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You know how Carl is sort of psycho? Yeah, that's become an issue. To the degree that when his principal asks for a meeting with Carl's parents -- noting that in all the Gallaghers he's had to deal with, Frank has never once shown up -- it's only because he's following SOP to get Carl kicked out for good.
Fiona, showing the stress more than usual now that Steve's integrated into her routine, does her usual million things to find a fake Frank so they don't call social services, but in the end it's Steve that solves the problem, by hooking the principal up with a weed connection. At home that night, Steve gently explains how her reticence to accept his help isn't actually about pride at all, but about her assumption of being abandoned, and that he will spend the rest of his life proving to her that love exists, and yeah, it's one of those speeches, but still.
All of which would be fine and dandy, except that it's also Karen's parent-teacher night, and since she hates Eddie and Sheila is a basket case*, she's decided that "Daddy Frank" will be her designated parent. So the stress of "will Frank come through for Carl" and all the conversations they have about that, and about Frank's general worthlessness, in the end actually count for double because -- despite being on the run for his life throughout the episode, chased by some thugs from some country that doesn't exist -- he shows up with Karen, breaking Fiona's heart once again.
*(Sheila's attempt this week to get out of the house involves practicing virtual grocery shopping with a Woozyhelmet device. It is, as usual, totally funny and super sad.)
Ian and Linda take turns swatting at Kash's ego, because he's still letting Mickey Milkovich steal things and generally being a wuss. Linda wants to teach them to shoot her pistol, but of course ROTC Ian is already a crack shot, and it's pretty hot. Meanwhile, Lip gets caught taking SATs for people and ends up impressing the SAT man with his magical brain, because he really is the smartest genius in the world and isn't it tragic, etc.
But, having been caught, Lip's last few scores have been invalidated, which means a big scary young black man shows up at the house to beat him up. Psycho Carl breaks his leg, and then they all carry him around the house cheering for him for attacking this man despite having spent the last two days trying to get him to stop hurting people, and it's a real fucking weird -- not to say pointless -- way to end a show.
Still, fairly decent episode, and the dueling-conference story meant the show got to open up enough that everybody had their own stuff going on, but it still worked out thematically. It's great that we're halfway through the season and still discovering these people, and the many ways that Frank can let you down. Here's to seeing what else Karen can do when she puts her mind to it, and the Lip fallout from her stealing his dad.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!While the kids are downstairs playing, which for Carl means setting up an absurdly complex electric-chair system for his dolls -- "They have to pay for their sins!" -- Steve and Fiona are upstairs doing it, even though it's throwing off Fiona's schedule. There's some shameless fucking and boobs and positions and the whole time they're joking around about her dirty talk including how she prepares the kids' lunches, and when she finally has to tell him to come already she assures him she's already had a couple. Which is both sweet and efficient of her.
Steve complains that Fiona didn't make any noise during these alleged events, and she says it's a function of living in a house with one million children, which sets him off on a weird tangent about how early humans were probably used to mating in public and it was one sexual pioneer who took things indoors. He's almost there, finally, and then the electricity in the house abruptly cuts out, ending their sex soundtrack and causing Fiona to scream at Carl. But this one time it's not Carl: They've actually turned off the electricity.
Fiona runs out to plead with Hector, the electricity person, and they swear she's got the money -- she just spaced on paying the bills. It seems like a Gallagher lie but it's actually the truth, which is way worse because it means Fiona's off her game. Hector says to call him when she's paid the bill, and everybody runs around in the dark house.
Over at Sheila's, Eddie and Frank are two peas in a crankpot pod where Eddie's complaining about the Arts & Leisure section -- "Pagan-worshipping actors complaining about how America sucks? I'll stick to my steroid-riddled athletes, thank you" -- and Sheila's knocking Eddie's hand away from the usual cornucopia of breakfast treats. Sheila talks about how she wants to have Hungarian Night for dinner -- "hurka and töltött tojás and rakott krumpli," which Eddie says will exit Frank's "colon at the speed of sound," which is just lovely -- and Karen brings up Parent Night at school, which is the main thing of this episode.
Now of course Sheila stumbles over to the calendar on her fridge and talks a big game about how she will totally be there, doing that self-narrative thing she always does when she's trying to convince herself she's going to leave the house, and babbles for awhile, and it's sad. Karen goes, "Dad, will you join us at Parents Night tonight?" And Eddie's like, "Really?" But of course she snarls at that. "Not you, Fuckface. I was talking to Daddy Frank."
