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Lip and Ian have been arrested in connection with the stolen car Steve loaned them to look for Ian's dad, but thanks to Tony's whole obsessive deal about Fiona, they're released free of all charges. Of course, there's no reason Tony should tell Steve that, so Steven spends the entire episode running around trying to get them free, and eventually gives Tony the house he bought door to Fiona's house.
Seems dumb, but that's not the whole plan: Because of Tony's decree, Steve's flying to Costa Rica for a while anyhow, so he figures Fiona will just come with. Even Lip signs off on that one, but eventually Fiona decides to go work at Amy Smart's company, and lets Steve take off alone. Intriguing, especially given that Debs has finally come clean to Steve/Jimmy's mom about his double life and what he's been up to.
Meanwhile, the Daddy'z Girl sex tape goes viral, causing several awesome and a few sad things. Karen dumps Lip out of her guilt for sleeping with his dad, but Lip doesn't find out about that part for most of the episode, assuming it's because he blurted out "I love you" during their makeup sex. Once he learns the truth, Lip hands Frank a pretty awesome ass-beating which sort of makes the whole thing bearable, and in the end, Eddie kills himself. So that's sad -- I guess -- but Karen and Lip get back together, and then Lip pees on Frank, so it basically comes out even.
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Want more? The full recap starts right below!Last week, Tony accidentally arrested Lip and Ian at the conclusion of their dad search, and Karen fucked Frank on webcam to prove just how much she wasn't angry at her dad, and it was super gross.
Frank wakes up surrounded by clowns and profanities in Karen's scary little den and tries to remember what happened; he falls down with his old man ass up in the air and finds Karen's panties under a teddy bear or something.
Jasmine, Debs and Fiona are waiting in the police station, looking as usual a mess, when Tony comes in looking harried and trying to avoid their eyes. Seems Lip might be charged as an adult, felony GTA, and Fiona gets all over him about how they wouldn't steal a car or do anything, she's pretty scary right now, and Tony explains that if they don't tell where they got the car, Lip could do five years.
Lip and Ian are chilling, chained to a bench, talking about how this might really cut into Ian's plans to enlist and head to Korengal. "This your first felony bust? Getting a little late start for a Gallagher, aren't you," grunts the cop, and when Lip asserts that they're both Frank Gallagher's sons, pursuant to Ian's declarations last week, Ian gets a little pissy about Lip answering on his behalf. "I stole the car," Lip declares after the first of several unconnected prison rape jokes we'll be getting this week: "Ian didn't know anything about it." Ian doesn't say a word, at this point; Lip's poker face is unassailable.
After some annoying Frank behavior, Frank casually asks Kevin about the Illinois age of consent, which question Kev does not, to his credit, even think about answering.
Steve is, once again, not picking up his phone; Fiona's looking even scarier as she hisses into his voicemail about whether or not they got the car from him and similar questions. Where Steve is, is at the chop shop, still bloodied from his prior run-in with Tony, and hearing from his boss about how the Cayenne the boys were driving never got delivered. There's some stalling and double-talk, and then Steve calls the boys, but of course their phones are in personal-effects bags, and he's too scared to call Fiona about it. Jasmine is being, as usual, helpful to the point of creepiness -- she offers to take either Fiona or Debbie home, or both -- but this time when she leaves it's without a kiss.
Fiona sits through a long, pretty but unnecessary time-passes montage; Sheila nails barfed-up sleeping Frank with a snowball in her front yard and invites him inside, looking adorable in a giant fur hat, standing there in her pink mittens and huge fuchsia boots: "Every day a few more steps. I'm up to thirteen! Come on, sweet man. Let's get you a nice warm bath!" Not enough Sheila, I would say, has been a problem for a while.
I don't know what it is about the last couple episodes. Maybe I just liked the Eddie/Karen and Mickey/Ian stories too much, or maybe I just got too into the Fiona/Monica stuff finally hitting the fan, but it's just felt like treading water for a bit. Will Fiona run away with Steve? Given last week and the week before and the week before that, probably not. Will Ian do anything interesting? Not with Mickey in jail and Kash having proven himself useless once and for all. Is Debbie going to needle Steve about his double identity issues? Is Frank going to be almost too gross to deal with? Chances are those things will happen.
When was the last time you gave a shit about Fiona's tremendous responsibilities, or Steve's wheel-spinning slumming-hipster act? Do you think Ethel will exist this week, much less Veronica? Is this one of those episodes where Karen matters in any way, or is she just going to careen from personality trait to personality trait as a foil to Lip or Frank or Eddie? What's Jasmine's deal going to be this week? Is Lip going to be a genius with a brighter future, or the anarchic voice of every disappointed, heartbroken son?
It's not like you have to check in with every member of the ensemble -- God knows Carl's never done anything besides blow shit up -- and it's not like the whole thing has to snap closed like a box, although that would be nice (at least show us where the hinges are) but when you think back on this season, like: What was it even about? A churning mess of white privilege and there-but-for-the-grace about barely real poor people, spiced up with occasional brilliance and bravura performances? There's a reason it's called a story arc and not story pointillism, and it's what showrunners were invented to shepherd.
