On the ground, bleeding and slowly losing conscience, Tyrell says it’s weird that Elliot told him to stop anyone, even himself, who may try to stop them at all costs but now he understands. Mr. Robot’s last words of the season are that this plan had to go all the way. Once started, that was the commitment to change the world.

Whiterose’s talk with Angela worked. She’s got another pawn at her disposal. In Angela’s only scene in the finale, Tyrell calls her after he shot Elliot. She’s been filled in with what’s going on and calmly tells Tyrell what to do. She’s on her way to be by Elliot’s side when he wakes up.

And the stinger of the season: Trenton and Mobley are together somewhere in California. They work at a Fry’s Electronics store and while on break, Trenton is trying to convince Mobley to take a look at something she found. She thinks they can undo what they’ve done. And then Leon walks up to them and asks what time it is…

The blocks of the show are all in interesting spaces. The Dark Army found Trenton and Mobley, what are they facing now? Elliot isn’t dead as alluded to by Angela’s dialog, so our unreliable narrator isn’t done. What’s Darlene going to do? She’s completely on her own and faced with some rather startling revelations by Dom (I didn’t see Whiterose on that board). She’s in a really weird position. Are we going to see brother’s evil side vs sister next season? When is Joanne going to find out about Tyrell and is she going to continue to burn everything alive around her (Scott who is already broken is screwed and her boyfriend is about to step into a bear trap set and sharpened by her). The clock is ticking on E Corp. Tyrell said that all of the material will be moved into that new building in about a month and then it’s duck and cover time.

Quality season, the show is just as interesting to watch as it ever was. Everything came together really well and left me on a high note. I expect season 3 to be another animal entirely now that the whole plan is out in the open. We gotta wait a year for more, but in Esmail we trust.

Didn’t like this episode much. It was super weird and obtuse, even by Mr. Robot standards.

Everything that was left open ended last week, remained so, which I don’t like. It felt like not much happened in the end.

• We have a scene with Dom in the hospital. She wants to hit the ground running but she’s told to take some time to get some rest. She’s all about cracking skulls for going through another assassination and her boss says we’ve gotta get actual proof of what’s been going on. Nothing about Angela and Cisco.
• Angela meets Whiterose in a super weird scene. Whiterose wants to meet her because she doesn’t know why Price has kept her around. After telling Angela she should have been killed 3 months ago it looks like she’s going to get her request: Angela backing off from anything hack related and ditching the investigation on the Washington Township accident.
• Role reversal! Elliot goes in to find Mr. Robot and becomes the silent observer. Together (depending on how you look at it) they decipher a cipher that decodes a phone number. A meeting place is stated and Elliot meets…Tyrell! Or does he?
• Joanne talks with her right hand man about the address Elliot found for them last week. That’s it, it goes nowhere.

The whole episode felt like standing at the edge of a cliff waiting for that rush to come and never does. There’s some rather complex puzzle solving to figure out the cipher, Elliot can’t trust anything he sees so we have no damn clue either and we’re just as bewildered as Angela meeting Whiterose. My two highlights: Dom talking to her Alexa was some crushing stuff. BD Wong is a brilliant actor. Unrecognizable as Whiterose and the cadence he does for her speeches is the perfect topper to such a mysterious character.

OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH look out!

This one was another slow burn that cranked up the heat as it went.

With Joanne appearing at the end of the last episode, she picks up Elliot to ask for his help. Find Tyrell. She says he’s been calling her and no one has been able to trace his number. Elliot, being told that he (Mr. Robot) shot Tyrell, doesn’t believe Tyrell called her because he’s dead. She manages to convince him to take the gig so he and Joanne’s right hand man go to Microcenter to pick up some needed hardware. At the store, the phone Joanne gave him rings and Mr. Robot disappears. Elliot is back to not trusting Mr. Robot. With a clever plan of using the police, Elliot finds an address for the last known location of the number that called the phone. Right Hand Man knows the address and seems very concerned about it. He takes off leaving Elliot and us wondering what the significance of that address is. Is that really Tyrell?

Angela is a damn mess. I called this some time ago. Don has her completely spooked and she tells Elliot she’s going to confess (but try to leave the others out if it). She’s so in over her head she doesn’t know which way is up anymore. She’s going to have to put on a cape and learn to fly if she’s going to pull herself out of this nose dive. I don’t know if she has it in her to do it.

