A quick review of tonight’s “Shameless” coming up just as soon as I take some pre-emptive Advil…
There were two particularly interesting moments in this one, I thought – not necessarily interesting within the context of the episode (which felt repetitive coming right after “Aunt Ginger”), but of my long-term interest in the series. The first is when Steve is shot down for suggesting, not unreasonably, that it might not be such a bad thing for Debbie to get some help. The second is after the whole kidnapping mess is behind them and Fiona wonders if she’s really screwing up these kids by raising them this way.
The show is on the side of the Gallaghers, obviously, but it also has to walk this knife-edge where their life and behavior is raw and weird and dangerous enough so that it doesn’t just feel like a sitcom goof that they live this way. And an episode like this one doesn’t make me look at them as amusingly eccentric, but damaged and capable of inflicting great harm on others. And I think back to the way Frank was portrayed a couple of episodes ago, where he briefly seemed like a bad dude when he head-butted Ian, then went back to being harmless and wacky, and I think that the show either doesn’t have enough distance from the family to see it properly, or else doesn’t expect others to have greater distance.
Like I said last week, I’m still enjoying the show just enough to keep watching, but I think I may let the next few go by unreviewed and see how I’m feeling as we head into the back half of this season.
What did everybody else think?