S11.E12: Father Frank, Full of Grace

[ElectricBoogaloo]

SERIES FINALE!

Quote

Ian and Mickey shop for furniture. Kev and V seek buyers for the Alibi. While Lip settles for a new job, Carl finds his calling on the force. Debbie plunges into a dangerous world when she meets someone. Frank faces his mortality.

Promo:

Original air date: 4/11/21

[chocolatine]

Well, that's over. Too much time spent on Frank - if he was going to die anyway, he should have just died from the OD and the time should have been spent on his children. Speaking of OD, I can't believe the adult Gallaghers just left Frank's needles and paraphernalia on the coffee table where Frannie draws/plays. Have they learned nothing from when Liam got into Fiona's cocaine stash?

Apparently Lip is so smart that he can immediately spot the flaw in a forex trading system, but not smart enough to understand the concept that if he actually lists the house, he may get multiple offers at or above market value and wouldn't have to accept the low-ball $75k from his neighbor. Now he's not just screwing over his own financial future, but that of his siblings as well.

Finally, really disappointed that Fiona didn't make an appearance. I thought Emmy was working on something with the showrunners. Come to think of it, the only reason I've stuck with this season is to see Fiona at the end.

Edited April 11, 2021 by chocolatine

[ElectricBoogaloo]

Ugh, this episode was like terrible fan fiction written by someone who was willfully ignorant of the first ten seasons of the show. Tami, the person who was packing their stuff before Lip even got home so they could move in with her dad, is suddenly fine staying at the Gallagher house which is in an even worse state of disrepair thanks to Lip? Debbie is in love with a car thief she just met? Mickey, of all people, throws a big surprise party to celebrate their wedding anniversary? Give me a fucking break. 

Worst of all was Frank’s unbelievable suicide note. The man who has neglected and disparaged his kids since they were born is suddenly so proud of them and just imagining them makes him smile? BITCH, PLEASE. 

And no, showing me footage from S1 and seeing Frank outside Patsy’s isn’t enough to make this a satisfying series finale. 

Poor Liam. He’s where Debbie used to be. He can’t help loving Frank no matter how awful he is. 

[kathe5133]

Well, it's over.  It could have been better, but it also could have been worse.  I got invested in the stories of this family years ago.  There were episodes that were tough for me to get through from season 1.  I started watching because I was intrigued that the girl who so beautifully played the innocent Christine in Phantom of the Opera was cast in the role of Fiona.  I stayed watching because of the acting of Emmy Rossum and Bill Macy and all of the others.  I wanted to see all of their stories play out.  The stories were not as consistently brilliant as the series wore on, but, I will miss the shenanigan's of the Gallagher clan. I will be tuning in for last call.  

[TooMuchRealityTV]

What a bad series finale. They actually introduced more plot lines to leave unresolved.

I actually really liked the first 4-5 seasons of this show a lot. So I stuck around after that to see what happens to the characters. In retrospect I probably could have stopped watching after Fiona left. The writing went from bad to worse after that.

I felt bad for Liam not being able to find Frank. He is probably the only Gallagher who would have benefited from saying goodbye to Frank. He could probably use the closure. He won’t grow up with him so he may not come to hate him in the way the older kids do. Other than that I felt almost nothing. Which is odd for a series finale.

[juno]

10 hours ago, chocolatine said:

Apparently Lip is so smart that he can immediately spot the flaw in a forex trading system, but not smart enough to understand the concept that if he actually lists the house, he may get multiple offers at or above market value and wouldn't have to accept the low-ball $75k from his neighbor. Now he's not just screwing over him own financial future, but that of his siblings as well.

Suddenly, there is a rush to sell and take the first offer and not even list it for a couple of weeks? I just can't believe how stupid this show got.

I spent 1/3 of the show watching Frank's death march. Garbage character should have been gone in the second season along with Deb.

1 hour ago, TooMuchRealityTV said:

What a bad series finale. They actually introduced more plot lines to leave unresolved.

The new baby, possible bike repair show with Brad and Lip, Carl becoming the owner of the bar to name a few.

Garbage season and a garbage episode to a show that was really good a long time ago.

Edited April 11, 2021 by juno

[funnygirl]

And they all lived crappily ever after. 

(except for Kev and V, who are off to flourish in KY.)