And so for the rest of the episode she's calling him Daddy Frank, which is either the sickest thing in the world or Karen being, as usual, completely upfront about her attempts to figure out life. She couldn't get Frank to fuck her, so she's laying off on that and trying on a different outfit, where he's her dad. Which is the one thing that will actually work, because he thinks of himself as a father, but his actual kids are authentically used to his bullshit. So you've got Karen pretending to be a perfect daughter, which fits hugely with Frank's idea of himself as the perfect father. Where manipulation and emotional honesty meet, that's where Karen lives: Whether it's making out with other guys practically in front of Lip or showing Daddy Frank her whale-tail, she's just doing Karen. Which is why the people all love her.
"Ladies, I don't do school. We all have our phobias, and school is mine. All of it. Textbooks full of falsehoods, teachers' unions full of thugs, and tenured imbeciles who still use words like irregardless: Not for me." And Frank bounces in a hurry, which normally would be about not wanting to be the father figure in Karen's life because it smacks of responsibility -- which is a small, not huge part of it -- but actually is about his insecurity having to do with school. The one time he's being honest, and the one time he actually comes through for his kid, and it's not even his kid. And that's why Frank's story is actually pretty great this week, for once.
In Frank's absence Sheila continues to lie and delude about how she's going to Parents' Night: "I have a session today, I'm gonna have a breakthrough. I can see it!" And of course Eddie is mean about it both because he is mean and because he knows laughing at her will erode whatever willpower she's stored up, so Karen gets in his face, awesomely: "Keep laughing, and I will slit your throat while you sleep." Wouldn't that be something.
While Fiona's finishing up the breakfast run -- and getting real fucking tweaked about it -- Lip's friend Warren shows up to get a paper Lip wrote for him. Ian's cleaning out the fridge, and Steve says there's enough hot water left for one more shower, and then he notices that Fiona is flipping out. Carl didn't blow up the neighborhood, it was Fiona's flakiness, and he's like this happens to anybody, and she almost loses it.
"Not to me, okay? I'm not like this. Distracted." By what? Well, Steve's the only new thing in the mix, which makes him a problem because distraction is death, and he thinks they're being flirty. They are not. At this point wild-eyed Fiona nearly raising the coffee urn above her head and smashes it on the floor, is how stressed out she is by her sudden inability to do everything right and save everybody. Steve backs down and just offers to go get coffee and stop flirting around, because she is on the fucking verge.
Upstairs, Lip is still asleep, so he wakes up to see Warren staring at him. Cash upfront, and Warren offers him $35 and not the agreed-upon $450, so Lip calls Koreans the Jews of Asians. Which is where the eponymous quote comes from, because he illustrates a proof that in his personal experience, "Many Irish are drunks, many French smell, most Chinese hate children -- that's why they sell them to Americans," and now you've got Warren trying to get out of paying. It's obnoxious and there are better ways to write this joke, but really the only good part is Warren stomping around upstairs cursing at him in clearly fake ching-chong Korean.
"Now the fact here is that you -- the one Korean I know -- made a deal of 50 bucks for an original essay about The Great goddamn Gatsby, yet once again, you're trying to get me to lower my agreed-upon price." Pay or GFY, Lip says, because the bills are due.
Also upset about money is Kash's wife Linda, because Mickey Milkovich (among possibly others) has made a habit of openly stealing merchandise ever since Kash revealed himself as an easy mark during the Mandy Beatdown stuff. "Soup, beer, chips, cigarettes, lollipops. Salt, people are stealing salt, Kash. What the hell."
You know that Marguerite Moreau is my favorite actor and that I really, really want to like Linda but this part was confusing because it's like, Is Kash really this much of a pussy? And the answer is yes, and Linda is in the right, and even Ian agrees. But that's so deadly to the character of Kash -- who needs some amount of sympathy from us to even exist, considering he's already morally compromised to the point of being a pedo -- that I didn't believe it until everything else that happens in the episode.
But somebody on the forums pointed out that maybe this is just how much of a coward Kash is, like, he can't even really be gay or have a real gay affair, he has to settle for the little boy that works in his store, and his whole thing is about cowardice. Which I can see this show doing, although in my experience and opinion guys caught in the hell of the closet -- much less simply navigating the infinite complexity of the spectrum of sexuality -- are struggling mightily and deserve support, if not exactly respect, until they figure it out. Punishment never led to redemption.
