South Side Rules

A lot of loyalties and trust put to the test! Let’s run them down.

Fiona continued to back Sean in his time of need, even with some rather rude accusations (which were well warranted). She does have his back though. When Debbie decides to go go all the way with Derek, she does the right thing and tells Fiona about wanting to go on birth control. Fiona fights the urge to high horse it and does the right thing. She makes an appointment for her and they go together. Fiona has her back. Great to see this bond come through at an important time.

Frank tries to stick with Bianca when he gets kicked kicked out by her in the morning and then later, aside by her sister (which was well warranted). As we saw last week, Frank has really found a friend (he may try more than that, but there is at least some sort of actual legitimate bond there). V even gave Frank the same reaction I did at first, “What’s the scam?” He got all mad about it and left The Alibi in a huff. He stuck with it though, camping out in front of her apartment building with a bit of vodka. Frank’s stubborn as a mule attitude paid off in a good way for once. I really like this road for Frank, I want to see it play out.

Lip got a much needed wake up call from Helene. His scheming splashed back on him again and she threw his “South Side Rules” in his face. If he doesn’t cut the nonsense, he’ll never get out. Lip saw this for himself at the beginning of the season, but someone of real authority (and perversion…) reminded him of it matter-o-factly.

Mickey and Ian back in full force. Ian is so disconnected from the meds that he purposefully burns the hell out of his hand on the grill at work. Still apathetic and angry about everything, he got Mickey to go on a bit of a bender with him. It actually made them reconnect and have fun, something they both were missing. With things on the upswing, that brings us to The Shameless Moments!

First, Debbie got the brain dead idea that having a kid would be a good thing. To “choose” her own family. She lies to Derek about being on the pill (never see her take it and the doctor told her it takes 48 hours to start working). The mountain of a horrible idea this is. I wanted to jump through the screen and warn Derek. It drives me insane that she could think this was a good idea. I hope to God she doesn’t get pregnant.

AND THEN THE SNITCH. Colossal, Earth shattering, revenge by Sammi! Ian let it slip that the Army was looking for him (with a list about the length of his arm). He comes home with Mickey and then she apologizes to him right as he walks in the door. Ian and I both go, “What’s this about?” and two dudes in fatigues pop out! He gets dragged into a car as Fiona comes home, Sammi drops a nasty line on Fiona and even has the nerve to go back into the house! If next weeks episode doesn’t start with the biggest Gallagher fight in series history, I don’t know what direction up is anymore. There is no way Fiona and Mickey don’t drag her out by her hair into the street and pelt her with everything she owns in the house from the second floor windows. They wanted her to hit the bricks before? That’s nothing now. Holy animal. I can’t believe she went back into the house, I’m still going nuts about it.

Can’t wait for next week.

Burned

Avery had quite a bit of a rollercoaster ride this week. One thorn removed, another one in.

The big mover this week was Loretta McCready, who we haven’t seen in some time. She swung around her home grown flag right in Avery’s face at his own party and he was none too pleased about it. Some not so subtle threats (hello new character Boon) only made her look into local defense possibilities. Loretta is confident she can boot Avery and his “city mouse” girlfriend out of Harlan County. I’m rooting for her, it’s great to see an old character come back with new and reinvigorated purpose.

Avery’s merc problem was successfully rubbed out by Hale. If Seabass knew who Hale was, he never would have let her get her handbag. She’s got an interesting phone book at hand, that kind of clean up service can’t be easy or cheap to find.

Duffy, you little rat! When it fits, it fits.

With that out of the way, Avery still had Boyd to tangle with. Always the opportunistic, Raylan successfully made Boyd fast forward his “steal the money” plan by two days with a well placed lie. This move gave the action but not the result Raylan was looking for. The detonation under the safe went off but it didn’t work. For some reason, I thought it would, as did Raylan, so we were both surprised.

Zachariah finally strikes! I’ve had my eye on him since his first plan didn’t work out and I’ve been wonder how he’d do it.  Chaining Boyd right under the blast was a good one, but with Carl saving the day, Zach better have made a contingency plan for Boyd coming at him.

Gotta say I wanted to Ava to really go pop off on Boyd after he went after her thinking she was scheming with Zachariah. Greed always clouded his judgement, he should have known better. That greed has completely taken over now. Not deterred by being nearly blown apart and buried at the same time, Boyd is committed to stealing the money as Avery moves it from the safe. Raylan, of course, knows Boyd is going to go after it since his plan didn’t work (not knowing the specifics of Zachariah’s wrath).