Someone jumped one of the fsociety dudes that did the Washington D.C. stunt. They basically turned him into  hamburger meat. Cisco, seeing the guy dumped on the couch of the burned fsociety HQ when he grabbed the forgotten tape for Audrey, brings him to his apartment. Audrey wants nothing to do with him and Cisco tells her to cut the nonsense and they bring him to the ER. They wait around to hear if the guy is even going to make it and when they bring him upstairs for more tests, Cisco and Angela bounce to get something to eat.

Meanwhile, the burned fsociety HQ has been found by the FBI. The place has been rushed into processing, much to Dom’s dismay. She gets a good lead though. A witness sketch comes up with a very close resemblance to Cisco. This is the second witness to make such a recall on a probable fsociety member so Dom thinks she’s got some serious traction to close in on them on the sly. Her boss says there is no time for that and goes public with a BOLO on him. Dom fears that The Dark Army is now going to put a bullseye on him. The nurse in the ER calls the sighting in and Dom deduces that they must still be in the area.

Cue amazing ending.

The two highlights for me. Elliot breaking the fourth wall asking us to see if we can find why Mr. Robot took off. The camera, up near the ceiling, pans the room like a moment out of Resident Evil. That unnerving sense of our guide through this world losing it all. Second, another one shot take for the end. Following Dom down the street to the diner where she sees Angela and Cisco eating. She runs in and the camera plants itself for the remaining minute of the episode. No music, just audio from the street. Just before that Angela actually laughs with Cisco as they get their food. That’s going to be a brutal scene coming back next week.

Two episodes remaining.

Compared to last week, episode 9 was a slow burn. A lot was covered and the set up at the end was a major stinger.

We got a quick review of Elliot’s time in prison and how he got released early. Darlene picks him up and off we go (we also find out it’s been 3-4 weeks since the events of the last week).

Darlene is still mad at Cisco for talking to The Dark Army behind her back. He doesn’t know what Stage 2 is and they need to find out what it is. Elliot gets some malware on Cisco’s DA contact’s cellphone so they can eavesdrop on him. Elliot then meets him in person and in a few hours the guy talks to someone else about it (Darlene overhears it). The guy says Stage 2 was Elliot’s plan so why is he asking about it?

This whole episode was a damning one for Elliot. We’ve gone into this season knowing he’s an unreliable narrator but things were revealed to us that will be news to him because he forgot. Just like him forgetting who Mr. Robot original was (and Darlene) he has major black out periods of his memory. He’s having alarming disassociative moments right in front of us. He hears Mr. Robot talking to Cisco and Darlene only to snap back to reality to realize he’s been talking to them. He hallucinates an entire thing while on the subway with Cisco. He sits opposite Mr. Robot and Darlene having a discussion and pops back into his body at the end. When Elliot “checks out” Mr. Robot steps in to keep conversations going to keep others from freaking out. Much like taking over to protect Elliot from physical pain, he’s taking over to keep Elliot out and about and on task. Mr. Robot feels that something isn’t right early on and that’s worrisome. Elliot’s grip on reality is getting much worse.

Whiterose is in a power struggle with Mr. Price. Their deal isn’t going according to plan and Whiterose throws some thinly veiled threats at him (Whiterose literally put the last E Corp CEO into the ground). Price pushes back hard with his own threats and their conversation ends with a pivot in the plan for China to hook up E Corp with bail out money to survive (the Washington Township plant is very important for some reason). Interestingly, it seems like they talked about Angela too…

I think Angela is being mindboggling stupid. She’s so in over her head it’s ridiculous. Getting blocked with getting the risk assessment/lawsuit info on the Washington Township disaster, she busts out the Rubber Ducky that Mosley gave to her a few weeks ago. She sneaks into her boss’s  office, pops the USB drive in and in just a few seconds gets a bunch of passwords. Back at her desk, she looks for her boss’s log-in info and signs in as him. She finds a folder that’s conveniently labeled and copies it. She’s got the info she wanted to go full whistleblower. Problems: Angela is not a hacker and did nothing to cover her tracks. Her digital finger prints are all over the place. It’s all logged that someone logged in as her boss on her terminal and what she took. Her only hope is that no one checks. Then, clearly thinking that being a whistleblower ain’t no thing, she stumbles all over the place when asked where she got the incriminating data. She broke all kinds of laws to get it and didn’t do the legwork to protect herself or actually get the damning evidence out. She hightails it back home where Dom comes by for a visit. Cue another Angela staring into headlights reaction under pressure. She is not cut out for any of this.

