sazzat

I get tired of Fiona's endless refrain about how no one recognizes how hard she works when she seems to readily forget who has helped her along the way and how. That said, Ian's stubbornness about the shelter seems like a throwback to his reaction in season 2 when Lip tried to help him get into West Point: weird indignation and digging in his heels beyond what actually makes sense. I don't even see them setting it up to blame his bipolar (which would be lazy but at least would give Ian a motivation). I think they're just casting around to give him something to do. Hint, writers: you had Ian improbably land a truly interesting job. Use it. Or use his backstory: if you're having him invest in the teens from the shelter, maybe this is a good way to show how he reflects on his own past as he gets older. If one of those teenagers told Ian about being in a sexual relationship with a much older adult, would Ian still see his own teenage relationships with older men as healthy? Liking Lip's path so far this season, and incredibly enough, liked Frank's arc this episode. I was loathing the "hot school moms want to get it on with the old alcoholic" last episode, so this is a turn - I appreciate that Frank learns that taking pride in your work is not always enough, and that life can be capricious even when you do things the right way. Debbie, ugh. The actress doesn't have the chops to make anything of that material except a whinefest. The speech about her taking responsibility to try to avoid another mistake but also really loving Franny came across as really unnatural.

I find the chemistry between Ian and Trevor so weak that I just don't buy Ian being so hung up on the guy that he's still hanging around trying to win him back. At this point he's spent as much time pining as they actually did hooking up. I'd be more convinced by a story where helping people at the shelter really became a sincere interest.

Debbie is married to Neil. She lied to the stylist guy. I, too, was not a fan of the "chubs" references. It's not even the first or second time; multiple times Shameless has shown fat as equaling desperate for the attention of a thin person. Surprising that Trevor would talk about fat men that way - this is supposed to be a very aware character. I like Trevor's presence and do think he's cute but don't see the romantic chemistry. Let Ian have a friend for once. Hey, let him learn to navigate a friendship with an ex who is also gay and out. Fiona, too, needs friends, so I hope that's where they're going with the tenant. Please, Shameless, don't do the obvious temporary lesbian storyline. Thinking about Svetlana owning the bar just pisses me off because that storyline was so endlessly stupid, so I would appreciate them junking all references ASAP. Would Debbie be that callous about Frannie, even pawning her off on the woman who kidnapped her last season? At the end of last season we were supposed to see a maturing Debbie who took more responsibility for securing her future and had a plan. If this season's Debbie is tired of motherhood I'd like a more complex look at her feelings. Otherwise it just seems like she gets rebooted every three months. Consistency and continuity in the show bug the shit out of me as usual, and the things like the gentrification of the neighborhood except not so much/more unneeded mentions of characters' ages/Trevor is progressive but not about body size/joining a support group without even a diagnosis are just arrgh. And the tattoo! There are no circumstances, zero, none, where a sober person enters a tattoo parlor and says "give me a tattoo of some woman on my shoulder blade but I will give no further detail about what I expect so that you will make her nude with giant tits before I can see what you've done." Someone said it would be funny to tattoo tits on the gay kid, and this is the best they came up with? Was he supposed to be drunk and I missed it?

I just don't know where they can take it. I don't always like how they moved characters to new places, but they've done it; everyone is in a more or less settled position for the time being, so it will be annoying, not to mention repetitive, if they have everyone fuck it up just to give them something to do. I appreciate the comparison to FNL, a show I loved but which also did a lot of convenient forgetting of events/playing with the timeline. They had the excuse of the strike, but even so, there was a whole killing the rapist, Tyra/Landry romance, Santiago, etc. that they never built on (or in Santiago's case, even mentioned again). Why is it that I can forgive FNL but have a harder time forgiving Shameless? Maybe just the sheer volume of rebooting/we will not speak of it again on Shameless, or the sense that characters are deeply affected by their upbringing but are somehow not affected by the experiences we see them undergo on the show itself?

It really does seem like a group fanfic challenge, yeah?

I'm glad for her, but I wish it wasn't so late in the game! If she was contracted for seven seasons I guess the renegotiation had to be at this point; I just think Shameless has been on a quality downslide and can't imagine it lasting much longer. It's hard for me to imagine what kind of meaningful direction they can go in without more repetition of the same up-down cycle, and just speaking practically, a ratings/interest rebound is unlikely a few years off their critical high point.