Boyd is so mad it’s going to be a real test for him to pull himself together. This heist wouldn’t be easy without Raylan shadowing him. Should be some wild action next week! Cops and robbers here we come.

Carl’s First Sentencing

This week Ian’s story took a bit of a break. He wakes up in a rather alarming way and agrees to go back on meds. Mickey watches him (as does everyone else).

Kevin got an unusual temp job on campus! Didn’t see that bringing him back to V in the end like that (“Good talk man.”). He better not tell her what he was doing over the weekend.

Lip gets a bit of a break and he doesn’t see “the angle” on why he’s been helped out with tuition. Not surprising as he’s never really met a truly charitible person in his life before. In typical Lip fashion, he’s clear of one problem and right in the middle of another head scratcher. I don’t know how he does it, but it seems like every woman he gets close to is a landmine. The revelation that she’s married was certainly a surprise, but when the husband is okay with it, this is a whole new road to travel. College is certainly a learning experience. Now are they going to bring the hacker kid back into it, or will this triangle be his undoing? Or both?

I really didn’t think Carl was going to go full gangster. Shows what I know as it’s probably the right choice. If he ratted on his boss, there’s a good chance he wouldn’t make it through this season. As Lip said, “It was bound to happen sooner or later.” As terrible of a road he’s on, let’s face it, he’s been on it for awhile now. Carl was never going to be an outstanding citizen, he’s probably the most like Frank out of all of the kids. He would never get to 9th grade let alone graduate high school. He’s genuinly excited to go away! There’s no telling what he’s going to learn in juvie. Interest in seeing how they handle showing it.  A year is a long time, can’t really skip what he’s up to. Poor Chuckie! That bag of rocks barely knows what’s in front of his face if it isn’t a pancake. Sammi stole every scene she was in, it was pretty wild the lengths she went through. As messed up as it is, she’s probably the best parent on the show.

Fiona is stretched all over this episode. She halts her self interests in favor of her brothers which I liked to see. When Sean hits the dirt (due to things out of his control) she’s the only one there for him. Would she let go of Gus and be with Sean? She has a lot more in common with him.

Really liked Frank’s story this week. We’ve seen him do benders before and I thought this one would be just like his others. Frank is a hell of charmer when he really turns it on and Bianca was an easy mark for him. He got a lot out of those two days with her and so did she. I was pretty shocked to see him not take the money and run. Did he actually make a friend? They had a lot of great moments, it was fun to see Frank guide her into somewhat safe debauchery. I hope he sees her to the end, I think that’d be incredible to watch.

This episode was packed with amazing lines. Almost every conversation had at least one killer line. There’s so much great stuff I’m just going to do a list.

Art and Hale poking at each other about who the rat and killer was 14 years ago.

The Raylan and Zachariah fight.

• Tim’s great line just before that, ” Is no one named Justin around here…” (paraphrased this one a lot)

Every single line of Raylan and Boyd conversation on Boyd’s front lawn with Ty hiding there. Just brilliant stuff. So funny, so fast and smart with perfect delivery. Just the best watching these two trade, the history between them and the end so close.  The final cat and mouse chase, Raylan wants to catch him so bad.

• Raylan smiles from Boyd’s continuous, shut down, smart ass responses and says, “I’m going to miss this when it’s over.”

The fantastic talk between Raylan and Avery to weed out Ty.

• Avery: “Read the sign.” Raylan looks over and sees ‘We reserve the right to deny anyone service at any time’. Raylan holds up his badge to Avery, “And this means kiss my ass.” Raylan pours himself a drink and sits down in front of Avery.

Ty’s plan to try and get something out of his time in Harlan County. Good try, never could have seen a bounty going out on his head. Boyd giving him up was great.

Ava trying to talk Boyd down from going for the millions.

Raylan was simply on point. He’s tired of the run around and really just kicked things into gear. Bringing Ty down so he can just focus on Boyd and getting Avery to help which sets a rat trap for Boyd at the same time. The look they have when they see what’s in the vault was perfect. Then, Raylan looking at Boyd, getting the confirmation that he’s totally baited the hook. Brilliant move. Plus he figured out Ava is burned despite her best efforts to hide it (I thought she was convincing).

Seeing Arlo Givens felt a bit out of place for the series, but that was still a really good scene so I can’t really complain about it. The motivation and desire for Raylan to move on has never been stronger and that really solidified it. Burning Arlo’s stuff at the start then the decisions with the graves made for great bookends.

• “I wasn’t there, but I’m sure he put her in the cheapest one he could.” “And your father?” “I put him in the cheapest one I could.”

Phenomenal episode. Everything I love about Justified.