Edited April 11, 2021 by funnygirl

[kieyra]

I skimmed a bit but the flashback scenes and Frank-centric-ness annoyed me. Was he supposed to have died of covid19? I heard them mention his bad oxygen levels, that a quick test had come back negative, but that they had requested a (more intensive) PCR test. Was it ever resolved one way or the other? I don’t know how the show has been handling the pandemic, but I just kept thinking “wait, if he had covid did he infect everyone in the house?”.

[preeya]

3 hours ago, kieyra said:

I skimmed a bit but the flashback scenes and Frank-centric-ness annoyed me. Was he supposed to have died of covid19? I heard them mention his bad oxygen levels, that a quick test had come back negative, but that they had requested a (more intensive) PCR test. Was it ever resolved one way or the other? I don’t know how the show has been handling the pandemic, but I just kept thinking “wait, if he had covid did he infect everyone in the house?”.

These days EVERYONE dies of COVID, even if they DIDN'T.  Gotta keep that pandemic running.

 

Edited April 11, 2021 by preeya

[Utpe]

That was a terribly disappointing series finale.  Given the dreadful writing these past few seasons, I'm not the least bit surprised.

So long, Shameless.  You bowed out with a whimper.

[ElectricBoogaloo]

8 hours ago, kieyra said:

I skimmed a bit but the flashback scenes and Frank-centric-ness annoyed me. Was he supposed to have died of covid19? I heard them mention his bad oxygen levels, that a quick test had come back negative, but that they had requested a (more intensive) PCR test. Was it ever resolved one way or the other? I don’t know how the show has been handling the pandemic, but I just kept thinking “wait, if he had covid did he infect everyone in the house?”.

The rapid test came back negative but one of the nurses requested a PCR which came back positive (right before they found the DNR tattoo).

[aghst]

If they didn't GAF about Frank, why were they all gathered around him?

Then when he disappeared, none of them bothered to look for him except Liam.

Make up your mind show.

Yeah Frank did care!.  He noticed what each of his kids were like, even if he pretended not to give a damn.

But this is Shameless so they can't get too sappy, so he dies alone though he's with them in spirit as they celebrate Ian's anniversary and then all singing in joy at some guy's expensive car being on fire.

It's Shameless!

I thought the PCR test came back positive and his oxygen kept dropping.  They didn't even try to intubate him.  In any event, if Frank had it, it would have ripped through that house.

The overall vibe of the show has always come across smug, whether it's Frank pontificating on something or Lip's supposed genius.  I wonder if the UK show was like that.

 

Also when Lip was making his deliveries, all hipster with the nice bike, riding jacket and retro helmet, he delivered to people around his age, who apparently were successful.  The way he stared into the first place and then the day trader's screen, you expected some light bulb would go off and he'd have some brilliant idea.

Is he going to take his stake from the home sale and day trade and become stonking rich finally?

After self-sabotaging repeatedly, a Gallagher is finally going to have some success?  Well more likely it will be Liam, if only he can get away and get to a better environment. 

[Chaos Theory]

Fair to middle of the road finale but with the disappointing  final season a fair finale is the best I guess we could hope for.  I am not going to nitpick but I will say what I liked.  I actually did enjoy watching Deb’s story.  I know there are people who hate her especially around here but I thought the idea of her looking for chaos kind of manifested in the new criminal car thief girlfriend.  Frank was right about her she is all the bad parts of Monica.  The chaos Junkie.

I also liked the flashbacks.  It’s interesting that these were scenes Frank was never a part of.   Things that his drinking and drugging caused him to miss and yet watching them did make him smile.  He was a terrible selfish father but I do think he loved his kids.  
 
Also the callback to the pilot where Frank was describing his opinion of his kids was really well done.  I thought that was clever and a lot of it has been discussed here and other places especially about Lip.  He is as clever as a whip but can’t seem to get out of his own way.   And Ian is studios with a good work ethic but with a touch of mental illness but ironically the most well adjusted of the group even if he is married to a Malchovich.    
 

And I wouldn’t have minded instead of that stupid crematorium scene the show had Carl behind the bar at the Alibi and turned it to a cop bar with Tommy and Kermit sitting on their stools surrounded by a sea of cops.   That would have been a funny scene.

Edited April 12, 2021 by Chaos Theory

[SG429]

33 minutes ago, aghst said:

all singing in joy at some guy's expensive car being on fire.

It's Shameless!

That scene could be a nod to Shameless(UK), where I think the final episode, maybe even the last scene, involved the pub emptying out to celebrate someone's car on fire.

