Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Running Up That Hill
By Jacob Clifton | Season 1 | Episode 1 | Aired on 01.09.2011
Ian's gay porn, answers his own question.Downstairs, they've got Steve's shirt off and Veronica's giving him a haircut, of course. The kids are all hanging around, too, interested in the heroic stranger. There's so much going on at the Gallagher house -- and so much to be ashamed of -- that once you're in, you're in. He was their buddy the second Fiona let him in the door. They go down the line introducing everybody, Debbie and the crazy one, and they talk about Veronica's many jobs. If Fiona is a casual dater, jobwise, Veronica's more of a serial monogamist. She did housekeeping at the Cook County hospital, where she got her nursing smarts we'll learn about later, but got fired for selling medical supplies on eBay.
Debbie's just remarking on Steve's big watch -- "Panerai... What'd that set you back, about six bills?" Welcome to Debbie. Keep an eye on that watch. The boys come down, clearly still uncomfortable, and I am sort of glad we didn't have to see how the gay thing went down. Lip, for being such a thug, is pretty fierce about his brother. It was crude and short-lived and Ian said nothing, I'm sure. Ian sits on the stairs, out of sight, in a sort of détente with Lip across the way; that's when Kevin comes in, Veronica's live-in boyfriend next door, a bartender. There is much to recommend him, but there is also a wicked hard-to-swallow thing about his idiom of use. Which is to say, his last name may well be Federline.
Which would be merely sort of heartbreaking, except for how Veronica is black. So either he's a douchebag, or this show is.
"Yo!" says Kevin. And when he gets startled by the half-naked hottie in his girlfriend's lap, they tell him Steve decked that bouncer, Jimmy Clifton -- also black/no relation -- he goes, "Respect!" Things like that, on the reg, which I don't know what to do with. Sometimes with a Showtime show you just have to shrug. (Or, I guess, "respect." I do not. Either of those things, I do not.)
Turns out Jimmy Clifton didn't murder Steve because he's already had two or three convictions for like manslaughter, and he did five years for fucking up his own dad over an '87 Monte Carlo with 200K miles. So that's Jimmy Clifton. So Steve is doomed.
"Up the wooden hill," Fiona trills, taking a beer out of Carl's hand and ushering the kids out. Kevin grins at Steve -- "Let me take one last look at you while you're still alive" -- and the neighbors head home. Out on the street, Steve's car is something impressive. When Kev asks the deal, Veronica spins him a whole story about how Steve dropped out of high school and became a janitor at a dotcom startup and within a year he owned it. "Made his first billion by twenty. Two Jags, controlling interest in the Red Wings, 10,000 employees kissing his ass. Yes boss, No boss. Why shouldn't he ride around in style?"
Kevin finally figures out that she's fucking with him, and they have a fight that makes more sense in British -- "Take back dumb prick!" -- but Veronica is hilarious about it: "Hi, nice to meet you, I'm Veronica. What's your pre-tax income?" Kev changes to how Steve was half-naked when he came in, and Veronica explains that if he hadn't shown up, Fiona and Veronica were going to tag-team him. This finally resets Kev's brains and he starts thinking about having sex with Veronica and Fiona at the same time. She laughs and slaps his ass and they go have their requisite huge amount of adventurous sex.
"All quiet up the wooden hill?" Steve asks, when Fiona comes back downstairs. Steve poses a lot of things in terms of quizzes and yes/no questions, like, if he hadn't busted ass for Fiona's purse, would she even have noticed him? She explains that she's still not said she's interested, so the question is moot, and then Steve is saddled with this impossibly contrived, over-rehearsed speech that makes no sense regardless of country of origin: "You know, 90% of the world's problems are caused by tiny words that come in pairs. I mean, we're healthy and we're happy, but when people ask, we say, Not bad. You know, the first time that I saw you dancing -- about a month back, at Crobar -- I was desperate to buy you a drink. You know, normally I'm shy, so I told myself: I can't. She won't. We wouldn't. And then tonight, I see you there again. All the indications being that I'm getting... A second chance to make a good impression."
Justin Chatwin is awesome and all, but that's the kind of bullshit they used to cram in his mouth on Weeds and it didn't work there either. Difference being, the whole time he's talking that smarmy nonsense he's been getting closer and closer and hotter and hotter and hasn't stopped looking in Fiona's eyes for one second. "Tell me to stop and I'll stop," he says, and she doesn't. He keeps telling her to go slower, but she can't. Pretty soon he can't either.
Giant fuckfest, knocking things off the table, it's all very athletic on every surface of the house and yet also very sweet and hesitant, the way they're banging the shit out of each other. Steve's finger gets caught in a silverware drawer and Fiona doesn't even notice, it's pretty awesome, but just before she comes somebody starts banging on the door. They both scramble around and she runs up the stairs to get clothes or something, so Steve has to answer the door -- after a faceplant or two struggling into his jeans -- with his shirt still off.
It's the cops, which is weird for Steve especially, so he runs up to find Fiona, running into a wild Liam on the Loose, Debbie running to catch him, on the way. "Yeah, uh, cops? Looking for you?" She doesn't even have time for the weirded-outness of Steve at this time, and just heads downstairs. Where the cops have brought Frank home, like every night, with soiled pants and a deadly complexion. They dump him on the floor and the cop, Tony, looks at Fiona a little wetly, maybe because of Steve's shirtlessness. Everybody loves Fiona; Steve is clearly hot enough that "everybody" should be worried.
Does she usually leave her father on the floor like that? Yeah, every night. Always gone by morning. And then who was the black toddler running around upstairs? Which is really two questions, one of which has bearing on the situation between them, but both of which have the same answer: "Liam? Liam's my brother." And we won't be discussing it any further, if you really think about it.
It's a friendly, sort of sad goodbye that happens next. Drunk dad on the floor, cops all around. He thinks it's a situation, he doesn't understand that it happens every night, even though it's clear it does. Steve's got a lot of things to consider right now, and needs to leave; Fiona, on the other hand, assumes that Steve's Ghetto Tourism trip has come to its logical end. She nods to herself: This is what you get for trying.
When Steve gets to the car he looks back at the window, hoping to see her -- hoping to turn back around and up the steps -- but it's just the rest of the kids, staring down from a window. He salutes, and leaves. Fiona goes to bed lonelier than before she met Steve.
Next day's tough; Fiona takes Liam with her to another job, cleaning up motel rooms, and her coworker offers to bring her a dozen tamales in the morning. Over at Kevin's bar, Frank's just shown up with his disability check in hand, refusing to leave. Once Kevin settles up his previous tab, there's not a lot left, but it's enough.
When Steve shows up back at the house, Fiona does everything she can to get him out of there. Tower of stolen paper product from the motel on the kitchen table. Project girls don't abort; he's just there to get the fuck he didn't get last night. But underneath that, maybe she's allowed herself to hope. Just a little. So then everything she's saying is not only the logical truth, but also a test. She gives him hell for awhile, and finally Steve breaks down, grinning but sincere. "Just when you think you've collared your dream girl, her incontinent, alcoholic father appears, wrecks everything... And she's blaming you?" She s