Uncle Carl

Great episode, this one had it all. A rough one for all the Gallagher’s, but a bit of light at the end of the tunnel.

I didn’t think Svetlana would have a positive impact on Kevin and V’s relationship, but she did manage to be the first one to get through to her. While she does go on a date with the old flame, that lasted all of 2 minutes before she called it off. Kevin on the other hand is going to be in so much trouble.

Fiona, still in the dog house with Gus and when the chips are down she puts a real effort to put things back together. Very few happy endings on Shameless, so it didn’t work (and for good reason).

Lip is another one struggling, but with the help of Kevin, made some extra scratch for tuition and managed to plead his case for more time to extend the due date.

Now my favorite part of this episode was all the story threads that came together in the last half. Starting with Ian who comes home in bad shape, his mind is still reeling and he insisted on denying the Monica diagnosis. He thankfully got the will to flush his meds instead of ODing, but that put Debbie into a frantic shame spiral. She had some the best scenes of the night, trying everything she could think of to get Ian more meds. The talk Fiona and Ian have in the backyard was so good. Ian made a hell of a case for himself (reoccurring theme this week: hypocrites have a hard time making a stand).

Carl’s adventures of drug dealing comes to ahead as Frank uses him in a hail-mary-don’t-do-this plan to try to get rid of Sammi. Carl uses Chuckie to smuggle heroin to Michigan and gets caught almost right away. Sammi rightfully flips out and turns the cops on Carl. Carl has done a lot over the years and dodged a few bullets, but this is some next level trouble he’s in.

The end of the episode contained some of my favorite stuff from this show. Frank going off to The Alibi to be Frank while the others deal with fallout. Everyone else is at the police precinct waiting for Carl. The Gallagher kids totally pulled together, I loved it. Ian turns a corner, Fiona relates to him and they all manage to laugh about how life keeps shoving them all down. They coral around Carl to support him in his biggest time of need. Finally, Mickey comes back from his pit to Ian (helped a lot by Debbie’s great talk).

With all the sharp writing and intense scenarios coming together, Uncle Carl has turned out to be one of my favorite episodes of the series.

Alive Day

Somehow I missed recapping episode 6 the week it aired, so let me fill the void real quick.

Raylan swings by Boyd and Ava’s home to inquire about the where abouts of Dewey, something Boyd isn’t too keen on answering. He tells Raylan to go bug Avery about it and Raylan leaves without getting anything that can help him. He does bug Boyd with his presence though, he doesn’t like Raylan around Ava alone. He gets Earl to babysit her.

We get to hear a bit about Ava’s father and her past from her Uncle Zachariah in a nice conversation on the front porch before he goes off to the mine with Boyd. Knowing full well that Zach is about as shady as they come (and the bad blood between him and Boyd) she talks to Boyd about if he can really trust him. Boyd is confident he can, but later he nearly falls to his death in the mine. Zach helps him up and convinces Boyd to take the rest of the day off after the near death experience. With Boyd gone, Pig notices that it looks like the planks Boyd fell through were cut, not rotted out. With Zach’s trap exposed, he shoves Pig down the hole head first and yells for Carl to come to help.

Onto the side story. Avery proposes to Hale and asks her if she was the snitch that got him and her late husband arrest years ago. She denies it. She later tells Duffy about it and he asks her the same question. She denies it. The plan to kill Avery still goes ahead (Hale is looking forward to it). Art, board with being sidelined at home pokes around the office to get info on who the informant was in that Hale case. It’s not known for sure, but Hale’s name sure does come up a lot.

The big run for this episode was the fallout from Choo Choo killing Calhoun. It turns out that Avery’s mercs, ” know killing, but they don’t know crime.” These idiots did the bare minimum at hiding the murder. Calhoun’s body was quickly discovered with knuckle marks on his temple and Raylan’s business card on his person. This points them directly to Avery and Choo Choo. Ty and Seabass have tried to hide this info from Avery, so when Raylan shows up at the pizza place, Avery rightfully plays dumb about the news. Ty has a lot of explaining to do when Raylan leaves.

Pissed that they have another body on their hands due to ineptitude, Avery wants Choo Choo finished. Ty pleads his case, but when he gets a phone call from Choo about not killing Chalhoun’s girl, Caprice, he realizes Avery is right. Choo Choo is all liability. My favorite new character this season has made too many mistakes and everyone pays for it. Raylan and Tim followed the mercs to Choo Choo in the woods who has Caprice tied to a tree. To his credit, Choo argues as best as he can to keep her alive. “She shouldn’t have to die for my mistake.” When Raylan and Tim pop into the conversation, things go south real quick. One merc is shot and killed, Choo Choo gets hit multiple times and flees and Ty gets one in the gut and manages to escape too. Few shows do shootouts as well as Justified.