I'm just not sure where the burnout is coming from, if it's even burnout, or if it's not personal to me and this is just a situation of the story not gelling, but this season ends with a whimper. Maybe it's just that Showtime disease, where each episode is such a little movie unto itself that nobody really bothers to connect the dots and make a thing to hang the story on. It isn't enough that things should just be enjoyable: Things are enjoyable when they are well-made, and this season's last half has been about as good as some unholy union of Hung and Weeds, two shows I like that rarely justify themselves.
Anyway, Veronica is not so delighted to hear that Fiona leaned on one of the moms from Deb's school during last night's travails, so she jumps on the "we need a real lawyer" train to prove her worth: "Not some just-got-out-of- law-school, liberal do-gooder with a 2,000-ghetto kid caseload."
Sisterwife: "She's right. My husband's public defender never even met Clyde before the arraignment, then suggested he plead guilty to child molestation and sexual abuse." Everybody: (Stares, horrified, at everybody else.)
They talk about the defense attorney that managed to get Veronica's brother six years for arson, mostly to change the subject, and Fiona notes that, per Tony, it's possible she can at least get Ian released into her care, but Lip's got all these priors: Truancy, shoplifting, drinking, and that fight where he fractured Cam Matlock's cheekbone -- "But no felonies, though," Carl spits in this really weird voice -- and once V brings up the fact that it was a stolen Porsche, the subject turns, of course to Steve. Fiona heads door and pounds on the door, as a last resort, but there's still no Steve.
He's busily getting ignored by the cops at the station, I guess hoping to solve this before he has to talk to Fiona, and once he gets their attention he tries to pay their bail, but there's nothing he can do: They haven't been arraigned yet and possibly won't make it into court until tomorrow.
Frank sits uncomfortably in his pink silk housecoat while Sheila feeds him and worries about Karen; she comes in with that chain on her face and barely spares him a look before trudging back down into hell. "Don't go to the basement yet," Sheila sweetly pleads: "Come and sit with us!"
Steve's drunk mom is nursing a cocktail when Debbie shows up, looking for Jimmy; it is at this point that she decides on the nuclear option -- one of the few game-changers in the finale -- to a hilarious drunken non-response: "No. He's living 96 blocks away, on the South Side, dating my sister, stealing cars, and going by the name of Steve."
Frank busts in on Karen on the john and delivers a hellishly long speech about how they cannot continue to be in love or have a relationship or whatever the fuck he's thinking, because he loves his son so much, and a man must have the courage to fight his passions and whatever usual Frank bullshit, and she just stares at him for a while, with a sort of catatonic humor, until he goes away again...
And then, gamely trying to fit himself back into the fatherly (or at least mom's-boyfriendly) role, he comes back and does the unthinkable: Crushes some twenties into her hand, and tells her to pick up something pretty. You can see where he's headed with that, and it's not a bad thing necessarily, but... Learn to read a room. When he's gone she turns her hand over, with the money still folded inside, to look at her tattoo.
Steve comes to the chopshop with a second Cayenne, looking for payment, because he's also supposed to be getting out of town, and he can't ask Fiona to run away with him -- or whatever he's planning -- until he takes care of the boys. He's up against the clock not only of Tony, but also of this Lip and Ian situation: Fiona has to come away with him, but getting her son/brothers arrested is going to queer that deal, so it has to be done right. He tells the guy to hold onto his fee for the Cayenne, and heads off.
Meanwhile, though, Tony's working overtime to get the Gallagher boys released. He tells the cop truthfully how they're good kids -- "Lip's bright as hell, doing great at school; Ian's in ROTC, wants to join the Marines. They wouldn't have been in that car if they knew it was stolen... I promise I'll kick their asses up and down the block" -- but the guy won't budge because he wants the name of the thief. Well, they're South Side, so they'll never snitch, and anyway he ends up getting them off with Bears tickets. The whole family arrives to pick them up, with the usual Explosions-lite music playing, and Tony watches happily from the sidelines. Fiona doesn't even notice him there.
While attending to Carl's cavity search questions, Lip's first order of business back home is to check in once again on Karen. Still no answer; he's starting to get worried. He should. Carl continues to ask pestering jail-type questions until Fiona sends Lip for a shower and corners Ian alone. He doesn't technically tell her the car was Steve's, because in the absence of Steve she's clearly losing her damn mind, and then randomly comes out to her, and she's like, "Duh. You're still in trouble." It's possibly sweet, but comes off -- for the first time in the history of Ian -- a little pandering. If they'd had a conversation in a while maybe it would be more of a moment, but it seems unlikely that anybody would expect Fiona to have a problem with Ian's sexuality. Even Ian, at this point.