So maybe that's the best case: Yes, Linda is right about Kash; no, Kash is not to be hated merely for that reason, because issues of personal identity and acculturation are not in our jurisdiction as fellow humans. He's a cheater and a wuss, the anti-Karen if you will, and that's enough of an indictment that we don't really need to get into the thornier bits yet. He tries to send the boys to get juice and she's all, "You need to hear this. Other than genetic markers for heart disease and bad teeth, this dump is the sum total of what we're leaving you."
She can't figure out what he's doing while all of this is going on, because the truth -- either diddling a child or watching mutely as it happens -- are both so out of the realm of possibility. "Playing Brickbreaker on your phone? Do I need to get the security cameras fixed? Because that's a $2500 bill we cannot afford. Do me a favor while I take the kids to school: Grow a pair." Which again, I think my only real desire to love Kash comes out of my inordinate respect for the way Ian does things, which made Linda come off a bit more harshly in my head than maybe she really did here, or was meant to.
Or maybe all these people are just assholes, which is what the show keeps suggesting but which I cannot accept. Because except for possibly Frank Gallagher, I can't generally buy into the "just an asshole" theory of people. It's not how it works in real life and it certainly doesn't work for fiction, because if that were true all stories would be six words long. For Sale: Some asshole, never learned.
(Plus, they snuck a previously into the Previouslies which still makes no sense out of context, where Ian is wearing a bathrobe and yelling at Kash, "I'm gay, not queer!" which could mean a lot of things but has almost certainly never been on the show, which means there's a scene we didn't get to see that probably adds even more background.)
The idea about potty-training Liam is that they'll save so much on diapers they can buy him awesome things like candy and small cars. "Ah, rewards for shitting," Steve grins. "The good old days." Fiona hands Liam and the potty chair over with a too-real "When Liam starts holding his breath and squinting, put him on this." Steve tries to pass her money for the electric bill, with the worst possible excuse -- "I'm almost living here!" -- guaranteed to get her hackles up, and we learn that the "I forgot to pay" thing was absolutely true.
"Lip's a bit flush this month," is something that Americans might say, sure, and we exposit about how it's SAT season and he's always got money from taking people's tests for them. Debbie says Fiona can't have the phone today -- "I need it. Cold-calling for baby-sitting gigs. I sound more mature on the phone" -- but Fiona takes it anyway and Steve drives the kids to school. On his way out the door, Carl hands over an urgent message from the school that is now five days old, of course, and scoots before they read it. She takes the Killing Bat away and then gets very stern with Steve about how she will not be having the money conversation with him again, because basically it strikes at the very heart of who she is to ever accept help in that form when there are still so many schemes and tricks up her sleeves that don't involve gifts from Steve. It ends badly.
Outside, there are two dudes from like Ireland or Uzbekistan or somewhere, they talk like the Foreignia version of Fiona and it's just as distracting, and they watch Steve drive off with the kids before heading toward the house, talking about Catholics ("They replicate like rabbits!") and prophylactics ("If the Pope ever approves of condoms, I'd get baptized. A lot I like about the Catholic Mass.") and then they head inside after beating up a man in the back of their truck to confirm that it's Frank's house. Fiona doesn't look up when the whoever comes inside, assuming it's the kids, but luckily she still has the Killing Bat in hand when she notices the two heavies casing her living room. Seems Frank owes them either $6000 or a car, for some con or another, and whether or not he even lives there right now, it's going to be Fiona's turn to get beat up if he doesn't produce it. Fiona and her bad days. I don't think of myself as a disloyal person and I do have a fairly close-knit family myself, but I do think at some point you draw the line. I honestly don't understand, in terms of cost-benefit, what this loyalty to Frank earns you. It just makes the Gallaghers seem deranged/brainwashed, a little, that they haven't cut him out already for the sheer metric tons of shit he brings down on them all the time. Although no, I guess that was the whole point of the headbutt incident with Ian, that he had finally crossed it.