[juno]

This is a great review and a review that really sums up the mess of the final season and episode;

https://tv.avclub.com/it-s-a-real-shame-shameless-went-out-this-way-1846662755

[40Love]

Doesn't Mickey have a son? What happened to him and Mickey's Russian wife? I can't remember.

[ElectricBoogaloo]

Shameless Boss Talks Open-Ended Series Finale, Frank's Fate and the Fiona Storyline That Wasn't

Some tidbits:

Quote

If you could picture a spinoff for one of the characters, which one would it be?

Oh, it’d be a bunch of them. We originally intended to get a little farther in the story and have Carl buy the bar from Kev and V and turn it into a cop bar and have Debbie work behind the counter. I’d love to see what happens with Mickey and Ian in their married life and having some kids. I would love to see Lip take over a motorcycle shop and really get himself firmly on the ground and become more and more the patriarch for the rest of the family. There were a lot of stories we could have continued to tell. Showtime was ready to be done, and they couldn’t have been lovelier to us over the 11 years. So I have nothing but appreciation for all of the things they did for us, but I could have kept doing it.

 

Quote

There was one notable absence in the episode, although we did see her in flashbacks. Did you try to get Emmy Rossum back for the finale?

Yeah, and she very much wanted to [come back], and we worked and worked on it. She lives in New York with her husband, and we managed to time it just at the wrong time, unfortunately. We hit the second or third time everything shut down with two-week quarantines. So just the timing didn’t work out. It was disappointing for all of us, and especially for Emmy, but with her other obligations, she couldn’t go back and quarantine for two weeks in New York after being in Los Angeles. It’s sad. A minor inconvenience given the major tragedy of the pandemic, but sad for all of us, nonetheless.

What would you have done if you had been able to have Fiona in the finale? What was your original vision for her?

I never really got that far, honestly. But what we were talking about was that with the information that the family had about Frank’s dementia, she was going to come back and deal with Liam’s guardianship and deciding where Liam was going to be as they sold the house and be a part of all those decisions, [and we’d] have some more moments with Fiona and the rest of the family. Because it was so hard to work out, we never got to the point [of] actually writing it and then having to ditch it, but that was the intent. Emmy’s one of my favorite people, so I would have just loved to seen her just as a friend.

 

Quote

One last question because it’s something that’s going to plague me for a while: Does Debbie actually go to Texas?

We had a big argument about it in the room. Several people think she would never go. I actually think she does, but I think she comes back like six weeks later, with a tan and Frannie in tow. [Laughs] One of my favorite characters, and Emma [Kenny’s] so wonderful in the part. [Debbie is] crazy, genuinely out of her mind. She’s that person in your family who, like, just does that.

 

Edited April 12, 2021 by ElectricBoogaloo

[Marley]

That was a lame shitty series finale.

Lip is an idiot and they all are if they sell the house for $75K. It’s gonna be worth way more then that eventually. Makes no sense to sell it to that random guy. I guess it was someone he knew but did we see that guy on the show before? Were we supposed to know him?

Really don’t care about Frank’s dumb little journey. Should’ve killed him off sooner. The show was always too obsessed with William H Macy and Frank’s character. It ruined the show most of the time actually.

No Fiona was so stupid she was a huge part of the show and really the only reason I watched this last season. 

Glad this show ended. It was a joke at this point.

Frank doesn’t even say anything to Fiona in his letter either. Seems rude of the show.

Also Mickey you had a kid once and you were a shit dad. I mean it was a fucked up situation but you handled it horribly.

Also gentrification pisses me off but what if that guy with the burning Tesla was just a normal guy. Just a bunch of assholes laughing and flipping him off singing some dumb song while his car burns. Was that supposed to be funny? Ugh.

Edited April 12, 2021 by Marley

[chocolatine]

3 hours ago, aghst said:

Is he going to take his stake from the home sale and day trade and become stonking rich finally?

If he's going to talk his siblings into taking the $75k offer, get a place big enough for him, Tami, Fred, new baby, and Liam, and put food on the table, he'll be lucky if he has a few hundred dollars left to trade with. And no, he won't get rich from that.

Quote

I would love to see Lip take over a motorcycle shop and really get himself firmly on the ground and become more and more the patriarch for the rest of the family.