With all these guys in the wind, Avery has some serious issues on his hands and he doesn’t even know about the Hale/Duffy/Boyd plan.

At the very end, Ellistin Limehouse gives Boyd a call. He drops a dime on Ava as a “good faith gesture.” The cat is out of the bag, Boyd is living with a snitch.

The Hunt

This week we got to see Raylan take a break from the case (a very rare occasion). He puts in some quality time in with Winona and his baby girl for the first time in months. Seeing Raylan carrying around a baby instead of a gun is something we never get to see. It brought out a different side to him…for once it looked like he’s actually thinking about his future. It’s something that Winona has been thinking about too and before he goes back to chasing Boyd and what’s left of Avery’s squad of hired guns, confesses that she misses him being in her life. She wants to give their life together another shot. It looked like Raylan thought this was a pretty good idea.

With Raylan’s domestic life on the upswing, Ty Walker is fighting to stay alive and keep from getting caught and after Avery convinced Seabass to leave him in wind, he really is on his own now. Ty makes some military moves, throwing a data trail away from him to keep the feds away and patches himself up in a bathroom as best as he can. But a busted car puts him back on the map and with two more bodies on his wrap sheet. It doesn’t look like Ty has much longer.

Zachariah, still down in the mine, did his best to keep Carl from calling Boyd about the “accident.” It didn’t exactly work, but I think Zach is still in good shape. He should be able to sell the “loose ground” story to Boyd without making him suspicious and come up with a new way to kill him. Time isn’t on his side though and Carl’s days are probably numbered too.

After receiving the tip of Ava’s movements, Boyd gets Ava alone in the woods. Really reminded me of The Sopranos as we (and Ava) were waiting for Boyd to pull the trigger from the moment he told her they were going to the family’s cabin. She’s on pins and needles the whole trip and he wakes her up before the sun comes up to go hunting. That doesn’t end well for many people (on TV and movies anyway).

Finally, it all comes up. Ava confesses and Boyd actually takes it pretty well. While Boyd has done a lot of terrible things, he always manages to keep his wits about him so he doesn’t do anything rash and stupid. Ava does have a good mark on him though, he completely left her in lurch when she was in prison. Their bond and loyalty together took a major hit. Acknowledging that, he had to know if she really betrayed him. Seeing Raylan alone in their house with her made him angrier than finding out she was a CI. When Ava tells him they didn’t sleep together, he;s relieved. He finds solace knowing that she is still his girl, he still has someone to turn to in this world. With that list getting smaller and smaller, that’s really important for Boyd.

Tell Me You Fucking Need Me

The needs of the family! Let’s run the gauntlet with our favorite broken people.

So happy Fiona has made the first good relationship decision in (possibly) her life. Even if she didn’t smell Jimmy’s (Jake!) last lie, she finally put her foot down and chose to formally end her relationship with him. She got all the conformation she could ever need just moments later from Angela. What was once a ghostly noose hanging above her head is now a rotten piece of rope laying in a gutter. Hopefully she can patch things up with Gus.

Fiona’s going to need all the support she an get as Ian is…well, it’s early. More sedated than anything else, it’s going to be a small miracle for him to be level headed in just 72 hours. If he can get some good treatment and come back to a safe home, he may have a chance. Mickey is rightfully scared shitless. He doesn’t know who he just went to visit and it’s sent him down a rough path. Svetlana isn’t helping things….

Which brings us up into V and Kevin’s business. Officially separated, V is still being an ass and her mother tried to talk some sense into her. Hard to tell what could flip her back to the right side. Svetlana crashing the scene and trolling old flames on Facebook certainly isn’t going to help them.

Debbie finally kicks one through the goal posts! A real boyfriend, it’s great to see her happy, it’s been a long time.

Carl’s third time in sixth grade! Kid knows how to make the best of a situation at least. His idea to get Chuckie as his gofer is brilliant. Shades of his dad right there.

Speaking of Frank, he manages to make Sammi completely crack. This has been a long time coming and was a riot to watch. We’ve seen some meltdowns on the show before, but her pulling a gun on him is some epic Gallagher insanity. It worked though. Can’t wait to see how their new dynamic works next week.

Last but not least, Lip. Tuition trouble due to some bumbling family ignorance forces him to keep a closer eye on his own responsibilities. Another sobering step to him breaking away. Another step that no one else in his family has noticed. I’m wondering what’s in store for him at the end of this season. I could see him getting a place with Amanda at the very least.