By Jacob
Well, Karen's not really dealing so well with last week's whole shame spiral: She's blacked out and started hacking away at her hair pretty much randomly, she's got one of those nostril/earlobe Jane Child chain things that are so popular with the youth these days, and she's started the eponymous video diary. Things start getting dark right around the time Lip stupidly points out that, judgment-freely speaking, she always was kind of a whore... So by the time Frank stumbles home full of Oxy, that's just one more reason for her to get stoned and fuck him on video, for the whole world to see.
Frank's worker's comp thing has been cancelled, so his whole object in this episode is to get a dangerous but not fatal job that will take him out of the workforce once again. For a Frank storyline it's not even really that annoying, and his final choice -- some kind of furniture finishing off-gassing nightmare -- even gives us a fairly fun round of whimsical coworker bingo before he nails himself to a cabinet in order to get out of there.
Fiona's confusing new friend, Amy Smart, kisses her on the mouth a few times and generally acts like a crazy person but I think it's too soon to tell what she's really up to. Tony stalks Steve all over the place and ends up handing him a pretty impressive ass-beating, and an ultimatum: Go to jail or disappear.
Ian and Lip spend the episode looking for Ian's biological father, which while it's the backbone and most interesting thread this week, it also seems a bit rushed and silly. First they go see Grammy Gallagher -- Louise Fletcher, from Cruel Intentions and also the planet Bajor -- who tells them of her sons three: Frank's blue-collar twin; the suburban success story; and Wyatt, who lost his testicles in the Navy. The twin is pretty funny, paranoid and bearded, but the boys instantly know when they visit the cul-de-sac of the second brother that that's their mark.
Of course, so does his wife -- given that Ian and their son Jacob are pretty identical -- and the boys eventually bounce. Ian's already made peace with their family's peculiarities, and is fairly open the entire time about the fact that he's only been indulging Lip's fantasies of having another life and father. Of course, he might have reason to rethink that, since the thing that happens to them is that Tony calls in the stolen car they're driving, under the assumption that Steve is behind the wheel, and gotten the boys into the biggest trouble of their lives.
week's finale: More pressure, more noises, some pretty confusing messes for Fiona and poor shitty old Eddie Jackson gets it in the teeth once again.
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