If that was supposed to be the endgame for Lip, they should have had him make at least one good decision this season. Everything he's done has been impulsive, petulant, and selfish. Those are not the qualities of a patriarch who is "firmly on the ground."

Edited April 12, 2021 by chocolatine

[ElectricBoogaloo]

3 hours ago, Marley said:

gentrification pisses me off but what if that guy with the burning Tesla was just a normal guy.

In my experience, any one who has a Tesla isn't just a normal guy.

[smeds]

I really thought the emergency contact was going to be Fiona.  They could have incorporated her in that way so she didnt have to fly out to film.  The bit with Frank in the chair seemed like a really play/Broadway show.  

[Chaos Theory]

I think the Tesla burning scene was there to mimic the pilot scene in the beginning of the series and the guy was just a symbol of the people (including the Gallagher’s) being pushed out so that people like him who like the day trader might brag about making thousands of dollars and then tip to the nickle.  Lip helped him out and then instead of even thanking him and maybe passing him twenty dollars he tipped to exactly 20% on his order.    Do the guy in the Tesla was just a symbol of the us vs then mentality.   

Edited April 12, 2021 by Chaos Theory

[kieyra]

5 minutes ago, Chaos Theory said:

I think the Tesla burning scene was there to mimic the pilot scene in the beginning of the series and the guy was just a symbol of the people (including the Gallagher’s) being pushed out so that people like him who like the day trader might brag about making thousands of dollars worth and then tip to the nickle.  Lip helped him out and then instead of even thanking him and maybe passing him an e yea twenty dollars he tipped to exactly 20% on his order.    Do the guy in the Tesla was just a symbol of the us vs then mentality.   

Yeah, this. 

There are a ton of Teslas in my metro--mostly the entry level ones, and a lot of other hybrids and EVs. (And of course, on the flip side, lots of Dodge Rams ... which cost more than an entry-level Tesla.) Obviously you see the occasional d-bag model S driver, but I'm more likely to encounter entitled road rage from, say, someone driving one of those Lexus SUV things. 🙂 Our Tesla drivers are more on the hippie/nerd spectrum. 

[Tikichick]

Biggest disappointment is Debbie.   She wouldn't be so bad if she weren't dragging Frannie around and giving her a front row seat to all of this.

[Avabelle]

So glad opted out of this shit show years ago. The ending sounded awful. Frank should have been killed off in the penultimate episode with the siblings moving on in the final episode. As much as they say it’s all roses with Emmy and timing just didn’t work, they could have easily had her zoom in for two minutes. No matter how frustrating Fiona became as the years went on She was the heart of the show when it was at it’s best.

[chocolatine]

2 hours ago, Chaos Theory said:

I think the Tesla burning scene was there to mimic the pilot scene in the beginning of the series and the guy was just a symbol of the people (including the Gallagher’s) being pushed out so that people like him who like the day trader might brag about making thousands of dollars and then tip to the nickle.  Lip helped him out and then instead of even thanking him and maybe passing him twenty dollars he tipped to exactly 20% on his order. 

Worse, it was 10% - $2 for a $20 order.

[Chaos Theory]

1 hour ago, Tikichick said:

Biggest disappointment is Debbie.   She wouldn't be so bad if she weren't dragging Frannie around and giving her a front row seat to all of this.

I think that is kind of the shows point.  As much as Debbie might want to be a good parent to Frannie she is far too selfish and the kind of parent who has a daughter young and when the kid is 16 wants to be their best friend.   Debbie isn’t an evil person (while Lip inherited the alcoholism and Ian the mental illness ) Debbie inherited the narcissism.    If she can find a partner who actually cares about her she stands a chance otherwise Frannie is going to be the next generation of barely functional Gallagher.

[Tikichick]

3 minutes ago, Chaos Theory said:

I think that is kind of the shows point.  As much as Debbie might want to be a good parent to Frannie she is far too selfish and the kind of parent who has a daughter young and when the kid is 16 wants to be their best friend.   Debbie isn’t an evil person (while Lip inherited the alcoholism and Ian the mental illness ) Debbie inherited the narcissism.    If she can find a partner who actually cares about her she stands a chance otherwise Frannie is going to be the next generation of barely functional Gallagher.