Ian's set Lip up with this great guy for the SAT scam, a tall dipshit football player, whose $300 will also net him a date with Karen ("He doesn't talk! It's fun!") but who seems really confused about most things. The dialogue and acting are both brilliant in this scene, as they try to explain basic shit to him: The SAT will be taken in three weeks. He will not be sitting to Lip while he's taking the test. He will in fact not be there, having been replaced by Lip pretending to be him, using a fake ID. "But what if they ask me for my ID?" Um... There will be a fake ID and you won't be there. "But I'm tall!" Lip just shakes his head and lets it go. "Yeah, that's a chance were just going to have to take." It's great.
So Sheila's "session" arrives, and it's a funny cute lady named Malaya who outfits her with a VR rig like Alsatia's Woozyhelmet and then guides her through a virtual grocery store while mixing herself screwdrivers and hanging out in Sheila's house. They chatter for awhile but the point of the scene is looking at Sheila with this machine on her head, hooked up to Malaya's laptop, and the little Atari joystick she's using, and the total weirdness of Sheila.
And the total sadness underneath it, because Sheila's just as trapped as Fiona but in such an extended metaphor that you get some really awesome effects, like how Fiona's claustrophobic life is basically Frank's fault, while Frank is the only thing making Sheila's agoraphobic life livable: He is her Steve, moving in on her territory and assuming the husband-role, but whereas Sheila desperately needs it to the point of overlooking Frank's drawbacks, Fiona is so desperately afraid of it that she overlooks Steve's strengths.
Punishment and redemption, flipping back and forth. Which parallel in turn comes through in this episode because of the whole Daddy Frank thing, and the fact that it's easier to be somebody else's pretend dad than to accept that you have failed your own kids. Especially in this episode, but also generally -- and almost entirely because Joan Cusack is so phenomenal that she raises her storyline so high -- it's interesting to think about how this could be read as the story of two single mothers, and the various complicated ways their sad lives intersect. These two households he's getting his Frank all over.
Fiona finds Frank at the Alibi, and goes off on him about how she was just threatened by goons, and he does that talking thing that he does -- he was supposed to drive this car somewhere so that it could be blown up for insurance, but then the car was stolen, maybe by Steve for all we know -- and Fiona changes the subject to how Carl is going to be kicked out of school if Frank doesn't show up at this Parents' Night, because the note said something to the effect of "Carl is a lunatic and a danger to the children," complete with flashbacks to Carl's various gleeful offenses.
"He's a boy. This is what boys do! When I was growing up, Joe Palazzo bit off a kid's finger. Sister Irmalita picked up the nub and wrapped it in Kleenex. She always kept her snot rag stuffed in her sleeve." He assumes Fiona will take care of it, and she gets a big laugh from the bar when she specifies that they want a parent, "a real parent," and not even that lays him low. Then a speech that is so self-indicting and obnoxious that you have to enjoy it word-for-word.
"I have never been threatened by teachers, and I am not going to start now. I am fed up with these pangender hermaphrodites who hate that human beings are a species with two distinct genders. It's like they've declared war on testicles! They want to remove all the masculinity from the schools, fill the world with yogurt-eaters. Well, do your research! We're all descendants of barbarians, and the sooner we face it, the sooner we'll have a civilization worth celebrating. So hell no, I won't go, because no one scares Frank Gallagher!"
I don't even... What? It's rare that you would describe something as an actual "rant" or "rave" you don't mean that they are literally "ranting" or "raving," but that was some rabid bullshit right there. And of course the second he says nothing scares him, here come the goons. So then there's a long, long chase of Frank through all the alleys and things of Chicago, and eventually he steals a kid's skateboard and poons a ride from a garbage truck just like Yours Truly in Snow Crash. Which is fairly awesome, despite the bird-flipping hubris he sends the goons' way once one of them has a hammy problem in the middle of the road.
For her virtual shopping experience, Sheila will be getting Indian foods: Curry, fresh chicken, stuff for a tikka masala. "It's really kind of nice to be out and about," Sheila says, talking herself through it as usual, and then Malaya introduces the first fellow shopper. Sheila gives the virtual person a soft crazy hello, and enjoys that a little bit. But then somebody gets a little too close and she starts shivering.
"Sometimes when we're out and about," Malaya explains soothingly, "People shop for some of the same things. And they enter our space for a moment." Sheila, with a wiggins that is truly awesome to watch, skrrks out a slightly hysterical, "Yes. That's happening." Malaya walks her through saying hello to this interloper, and Sheila's like, "She seemed really nice."