So that leaves us with Dom still circling Angela. Angela doubling down on being a dummy. Mosley and Trenton are AWOL. No idea if they are okay (probably not). What the hell did the Chinese do to the femtocell fsociety used to hack the FBI? Darlene forgot a damning VHS tape at the burned fsociety HQ so Cisco runs over to look for it. He finds it and there is something else there waiting for him. Cisco made a really weird face when he saw it and I have no idea what it is. Cut to Elliot walking the streets (going home from Cisco’s I believe) when he sees Tyrell’s SUV parked out front. Joanne rolls down the back window to greet Elliot. THE SUSPENSE! Less than a month to go in season 2!

The hits keep coming. This week an entire episode without Elliot. Surprising, daring and arguably the best of the season so far.

Man, did this episode get dark. A lot of great beats for characters and some downright shocking moments.

Mobley and Trenton finally get some significant screen time. The first scene is them meeting for the first time, something I’ve been curious about for awhile now. Mobley’s been worried about being followed and it comes to a head this week. By successfully owning the FBI, fsociety got access to a teleconference that exposes the government surveillance program “Bernstein.” That’s the program that Romaro heard about before he got killed. In the recording, it’s mentioned that they are tailing 16 people. one of them being dead. Mobley thinks they are talking about Romero. fsociety leaks the tape and now that puts the squeeze on the FBI.

They’re all at fsociety HQ when the owner,  Susan Jacobs, comes home. No one was keeping track of her. Nuts, just nuts. This sets off a crazy series of events. She’s seen them all and heard them talking. They tie her up in the room with the pool (!).

Before continuing with that, let’s talk about Angela. She’s at a 4th of July party where she gets called out by one of her dad’s old friends. She yells back at him in anger and does a rather stirring rendition of Everybody Wants To Rule The World. Then she picks up an older man at the bar. We then see that the guy she took home a few episodes ago works for the FBI. Dom assigned this guy to get info out of here (he didn’t get anything out of her) and he says he’s done.

Back to fsociety, things get intense. Susan tries to make a break for it and bonks her head pretty good. With limited options, the team goes ahead with hacking her life to get dirt on her to blackmail her silence. After some work, they find some. Darlene goes down to lay it out to Susan, one of the lawyers that got E Corp off the hook for poisoning her hometown years ago. And then…Darlene kills Susan.

That starts a tailspin. Mobley wants out and Cisco tells him that’s not a good idea for him and Mobley throws some Dark Army shade at him. Mobley and Trenton go home and my favorite directed scene of the episode comes to pass. Mobley and Trenton are both beyond paranoid and the music selection along with the play of darkness and light exemplifies their fear. Mobley pays a pizza delivery guy to go check his apartment. Trenton hears something outside and sees a car creep by and then speed away. Mobley ends up getting picked up by the feds but the surprise there is…they have nothing on him. Dom tracked him down from the End of the World party poster she found at Romero’s but has no idea he’s directly involved with fsociety. She asks him about Tyrell and he asks for a lawyer. Once released, Mobley sends a message to Trenton to meet up but he doesn’t show up. I like Mobley and have no idea (well, I do, but they’re all bad) where he is.

Darlene and Cisco are left to handle Susan back at HQ and Darlene thinks the only choice they have is to get rid of the body. They do and they take the subway to Cisco’s place. The stuff Darlene says is amazing about Susan and her past are amazing. Brilliant writing, I love it. So she spends the night with Cisco and the morning comes. He’s in the shower and Darlene looks at his laptop that he left open. Great Scott, now we know for sure Cisco is under The Dark Army’s thumb. He told them he has Darlene with him. They reply with “Stage 2” is underway. Darlene goes off the deep end in the ending of all episodes.

Amazing episode. A whole new layer of trouble. The main character of the show was absent and it wasn’t any worse off. Darlene has reached an entirely new level and all hell has broken loose. The intensity, the paranoia. It’s just dripping off of every frame now. Come one episode 9!