I think why I'm so disappointed is Debbie did love and care about Frannie and tried dong the best for her.   This season in particular she took a serious turn and even what was ostensibly supposed to be about Frannie was really about Debbie -- the clothes, the birthday party, etc.   Eventually over this season Debbie became so checked out she forgot to make provisions for Frannie when she was leaving and then didn't see to it that Frannie was kept away from what they assumed was Frank dying from an OD on the sofa, drug paraphernalia scattered around.   Not to mention hooking up with an obviously unstable person, bringing her into the home and considering dragging Frannie on the road with them.  Just doesn't seem like Debbie had an ounce of her decency left in her.      

[aghst]

3 hours ago, Chaos Theory said:

I think the Tesla burning scene was there to mimic the pilot scene in the beginning of the series and the guy was just a symbol of the people (including the Gallagher’s) being pushed out so that people like him who like the day trader might brag about making thousands of dollars and then tip to the nickle.  Lip helped him out and then instead of even thanking him and maybe passing him twenty dollars he tipped to exactly 20% on his order.    Do the guy in the Tesla was just a symbol of the us vs then mentality.   

The writing is kind of all over the place on social justice.

The characters take glee in ripping off or in the misfortune of supposedly rich people.  I thought Carl was going to let that one young woman off from the parking ticket and they'd hook up or something the way they shot her from her ass.

But a few episodes ago, Frank was ranting about the China flu and how they should take out the Asian kid who was preventing Liam from getting in a better school.

 

[eeyore]

Based on how this entire season went, I should have known the finale was going to be a complete dumpster fire (or should I say Tesla fire?) but it was still disappointing. I'm glad Frank died, that's the way it should happen, but all the other storylines they built up over the season, or at least over the last few episodes, all just kind of fizzled and went nowhere.

The house should have been sold - all of them moving out would have been a good way to end it. Instead Lip gets a half-assed offer on the house right after Tami tells him they can live there together. WTF? I liked Mickey throwing the surprise party and the growth it showed for him. I guess the only Gallagher to grow isn't actually a Gallagher. Debbie is the new Frank - selfish and terrible parent, just needs to get her addiction going. Carl is going to throw away his police "career" to takeover the bar? And why would the neighborhood want a cop bar? I thought the cops were part of the problem. Poor Liam. I hope that kid can grow and get out, like Fiona. 

[taanja]

On 4/11/2021 at 12:43 AM, chocolatine said:

Well, that's over. Too much time spent on Frank - if he was going to die anyway, he should have just died from the OD and the time should have been spent on his children. Speaking of OD, I can't believe the adult Gallaghers just left Frank's needles and paraphernalia on the coffee table where Frannie draws/plays. Have they learned nothing from when Liam got into Fiona's cocaine stash?

Apparently Lip is so smart that he can immediately spot the flaw in a forex trading system, but not smart enough to understand the concept that if he actually lists the house, he may get multiple offers at or above market value and wouldn't have to accept the low-ball $75k from his neighbor. Now he's not just screwing over his own financial future, but that of his siblings as well.

Finally, really disappointed that Fiona didn't make an appearance. I thought Emmy was working on something with the showrunners. Come to think of it, the only reason I've stuck with this season is to see Fiona at the end.

I was holding out for Fiona!

Even though (in the hospital) Frank mistook the nurse for Fiona and said she was an angry baby but always so very pretty -- when he was "reading" the letter he left that Franny colored all over -- NO MENTION OF FIONA!-- he mentioned all the others by name but not Fiona. In his suicide note he fails to mention his eldest child. I found that off putting.

Anyway I got a small tear in my eye when I realized Frank was really going to die.

I figured it was going to be like all the other times-- he gets up off couch and disappears for days/weeks/months and eventually returns. But instead -- it's not the drugs' that get him -- it's the Rona! Irony.

I kind of like where they left it all ambiguous. Life goes on oh blah dee oh blah da.

Debbie thinking about taking off with crazy chick and dragging poor Franny along is kind of ... scary .. but I figure Franny is screwed anyway. The kid always was really screwed with Debbie as her mother. Like frank said -- Debbie is like Monica -- but not the good parts.

[iMonrey]

Terrible finale to a terrible season. Somewhere along the way, and not just recently either, this show went from celebrating these characters to, well, shaming them. They did what they had to do to get by in this world no matter what that was and we rooted for them at first. But by and by it became harder to root for them because they kept doing such dumb stuff. The writers seem to really hate Lip in particular. It's as though they are trying to prove that poor people are poor because they make bad decisions and that really leaves a sour taste in my mouth.

