Season 9 Episode 10: Los Diablos!

I do not write that because I wish to see the Gallaghers, particularly Fiona Gallagher, suffer. But too often a glib one-liner or a downbeat plot twist is used to write the characters out of facing the totality of their mistakes, just as often as the writers of the series attempt to sabotage any Gallagher’s prospects of a budding middle class future. But in times like these, despair is a fair instinct. As Kev apologizes to Santiago and his family, you’ve caught us at a bad moment. One where optimism seems naïve and narrative shortcuts a little too convenient. Tonight Shameless considered going the long way on all subplots not involving Frank; the consequences were dreadful but in their own perverse way cathartic.

Read the full review here.

Season 9 Episode 11: The Hobo Games

The answer, I think, is something a little sadder than that. As we realize by this episode’s truly heartbreaking cliffhanger, the writer’s room has not actually forgotten the recent reintroduction of consequence (well, sans the Frank/Ingrid storyline); they’re just recalibrating for Emmy Rossum’s exit from the series. In fact, we knew that it wasn’t until mid-production of season 9’s back-half that producers knew for sure that Rossum was leaving Shameless after nine seasons, and I suspect this episode’s time-jump is the first hour we can actually see that transition affecting the storytelling. It is the hour where most of the remaining Gallaghers—mainly Debbie, Carl, and Lip—saw their narrative threads intertwine in a way almost completely devoid of Fiona’s influence, and then it’s also the one that ends with Lip’s commandment to Fi: he wants his big sister “out of the fucking house.”

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Episode 12: You’ll Know The Bottom When You Hit It

I thought it worthy of mentioning after tonight’s episode since Lip has seemingly and almost entirely forgotten those times—and also because other than when dealing with Lip and Fiona’s competing dramas, “You’ll Know the Bottom When You Hit It” really didn’t offer a whole lot in the way of what should feel like a rising crisis in the Gallagher family. In fact, Shameless broke its own golden rule by refusing to put family first for really any of the Gallaghers except, strangely, Frank. Otherwise Debbie and Carl went about their horrendous love triangle subplot that no one cares about, as if nothing that happened to Fiona mattered, Liam was AWOL, and Franny was a prop. Altogether, that feeling of camaraderie amongst the siblings in season 1 was much more tangibly, and painfully, gone by the contrast. As was my interest in Debs and Carl.