All of a sudden, though, Malaya hits turbonium on the experience and Sheila's being propelled toward the big double doors of the store and the sunlight on the other side, and she's pulling back on her joystick -- "I still need vanilla and raisins and peaches!" and it's super tense. "No peaches in Indian food," Malaya says, unrelenting, and Sheila's screaming "No! There's peaches!" and just completely unspools, and tears off the helmet, and it's sad -- is this punishment, or a shot at redemption she keeps missing? -- and Malaya is like, the most concerned and supportive you can be while still not actually caring about people's made up problems.
Fiona's on the phone with Steve, apologizing for her nerviness and abruptness this morning, and he's sweet and good about it as usual. Splitscreen with him stealing a car, of course, so we remember how he do. "I love that there's a world where people go out to lunch," Fiona grins ruefully at his futile suggestion, and she fills him in on how Carl is going to get bounced out of school if she doesn't produce a worthwhile father for him in the several hours. Finally, a problem Steve can't offer to swoop in and fix. It feels bad but it also feels clean. They say a friendly goodbye, the morning's BS forgotten.
Lip, Ian and Karen are smoking in the bathroom, and when she asks if they're going to the Conferences tonight they both laugh. "Need a parent for that, don't you?" Talk turns to Lip's consistent writing of A-grade papers and book reports: "You just take any novel, no matter when it was written, and you argue that the main character is a latent homosexual. No, seriously! Most English teachers are either gay and agree, or they're straight, but too scared to disagree and get labeled as intolerant."
Hmm. I pulled that one a few times, back in the day. It was always either the gay thing or comparing things to Clockwork Orange, or usually both. Those were my only real interests, besides military history and unicorns and linguistics. Frank Gallagher is a latent homosexual, so his entire dildo storyline is not actually a bigoted mess. Nancy Botwin is a latent homosexual, so her total horribleness is a revolutionary political move. Nurse Jackie is a latent homosexual, because that entire show is one giant not-so-latent homosexual. Dexter is a latent homosexual, because have you ever seen that show Dexter.
Two giant football players come in, one of whom got a 1870 on the SAT thanks to Lip -- "I'll most definitely be a beer swillin', roofie slippin', fightin' Illini year!" -- and the other of whom hasn't gotten his results. Ian tells him to spread the word, and there is a very icky, very real moment where the guy stares him down hatefully and just goes, "Don't tell me what to do." Karen asks why we help the people we hate, and Lip says we're taking our cue from American foreign policy, and between the two of them manage to completely dissipate the weirdly hateful thing that just happened.
Frank comes home to a very much out-of-it Sheila, who makes him take off his shoes despite clearly being on the run; over at the school Fiona's trying to head off tonight's huge Carl problem by approaching the principal directly. They produce a sculpture Carl made of "what he loves about himself," which is a papier-mâché pile of shit. It's gross. Fiona's like, "He's always had a highly developed sense of humor" and the teacher (who is I guess Carl's teacher) totally goes, "Carl's future is speaking to us through art! A dark future, filled with what -- even to the untrained eye -- is a budding psychosis!"
I'm kind of totally into Carl's teacher, she is just nimble in her weirdness. Anyway, they need a parent for reasons we'll learn later that are awful, so even if Fiona's totally the caregiver that's not something she can proxy for. "I've had what seems to be fifteen of you goddamn Gallaghers here at this school, and I have never once met a parent! Not once! Who in the hell is raising this degenerate?" And like, she can't even tell him the truth because the leverage he's already using is a call to social services, which he now makes completely clear, and we already know Blagojevich is waiting in the wings if that happens.
Sheila begs Frank to attend the Conferences with Karen in a totally sweet way -- "I just want someone to be there for her, to bear witness to her achievements" -- but he goes on another rant about how these nights are just about the teachers putting themselves on a pedestal so that you can worship them. It goes on at length and it's fairly gross, but we're building a pathology for Frank here where I think he's convinced that his failures in life are failures of the system -- I mean, clearly he's as much of a genius as Fiona or Lip -- and not his own failures, which means his insecurity about his fortunes becomes an insecurity about the system itself, because even Frank knows a diploma should be worthless considering his own intelligence.