That the entire season revolved around selling the Gallagher house without ever making a lick of sense speaks to how checked out the writers are at this point. It started off with the siblings voting whether or not to sell but ultimately Lip was somehow able to make that choice unilaterally. If his name - and no one else's - is on the deed - there was never a need for a vote. And if all five siblings are legal owners, literally all five of them have to sign off on the sale. 

These are not minor details when you base so much of your story on a basic plot point like this. This is a sign that the writers simply do not care and either they think we don't care or they think we're too stupid to notice, and I'm not sure which of those things is worse.

I think the only investment the writers still had was in Mickey and Ian, presumably perceived as the top fan favorites. They were the only ones with any kind of closure. But even there, a discussion about having a baby without mentioning the kid Mickey already fathered was jaw dropping in its neglect of history. It's hard to imagine neither Cameron Monaghan nor Noel Fisher speaking up at the table read. Everyone is really phoning it in at this point.

And finally, what was the point of Frank waking up and wandering around half the episode if he was going to die anyway? Was it because the writers wanted one more episode of Frank Follies or was it to alleviate the Gallaghers of the responsibility of just letting him die on the sofa? Which they were apparently perfectly willing to do.

The series had a much better potential end a couple seasons ago with the glimpses into the characters lives and where they were headed: Debbie starting welding school, Lip getting his act together, etc. It should have ended then.

 

[CarpeFelis]

15 hours ago, ElectricBoogaloo said:

In my experience, any one who has a Tesla isn't just a normal guy.

Please. I bought a used Model S for less than a lot of people pay for their SUVs. But you’re right, I’m not a normal guy, since I’m a woman. I’m just an engineer who can’t resist tech. And I don’t drive it like an entitled d-bag, either.

So Debbie continues to be a complete dumpster fire of a person, much less mother. A flash forward to Frannie’s future probably would have shown her at the top of the 10 Most Wanted list in 15 years or so.

Despite his complete inability to get TF out of his own way, I did feel bad for Lip when he fixed Stock Bro’s problem, allowing the guy to make $4000, and the guy just gave him a fairly lousy tip and then completely ignored him like he wasn’t even a person. Who does that?! If that had been me (note: I’ve never tried day trading) I’d have given him a much, much larger tip. Seems only fair. For that matter, so is tipping generously when someone is out there doing deliveries so you don’t have to go out and be exposed to COVID. But this show loves to pretend that absolutely anyone who has more money than the Gallaghers must be a morally bankrupt, over-entitled asshole.

Seems to me Frank’s ghost was floating away in the wrong direction!

I still think the most fitting ending would have been a drunken blowout wake, with Fiona there and drunken fights breaking out.

P.S.: If this show had even the remotest relationship with reality, Frank would have died back when he needed a liver transplant. 

Edited April 12, 2021 by CarpeFelis
additional thought

[tennisgurl]

It really is a shame that Shameless went out like this. The clips of the first season just made me sad, and not because the show is ending, but because it reminds me of how good this show was and how far its fallen in quality. I cant decide if this show just came to hate these characters and made them more and more horrible, or if the writers just got lazy and wanted to keep everyone in the hole forever because they don't know how to write character growth and plot development. This was such a good show, at one point it was one of my favorites on TV, but it got so bad that I stopped watching for awhile (which is rare for me, I usually stay until the bitter end after that much time) and only came back to see how things wrapped up. Turns out, I mostly didnt need to bother. What even happened? What was the point? What was accomplished here? Are the characters going forward at all now that the house is probably being sold? 

I was really hoping for a cameo from Emmy, like Fiona was the emergency contact that they found, and I am really sad that she was hardly even mentioned. Frank didnt even mention her in his suicide note, but that shouldn't surprise me. Even if he did have some final moments of affection towards his family as he died, its way too little too late. The ending was probably the only part that felt like a real series finale, the whole rest of the episode felt very same old same old. The call backs to the first episode (and the UK version) with the family partying by a burning car as Frank talks about them was the only thing that really felt like the show was ending, beyond Frank apparently ascending into the heavens. Yeah, I imagine Frank would be heading in a very different direction...