I wish Fiona hadn't gotten the huge offer - I still don't think she would have been stupid enough to buy without figuring out what, exactly, she was buying, but it would be more interesting to see her work as a small business owner than to get lucky and flip a property. It brushed over a lot of things (the help she got from the Alibi folks, the money she still owes to Patsy's, her treatment of Etta, who she took advantage of to the tune of not just the 5k she mentioned paying back, but also 20k that Etta could have gotten from the developers herself - if the justification for the lower offer was that Fiona was going to let her stay in her apartment, that's gone) that it could have built on further.

There were ways that they set up the distance between the two of them: Ian offers to bottom, but Mickey's not into that. Ian asks for more upscale food from the mini mart. Ian is more concerned than Mickey about the plan. Mickey can't imagine that Ian means legally withdrawing money at a bank (the last one was such the writerly machination - Ian, needing to withdraw money while on the run with escaped convict Mickey, is going to let Mickey think they're robbing a bank and risk Mickey drawing attention to them - and they're now together on camera near the border so the police can press aiding and abetting charges? LEAVE MICKEY IN THE CAR. But noooo, we need to have this "misunderstanding" in the bank in front of the teller). Ian admits he thought about Mickey a lot, but doesn't respond in kind when Mickey says he missed him. My problem was that these were all character developments for Ian that have either come about in circuitous ways, or have been told to us rather than shown, or both. They really biffed Ian's role over the last few seasons, alas. As per usual, it's an issue with development and continuity from one episode to the next. I liked Lip and the sponsor, too - it was a little hokey, but I liked his straightforwardness and willingness to admit he didn't have any magical answers, and the disdain for someone whose worst trial was the pressure of success. Plus I appreciated the detail of ordering four desserts because addicts gotta be addicted to something. I'm interested in seeing a slow and potentially bumpy road back for Lip, as long as it is a road back.

They had a lot of sex for Ian to not have an interest in sticking around. Also, he really, really obviously aided an escaped convict and committed multiple crimes in addition to that in a way that was very stupid for someone planning on going back to Chicago the whole time. But I definitely agree with the opaque part, and with this show, who knows? Next week he goes home, gets asked where he was, says "I just had something to take care of" while the camera lingers on his face, and that's all she wrote. I did not buy that the Ian who was impulsive enough to get in the car in the first place was reversing course in a matter of days. We just did not see enough exposition that Ian might have questions about his current life, or enough reflection on his past with Mickey, to understand the complications of why he would be so torn. I just don't think you can pack it all into scenes over two episodes. We should have seen that struggle between the desire for excitement and the desire for normalcy over time, but they don't seem to like giving Ian a lot to consider outside of who he's fucking. These two episodes were fan service from a show that doesn't understand what motivates its fans. The contingent who wanted Mickey + Ian 4EVA is wailing; the contingent who felt Mickey was done wrong is wailing; people who enjoyed the roles but were flummoxed by the way the show dealt with the story are unsatisfied; but I think Shameless thinks it's done something remarkable with this episode. They're promoting their Gallavich video and sent Noel Fisher to do interviews coinciding with the episode's release, and you know they're submitting this one for awards consideration between Etta, Monica, and Mickey's goodbyes. Write a good show, Shameless showrunners, instead of expending your effort trying to curry awards and get social media notice via stunt plotlines and guest appearances.

Shameless: a show I could enjoy so much more if I had selective amnesia strike me before every single episode.

The Ian/Mickey relationship never exactly had long term success written all over it. Even when they started, Ian was an ambitious kid with a desire to get out of the South Side via his ROTC involvement and Mickey wasn't going anywhere - how would that have worked out if Ian had gone on to college or been able to enlist normally? Ian has been portrayed as an earnest character who likes sex and craves love but doesn't know what to do when he gets it. When he went from pursuer to pursued in that relationship, he never seemed to know how he felt about having the upper hand. Between the wreck of Ian's future plans, his refusal to follow treatment for bipolar, and the uncomfortable switch to being the person that someone else took care of, and then Mickey slowly losing his income sources and having no real possible direction besides criminality, this show would have had a lot of development to handle to offer a happy ending. Fanfic writers have that kind of time, but this show just doesn't. It's hard to imagine how they would overcome those obstacles within the confines of Shameless. So I wasn't expecting Ian and Mickey 4-EVA from a teenage first love. But that doesn't mean I appreciate the writers throwing the nuances of their past out the window. I seriously don't get the point of this return - is the temporary ratings bump worth it? Nobody needed this kind of closure. The JimmySteve return was similar - what kind of closure was needed? He had already broken up with Fiona when the drug lords caught up with him - and I didn't get the motivation with that, either. Are they that desperate to get some press?