But since that didn't work out -- him being an alcoholic and a disgusting, ridiculous person and all -- he feels like the whole world is looking at him and thinking he is ignorant, which he is not. And teachers are authority figures, which automatically puts all of his issues into projection mode anyway, not to mention the fact that they are in better contact with his kids than he is, and in a position to judge him for his parenting skills, which he can't handle at all, because he only sees his children as extensions of himself, and anything negative about them or that connection means negatives about him and nothing else, because they don't really otherwise exist.
Which is why Debbie is his favorite, because she has such a gift of compassion that she doesn't even look like the punching bag they all are, but which is also why Karen will benefit here, because she's both his child and not his child, and doesn't bear the taint of being an extension of him and therefore his own self-hatred. He can take all kinds of unworthy credit for how great she is, which he would do and always does with Lip and Fiona particularly, without having to deal with the downside of the ways he has irreparably damaged his own kids.
Anyway, the goons come knocking and Frank gets very scared, but Sheila just assumes it's the granola she ordered from Oregon, and then he busts out of there while she's stalling them at the door about taking off their shoes and all that. The lie is that they are on Frank's darts team and they're raising money for paralyzed kids. "He's kind of in an uncooperative mood today, but I'll see if the paralyzed kids can get him out!" She lets them in and is totally fucked up and sweet as usual, but once they're inside, Frank is of course totally gone. Luckily, I think that Sheila's innate awesomeness will keep her safe in a way that being jacked up-looking Fiona with the Killing Bat did not.
Mickey drops by the store and fully tosses out the contents of an inventory box the better to stock up on the essentials, right in front of Kash. It's scary and goes on and on, and Ian comes in just as Mickey's heading out. Ian is as befuddled and irritated by Kash's wussiness as his wife, and we learn that once Kash did stand up to Mickey's father, the Frank of the Milkoviches who is now in jail, and paid the price with his face. "I don't need any new enemies."
Now, this bothers Ian not just on the Gallagher level but on the personal Ian level, plus the "my boyfriend is a wuss" level, but when Mickey comes back for onion dip all he can himself manage is a weak "Why don't you steal from a neighborhood you don't live in? Have some civic pride?" before Mickey throws the dip at them, splashing it all over the storefront. Kash pulls out some cash and sends Ian to another store for the stuff Mickey stole, which somehow is the most pathetic part, and when Ian calls them both cowards Kash rephrases this as being "smart men in a stupid world." Which I guess is fine, except it's the only world you get, so stop making excuses about how reality could be otherwise. Gravity always wins.
Across town, Steve offers to stand in for Frank, but of course that won't work, and eventually Fiona gets discouraged again and sort of harshly gets off the phone. When she inquires as to Hector's plans for that night -- because he is now turning on their electricity, true to his word -- he doesn't even answer her, which is odd and sad.
Lip, of course, at this point finishes his SAT well in advance of everybody else, because why would you call attention to yourself when scamming the vicious conspiracy that is higher education. He calls up the girl Morgan that he was testing for, and once he's off the phone -- visibly proud this time, which is nice because he's usually so chill and modest about this stuff -- this dude comes running up and calling him by all of his test-taking aliases. Nicked! Double-nicked, actually, because the guy thinks that Lip is cheating because he regularly scores so high as these other people, so now he'd like to test Lip on a brand-new SAT just for fun.
Karen finds Daddy Frank lurking in the bushes outside Sheila's, because the goons are staking out the place. He begs her to divert their attention, since that's what she was born for and everything, but she blackmails him to go with her to the thing tonight. Which is plot, which in one way makes the episode make even more sense -- this is about saving his ass, as usual -- but falls into place, a bit jumbled, with his easing into the Jackson house in the way that he's doing.
"So, what have you allowed to be stolen today?" Nice. Linda informs Kash that optimism is "for children and presidents, not for mini-mart owners in a land of 30 million jobless," and then Ian comes back in with the replacement merchandise, which Linda figures out in exactly one second, even down to the fact that it was "the Milkovich kid again." (This is, I surmise, when everybody watching decided maybe Linda was okay after all.) She flips the OPEN sign and locks the front door, grabs a Nascar cardboard stand-up guy, and drags both guys out to the alley behind the store. Linda has a badassness, now let's see it go.
Sheila's dressing Frank for Parents' Night, so grateful and so happy for Karen and so insistent that Frank ask one million questions and report every single detail back to her. Which is asking a lot, so then she blows him also. Which I think is the first time she's done anything sexual that I recognize as something people do, a thing about which I've had questions.