There were only a few moments that actually worked. The flashbacks to season one did hit the nostalgia button for me a bit, and as usual the stuff with Ian and Mickey was pretty solid, as they're the actual characters that the writers are even remotely invested in (because they have a big fan following) and the last moment between Lip and Ian was a nice scene, definitely the best moment Lip has gotten in ages. I also mostly like how Carl ended up, he is really one of the few characters who actually grew for the better in a way that seemed natural, and a really mean part of me laughed at how even ghost Frank couldn't think of anything nice to say about Debbie at this point. Talk about a character who ended up utterly destroyed, and giving her some rando at the last moment isnt going to make me invested in her terrible life.  

It became really obvious that the writers have long since stopped caring. Plots and characters disappear at random, they clearly don't remember anything that has happened on this show in the past or just don't care, and just about everyone is on auto-pilot. They were so lazy that we ended up with a show that I think was supposed to have a theme of how hard it is to escape a cycle of poverty, neglect, and addiction, but the writers got so scared of ever changing things and having to show the characters really grow, that instead we got "poor people are poor because they're dumb" which is a pretty messed up message. Well fare thee well Shameless. Thanks for the good times, even if they were a LONG time ago. 

Edited April 13, 2021 by tennisgurl

[SG429]

13 hours ago, CarpeFelis said:

P.S.: If this show had even the remotest relationship with reality, Frank would have died back when he needed a liver transplant. 

Not sure what's more surprising - that the liver wasn't rejected, or that it didn't jump out of his gut and run away in horror.

[kieyra]

13 hours ago, CarpeFelis said:

P.S.: If this show had even the remotest relationship with reality, Frank would have died back when he needed a liver transplant. 

Coincidentally that's right around the time Fiona decides to throw her new life away due to whatshisface's skeezy brother, and also when Sammi shows up. 

It's usually the part of my rewatch routine where I start skipping a lot of scenes and paying more attention to Kev/V and eventually Svetlana.

[MaggieG]

15 hours ago, taanja said:

I was holding out for Fiona!

Even though (in the hospital) Frank mistook the nurse for Fiona and said she was an angry baby but always so very pretty -- when he was "reading" the letter he left that Franny colored all over -- NO MENTION OF FIONA!-- he mentioned all the others by name but not Fiona. In his suicide note he fails to mention his eldest child. I found that off putting.

Also, when Ian was telling Lip how he was a father to all of them, no mention of how Fiona was a mother to all of them. Because she was! Just very odd. It seems like they wanted Emmy to come back, but since she couldn't, they just decided to not mention Fiona at all. Besides that one moment when Frank saw the nurse.

Debbie really is the worst and so is her new girlfriend. At this point Franny would be better off being raised by a pack of wolves. Or Milkoviches.

Also no follow up from last week with Carl's pregnant girl?

The whole scene in the furniture store with Mickey, Ian and the conspiracy vote fraud lady was a complete waste of time and pointless. It's the series finale, spend some time on the Gallaghers!

[CarpeFelis]

1 hour ago, kieyra said:

Coincidentally that's right around the time Fiona decides to throw her new life away due to whatshisface's skeezy brother, and also when Sammi shows up. 

It's usually the part of my rewatch routine where I start skipping a lot of scenes and paying more attention to Kev/V and eventually Svetlana.

I liked Svetlana.

Your comment about Fiona got me thinking. The Gallagher kids could never seem to catch a break and actually make something of it for long. Even Lip, the smart one, and Fiona, the ambitious one, kept throwing away or otherwise messing up every opportunity that comes their way. Fiona, at least, finally walked away but that was only because Emmy Rossum left. I think if she’d stayed the writers would have had her screwing up again, bigger and bigger each time. 

Meanwhile, Frank... I’m kind of surprised the writers FINALLY killed him off. All this time they’d basically made him into the old joke: one day there will be nothing left on earth but cockroaches and Keith Richards... and Frank Gallagher. Because he kept getting away with things and kept on surviving — the writers even contrived a way for him to get a liver transplant, though I don’t recall exactly how. And somehow he just kept on living even though he was drinking again. I can’t remember if he ever even took any anti-rejection drugs (yeah, like the Gallaghers could even afford them). No matter how much booze or drugs he put in his body, he just kept going and going like the Energizer bunny. He ran all sorts of scams and got away with it. Even managed to steal a famous painting, which was never explained.

I know this show was supposed to be funny and often was, but it seemed like in the later seasons the writers turned it into a parody of itself, like it was a live-action cartoon where Frank is like Bugs Bunny or the Roadrunner.