Agree on some and disagree on others. I was super annoyed that they gave so little time to Vee and Fiona making up, and that they took equal blame for their fight. Come on, that was on Fiona. Frank and Monica slurring it up around town just makes me physically avert my head from the screen. Pointless. June Squibb was particularly delightful this episode, wasn't she? The better to make Fiona look bad by selling out. Why do we get the things like Fiona stealing money from the diner and making use of Etta's credit cards if they aren't going to matter at all? Have a huge soft spot for Mickey but they started with the retcon last season and from Fiona's reaction, Mickey is now officially bad/crazy ex responsible for Ian's breakdown. Fiona witnessed Mickey firsthand with Ian in the hospital, urging him to stay on medication, trying to keep him healthy. It would be one thing for her to point out that it's a bad idea to run off to Mexico with a fugitive, because it is, but it's another to have her blame Mickey for Ian's past behavior. There are plenty of reasons why he's not the best choice for Ian, but that's not one of them. Could have done without Helene, too. The meaningful drunken moping was all very serious and well-acted, but one episode is enough. Have Lip be a functional alcoholic or have him get back into treatment, but you've established that he's bottomed out for now. I am very very tired of Svetlana's infinite knowledge of criminal practices. The whole throuple plot just required too much willful stupidity from Vee and even from Kev - and before this I would've doubted he was too stupid for much. I was also never in a million years convinced that Vee was in love with her - not because of Shanola Hampton, who was heartbreaking on the steps, but because too much of their relationship was written as either broad comedy or "ooh, hot chicks fooling around."

I'm super annoyed at hipster Yelp reviewer chick writing a teardown of the laundromat within hours of its opening--and with her photo attached! Why is it that the Gallaghers don't have enough cards stacked against them for the writers to exploit that they have to make up irrational ways for people to persecute them? Am also ewww-ed out that Fiona is just willing to watch her father abuse Etta (you would think that she would at least draw the line when it comes to his getting keys?! and yet she seemed fine with it - show, sometimes you have to explain this shit, like have Fiona acknowledge that she can't get her dad to back off without losing her own ability to influence Etta, instead of leaving us to wonder why she's so inconsistent about Frank). Oh look, Mickey's coming back. Long after the show fucked up his exit, long after they lost the opportunity to deal with any of the issues his leaving brought up. And it's a Social Media Event, since Shameless has such a good history with social media management. This may be too cynical a promotional move even for a show called Shameless. I wish I could look forward to this, but I'll be watching from behind my hands with the full expectation that it will be useless and resolve nothing except to retcon Ian, Mickey, or both.

I agree; when she claimed that Svetlana turned Vee against her, I was like no, that's not it. Makes sense for Fiona to blame someone other than herself, but I hope that when/if she eventually has it out with Vee the show doesn't support this idea of their friendship suffering only because of Svetlana. That said, Vee has been an uncharacteristic fool over Svetlana and I am beyond tired of this plot. Not only is Vee not that stupid, no one is that stupid, and there is no way anyone would put up with what Svetlana has done. Free babysitting and sex doesn't cut it as an explanation. I liked Svetlana, too, before she became a cartoon villain adept in whatever kind of skill or crime the writers think will create the funniest punchline for the week. I like Lip, but even as emotionally dumb as he is, I would have liked to see a more extended realization on his part of what he'd ruined for himself than we had this season. Confining his expression of what college means for him to the hearing made his actions afterward seem more like a spoiled kid than someone who is devastated. We've only had a couple of moments with Lip since season four where he's expressed any actual feeling about school, and most of the time he's treated it like a whim (his girlfriend got him in; another one helped him keep his grades up; he didn't decide to go to the hearing until that same morning because yet another girlfriend thought it was a good idea). Even if Lip can't admit it to anyone else, can we please see him give a shit about school so that his suffering seems authentic?

It's sloppy and it just doesn't seem like things mean much this season. I guess they have five episodes to go, but I feel like everything is some kind of caper and there's not much emotional payoff. I felt Ian/Trevor were better this week, if only because they allowed them to joke together and because Trevor is shown to be willing to compromise rather than have Ian do all the compromising. I was afraid they were building to the latter. I could still do without really obvious vocabulary lessons. I am also embarrassed for Shameless that they can't bring themselves to show gay sex. A dick, even a silicone dick, in a sexual context seems to be a step too far for this show. I am increasingly worried by Mickey's return; knowing about it makes it difficult to enjoy watching Ian now, because I can't imagine a scenario where they bring him back without completely screwing up someone's characterization. I can't even with Kev, Vee, and Svetlana. Or with Fiona. She just would not drop 80k on a business with no idea about what condition it's in or how to run it. It's not only that she couldn't in the time frame of the show, it's also that she just would not.