Apparently Lip missed one question on the entire test. "No, I didn't. The wording is ambiguous. You're gonna get mail on that," he grins, tapping the paper. It's clear the guy is having all kinds of Good Will Hunting feelings about Lip, which is nice, and he tries to explain to Lip the extreme, the statistically relevant, awesomeness of him, but I think maybe Lip already knows how his life is going to go. Maybe he stopped hoping a long time ago.
"Punishment or redemption, your choice." I don't know what the choice is, because the punishment is that all those scores will be invalidated, but that's happening anyway? And then as far as redemption, the guy works at UC and wants him to come visit and maybe solve some equations or whatever. So the guy never actually says what the redemption or the punishment will be, except that if Lip ever takes a test for somebody again he will personally locate Lip and beat him senseless.
Linda takes aim at the cardboard fellow and puts a bunch through his head. "Lived a lot of years before I met you," she sort of explains, and then Kash does a not-great job with the gun, but then old ROTC Ian comes along and calls every shot: "Left shoulder. Right shoulder. Left leg. Right leg. Stomach. Neck. Face. Heart." If he were just a few years older, that would be the hottest thing I've ever seen on television in my entire life. As it is, aww Ian. What they really need to do is gang up on Kash. That would serve everybody's needs perfectly.
"We are going to stand united and show them that we are a family that is thriving," Fiona commands, and they take Carl into the principal. Phillip is 17, Fiona's 21, I don't know if we knew that before. So yeah, they don't have Frank there because they only just got the letter. The teacher's like, "I gave Carl that letter last week!" Lip points out that it's kind of dumb to rely on a nine-year-old for correspondence of this importance, but the teacher responds that they don't even have a landline.
"Carl is taken care of at home by loving siblings," Fiona starts, and the principal explains what's been at stake the whole time: He is making the moves to expel Carl, that is his end result. And he can't move forward toward that goal without ticking off every box, and the box is a meeting with the legal guardian. He is not stymied, in this pursuit, because he has the option of calling CPS or whatever, at which point I'm sure the rules change. This isn't a negotiation or a standoff, because ultimately he has the power -- Carl actually is nuts, and actually is a problem, and he's trying to go about this the right way, and the Gallaghers are just like, "Yeah, he needs more structure." Which is when the principal gets awful: "What Carl needs is medication, a near-death experience, or a lobotomy."
But I think only as a way of making the parallels and disjunctions clear, because we cut from that to Karen's teacher giving Frank a tongue bath about how she's "prompt, poised, cheerful," with a "vivid imagination" and "expansive vocabulary" and "greatness in her future." Which is as outsized praise -- no matter how deserved -- as was that attack on Carl -- no matter how ditto. Frank jumps in with some kind of rant about flashcards and how he is responsible for Karen's greatness which doesn't really seem to bother her, because she understands that adults are idiots, but also might be some kind of therapeutic for Frank, explaining to a teacher how to teach now that he has a leg to stand on.
Fine, the guy's calling social services finally. But just then Steve shows up, looking dapper and hot as usual, and with a quick backrub for Fiona explains how they're engaged and filing for legal guardianship of all the kids. Which is still not good enough, but then Steve notices some kind of Grateful Dead shibboleth among the principal's shit and takes him out for a quick joint and saves the day. Whatever. (Meanwhile Frank is getting the shit kicked out of him by the goons, who have once again located him somehow, and we see that this storyline is ongoing about the $6000.) Principal talks mad gross about Grateful Dead fans being sluts and whores and being everybody's first black guy and it's all this 1979 shit I don't understand, and then in the end he's still reluctant to go easy on Carl until Steve suggests he can get a regular pot supplier with a great discount.
Fiona is so overjoyed, as they head out into the crowded hallway, that she doesn't even really pry into how Steve solved this problem for her, and then out of nowhere: Karen and Daddy Frank. Debbie, of course, runs to him happily without even a thought to what a gross betrayal this is, but Lip shoots Karen a look I would never ever want to get from him. Frank grins cluelessly at Fiona -- "Did they expel Carl? What'd I tell you, drama and threats, all for naught!" -- and the saddest, most touching thing of the night is the teary eyes of Fiona when she looks over at Steve, like, "Do you see why I find it hard to believe this is my life sometimes?" Just the angriest grin, and so much shame, and no pride in her martyrdom at all. It's really, really affecting, like, this moment touched the place usually reserved for Sheila. I think it's one of the best little shots of the entire series to date, honestly. Good on Rossum.