[whiporee]

At the end of the day, I think the showrunners, and maybe some of the writers, too, thought they had a great character in Frank.  They seemed to think of him as a carefree, kind of loosey-goosey kind of guy who had the right outlook on life. Because that's the only explanation I could come up with for that ending -- Frank giving out sieze-the-day sort of lectures. They were never able to just accept that the guy was a monster at heart. That could have been Macy, too, though. I remember Eric Braden had a clause in his contract that said Victor Newman could never lose.  Macy was an EP, and he might have wanted to make sure Frank remained the focus, even though the character was both limited and limiting. 

With that the case, everyone was trapped where they were because having them leave pulls them away from Frank. Lip had to end up back where he started because his success would have created too much space between him and Frank -- same thing with Debbie. At the end of the day, since Frank couldn't leave, none of the rest of them could get out. 

 

 

[DNR]

I was really hoping to see Fiona They could have had Fiona receive the phone call from the hospital..... Seeing that Emmy Rossum smile with her big brown eyes fill up with tears ( of joy?🤣) 

Earlier seasons were amazing with this group of scrappy kids surviving , i cried during many episodes...... then it all went downhill.  
gonna miss these actors & their characters Hope to see them on my tv/movies again soon 

[King of TV]

I just saw the finale on Netflix. Yeah, it was an awful way to end the series. 

On 4/13/2021 at 10:48 AM, CarpeFelis said:

can’t remember if he ever even took any anti-rejection drugs (yeah, like the Gallaghers could even afford them). 

Frank took anti-rejection drugs for 4 or 5 seasons after he had the liver transplant. The makeup crew decided to keep a scar on his body from the procedure for the remainder of the series. 

 

On 4/11/2021 at 10:49 AM, TooMuchRealityTV said:

I felt bad for Liam not being able to find Frank. He is probably the only Gallagher who would have benefited from saying goodbye to Frank. He could probably use the closure. He won’t grow up with him so he may not come to hate him in the way the older kids do. Other than that I felt almost nothing. Which is odd for a series finale

Yup, they give the audience blue balls in suspense by teasing us with scenes of Liam is wondering where Frank was, even the bar scenes where Frank's spirit is seen drinking alcohol while Liam peers back at where his seat is. You'd think Liam would find out eventually what happened to Frank, but nope, they don't have enough time to resolve it at the end of the episode. Somebody tell me how far in advance did the writers know that the show was cancelled.

 

 

On 4/11/2021 at 11:36 AM, juno said:

Apparently Lip is so smart that he can immediately spot the flaw in a forex trading system, but not smart enough to understand the concept that if he actually lists the house, he may get multiple offers at or above market value and wouldn't have to accept the low-ball $75k from his neighbor.

Probably done because they wanted to rush the end of the season. They would've had to stretch out the plot if they had Lip make the decision to list the house while waiting for multiple offers, instead the writers go for low hanging fruit by having the neighbor (all of the sudden) make a bid for it at $75,000.

 

On 4/11/2021 at 10:15 PM, Chaos Theory said:

I know there are people who hate her especially around here but I thought the idea of her looking for chaos kind of manifested in the new criminal car thief girlfriend.

I still think it was pretty dumb and lazy for the writers to add a new girlfriend for Debby so late in the show's run. Only for what, the lazily resolve the subplot of Debbie having low self esteem and being insecure about being bad with relationships. Also, who remembers the girl that Carl had unprotected sex with, we never found out if the baby was actually Carl's. What was the point of even adding that plot point if it was gonna be thrown away in the finale?

As for Frank's death, we all know he died of covid. But why was his death so sudden, it didn't have anything to do with the herion overdose, he gets up and leaves after he OD'd, and then all of the sudden, the priest calls 9-1-1 after Frank is showing extreme signs of Dementia when at the church. Frank is exhibiting zero signs of having covid until the very end of the episode. When people are showing severe signs of covid, they die over the coarse of several days after their condition worsens, Frank died that night. This didn't make his death sad. The show could've closed off with a scene with the Gallagers at Frank's funeral, or have Fionna over a zoom call, since her actress couldn't fly to LA due to covid restrictions. But nope, we get almost no closure, with just a scene that lazily parallels the pilot episode by having a tesla get burned. Very disappointing and rushed way to end the series. They really pulled a class of 2020 on us with that finale. 

Edited January 9, 2022 by King of TV

[Sean8uk]

Was the doctor bianca who held Frank's gand at the end. Also, Fiona could possibly the investor purchasing the properties. (Kev an v's) other houses.