Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Canadian Reach-Around
By Jacob Clifton | Season 1 | Episode 2 | Aired on 01.16.2011
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Karen's dad decides to headbutt Frank because of the blowjob she gave his gay son Ian, so then Frank drunkenly comes home and headbutts Ian in turn. It's gross and scary and not really that important, in the scheme of things. So then Frank disappears and nobody really cares (because that is awesome), except for how it's like his Christmas of the week and time for his disability check. Since he doesn't show up for that, everybody knows something is totally awry. Including Veronica/Veronica's tits, who are out for no reason at all but after Kev's piece last week I guess deserved some airtime.
Turns out he's in Canada, which is too awesome for Frank to even sully, so that cop that has a crush on Fiona explains basic shit and then Steven steals a van -- including dwarven staff -- to get Frank out of Canada and back here. This considerable logistical molehill gets the least screentime of anything, because there's so much drama.
See, Steve -- correctly -- noted that life is better when shitty Frank is not around, so he kidnapped him and dropped him over the border. Bad Steve. But on the plus side, he also used dwarves to get him back, so he thinks it's a wash. Fiona thinks otherwise, despite the fact that Frank has saddled her with fifty kids that he headbutts from time to time, and honestly should just go die in a fire.
Except then what would we do for the second act of this episode, where William H. Macy randomly decides that he's in Gus van Sant's interpretation of King Lear and rails on his countrymen at various degrees of focus and acts the shit out of some Lipton and is totally inappropriate and stupid and manages to make this whole show look stupid and lame? I guess being on a poorly conceived American import, on a channel with a half-ass drama record, was just too offensive, so he decided to shoot the moon.
So he does that shit forever, while everybody acts circles around him because this isn't a fucking Coen brothers farce and all the other actors -- including Debbie, who is like five -- are doing their best to make up for his showboating, and finally William H. Macy calms down enough to go back to his fucking trailer, and we get to have a show again for five seconds.
In which not much actually happens.
But then awesomely, after a montage of people not willing to harbor Frank's gross ass throughout Chicago, he shows up at Karen's mom Sheila's (Joan Cusack)'s house, and she fucks him up the ass multiple times with a stunningly detailed, veiny ivory dildo. And then make him her live-in butt slave.
At which point maybe you start to think maybe there's a method to this madness after all. Because as we learned last week, there's nothing more demeaning for a man than taking it up the ass... And what better jerkoff to pay that emasculating price than Frank Gallagher?
Next week: Frank is denied almost a thousand civil rights straight people take for granted; Fiona and Steve get back together; some body part of Veronica and Kev we haven't seen before; hopefully we ignore Frank and get back to the actual characters of this dumb show.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!The best part about a second episode is getting to see the credits... Usually. But since this one, true to form, involves various castmembers in the bathroom, doing a variety of private activities, we will go fast-forwarding into the breach immediately. No thank you. No thank you at all.
Frank's day starts with a broken shoelace, while Fiona stares at him stealing a replacement from one of the kids' and shaking her head. Outside, he can't manage to use the broken lace to tie back his hair, which equals the worst thing that ever happened, because he is a ridiculous person. Ian and Steve drive up with lunch for the rest of the family, and Frank gutterscums his way down the street.
At the Alibi Room, Kev's bar, they take up a collection to pay the upstairs tenant, Tommy, back for the pay-per-view MMA they're going to be stealing from him. It's all very communal. Frank makes his way in and steals a pint, while over at the Gallaghers' they're feasting on burgers. Lip introduces everybody to sweet Karen, and they sit down to watch one of those reality shows where they do dangerous jobs on a boat and hopefully die.
Karen's dad is at the bar, and when he sees Frank he headbutts him -- dropping, he keeps his pint aloft -- for Ian's "dirty adolescent prick" and where it ended up last week. The people in the bar can't seem to tell the difference between the beatings onscreen and the beatings in the bar, or else they don't care. Since it's Frank, it's kinda both.
Pride wounded and serious amounts of blood drying on Frank's admittedly adorable Modelo Especial t-shirt -- which it turns out is Ian's -- he comes home on a drunk rampage and menaces poor Ian, eventually headbutting him in turn. Steve jumps in and starts yelling at him, Fiona's horrified, they all stare and it's really gross for a while. Veronica holds onto Debbie, covering her eyes, but the little dear's got a cast-iron skillet in hand the second she's free. Frank turns his attentions on Steve, and Fiona gets him out of the house while everybody scurries around and freaks out and feels trashy some more. Frank whines that nobody's noticed he's bleeding, and spends some more time bitching about Steve.
Steve thinks about going back inside, but fuck them for being gross, and Fiona watches Frank clean up. He's ashamed of himself and sighs for forgiveness, but she's having none of it. Trying to get your own back by hurting somebody else is a great way to feel twice as worse. Finally he fesses up, sort of, but she doesn't speak.