Back at home Fiona explains very carefully that Carl needs to cut this shit out: "We love you, and we need you in this family. In this house. You need to stop biting and punching and hurting people." His response -- "How else do I make them cry?" -- is a red-flag perfectly deflected by Lip -- "Gossip and slander" -- and embarrassingly Steved by Steve -- "You know, when I get really angry, I usually just count to ten," he says, to absolutely no response from any of the Gallaghers. Then they all jump in with even better ideas: Hockey, karate, all of the usual kinds of "regulated, sanctioned violence for children," as Debbie unconvincingly supplies. And all of which would be awesome, except for what happens with Carl, which I still don't really get.
Sheila's overjoyed to hear what little detail Frank can produce about the conference ("I would've known, if I'd been there") and he's like, "She was developing into an incredibly poised young woman." Oh, Sheila loves that. But then she gets to thinkin' and it all goes dark again and she realizes that Karen is a good enough reason to stop sucking. "How am I going to help her be the woman she's supposed to be if I'm locked up in this house? I can't even get through the doors of a pretend supermarket, how am I gonna show her the Grand Canyon? Life is going on all around me, and I'm missing out."
Which is bad and sad enough -- and I don't even want to think about how much less Frank would care about her if she were a functional human being instead of this prisoner Rapunzel mommy-wife -- "Why am I so pathetic?" That is too much even for Frank, you can see it hurt him, and he just promises her she's going to get through those doors "any day now, and never look back." And she tells him again, and again, that he is her light. And maybe he is, and maybe that's even okay.
Lip's calling his people one by one to tell them their scores are invalidated, leaving voicemails for the people that don't pick up promising to explain face to face, because he is totally honorable when he's not stealing things from little kids. Eventually one of the bug guys from the bathroom shows up and punches him and then chases him upstairs and starts just brutally knocking his head into things -- which is when the rest of the Gallaghers spring into action -- and eventually he's hanging Lip out the window by his feet, and only Carl and the Killing Bat are enough to scare him into relenting.
And then when everybody's safe, Carl strikes out in this triumphant slo-mo and breaks the kid's legs anyway. So you've got this entire family of white people standing around while a nine-year-old ruins a football-hopeful's knee, for no reason, and then they cheer him and literally raise him up on their shoulders and carry him through the house like this was a good thing. I don't get that at all. Maybe it was the inside of Carl's head and none of that actually happened? Maybe it's the show once again suckily going for "shameless"? I dunno, but it sucked.
And like that isn't enough of a bummer way to go, the little sting in the middle of the credits is the principal getting the teacher stoned off Steve's pot and asking if she's ever fucked a black guy before. "Does rape count?" she says -- not funny -- and then "I was acquitted" -- not funny. So yeah. Rape jokes, racist jokes, whatever. Shameless.
But what sucks is, right before the football kid shows up, Steve and Fiona are having a neat little discussion about how she did not need his help, and she clearly did, and now she's acting pissed because he did. Not because she's actually pissed or actually didn't need the help, but because of the precedent that it sets and the way it's at odds against her own propaganda, which is that she needs nobody and is this supermom. But Steve, and this is canny, knows it's even scarier than that:
"You're afraid that if I keep on showing up and actually helping, that you'll like it. And liking it will lead to relying on it, and by relying on it, you'll be less of the You you've made yourself into. A kick-ass You, that you like. And I like, too. But you're afraid that if you learn to rely on me, then one day when you really need me to show up, I won't. And then you'll be angry at yourself for believing in something you've only seen in the movies. Something that I'm determined to prove to you actually exists."
She turns the music up, she jumps on him, takes him down. Every time he says it, it sounds a little louder. It makes a little more sense, it's a little more tempting to believe. He tells her these stories and they are too true for comfort, which only means he's getting in more, just by showing how far in he already is. He keeps saying she's not lost and doesn't need saving, but that's not what it feels like, and the fact is that to be known, truly known, is the scariest and the best thing. Which means the closer they get, the further she gets, because while he is very wise about a lot of things, including her, what she knows that he doesn't is that this is a face-off between punishment and redemption, the Fiona that survives and the Fiona that surrenders. And the only way that can possibly end is when one of them breaks.
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