Karen takes her time editing together the video of her fucking Daddy Frank, and then just before she sends it to everybody in the universe -- subject line FATHER OF THE YEAR, awesomely -- we cut to Frank at the bar, where he's pleasantly surprised to hear that his sons were in jail and are now out of it. What happens is, Frank blames rape and incest victims for a while, graphically, Shakespearianly, no thank you, we're done.
Tony's Nameless Partner: "Season tickets? Playoffs too? Jesus, this Fiona better be the best pussy you ever had."
True Enough: "She's the only pussy I ever had."
Steve waves Tony's cop car over and tries to keep Tony from beating his ass long enough to get Tony to help the boys. Of course, Tony already got them out of jail, but Steve doesn't need to know that, so it's this whole chest-bumping Mantua situation where he eventually offers Tony the house door to the Gallaghers if he gets them out of jail. Which, since he's running away with Fiona -- best case scenario -- he doesn't need anyway. "Nothing else is changed; you're gone. You don't see her don't call, don't write. Disappear." Steve agrees, and their whole misbegotten deal is closed.
Veronica comes over with boxed Chianti the makings of a Bolognese ragu, but of course fucking Jasmine's already there, grinning like a lunatic, with champagne and stir-fry ready to go. Veronica is not, let's say, hugely pleased with the fact of Jasmine. Even if it weren't for the Fiona-jealousy and the unctuous obsessive way Jasmine relates to her, I think Jasmine's screeching meth-head excitement and friendliness would put her off. In fact, her shifty unfriendliness and disinterest in Jasmine's whole deal is one of the best-acted performances in the entire episode; it's worth taking another look if you were too distracted by all the happenings happening in this one.
There's a cute moment where Fiona tells Carl she's not punishing them -- the real reason being they didn't do anything wrong, but she can't admit that in front of everybody, so she just shrugs, "I'm not their mother" -- and then threatens to smother Carl in his sleep if he tries anything similar. Debbie tries to tell her about the Jimmy situation, but they ignore her to toast "Chicago jurisprudence and adolescent misadventure," and then just because Veronica hasn't murdered her yet, Jasmine reminds Fiona that she now has a job at her husband's accounting firm. Fiona starts to feel the weirdness, w/r/t V, but what are you going to do?
Lip heads over to Karen's -- Jasmine: "The jailbird? He's cute!" -- and immediately apologizes for calling her a whore that time that caused her to go insane. They have some fairly graphic, disconcerting sex, where he's totally into it and she's crying the entire time, and he eventually groans out a couple "I love you"s before we cut to the post-coital wave-off, where Karen has found new ways to feel horrible about herself, and about what she's done to Lip, and with back turned breaks it off completely.
Since we've been heading here all season -- and nobody in this entire episode is actually having the conversation they think they're having -- Lip assumes it's because he broke their cardinal rule of being sluts together, and grabs her face: "I don't love you. That wasn't love you-love you, that was like middle-of-sex, you know, love you. Listen, honest! I don't love you. Okay? No, listen. I promise! I promise, I don't love you!" All the way up the stairs, with him still in his boxers begging, calling out the precise opposite of the truth: "Karen! Karen, I don't love you!"
Which I mean, for a show called Shameless I think Karen's the only thing we're really ending well on. What a horrible fucking situation. Doesn't it seem kind of familiar, like high school? You're not allowed to love anybody, because that's too needy, but you want everybody to like you, so you have to fuck them without loving them, suck off their gay brothers and have orgies and whatever, make out with other boys in front of them so they won't go away.
And you've got your dad telling you he'll love you if you only admit that you're a whore, and then like a jack-in-the-box clown, surprise! That's the one thing he can't forgive. He takes the shame in him and he puts it in you, and then blames you for it.
Jasmine: "I like you, Miss Fiona. You're a dirty girl like me."
Lip:"I promise, I don't love you."
And you've got Daddy Frank at just the wrong time, offering you the chance to finally win one because he's someone that is not worthy of any kind of need. Nobody will ever care to win his approval, or his love, except for Debbie and Carl because they don't know better yet. Because he is the lowest. Daddy Frank, who's so insecure about his own masculinity he's just waiting for a reason to headbutt Ian, or fuck Lip's girlfriend. Who would rather put his back into a speech about the strength of character it takes not to do those things than it would take to simply not do those things.
And at the heart of it, this amazing boy who's so afraid of scaring you off that he's willing to do anything for you, to you, to prove he's just as hard as you are: And that's the only person you've actually hurt. All that time saying you weren't mad and it turns out it didn't matter if you were. It wasn't about anger at all, it was about spreading the shame so wide that nobody could get away.
Shame is the opposite of grace; it is not your natural state. It is a sign that somebody fucked up. What's that saying about how anger is like drinking poison and expecting it to kill somebody else? That's what Eddie did to you. That's how your father used you up. Doesn't that all sound just weirdly, horribly familiar?
Ian: "Lip, how was Karen? ...Lip?"
Lip: "She fucking dumped me."
Ian: "Were you two even a couple?"
Lip: "Still feels shitty."
Ian: "She is kind of a slut."
Lip: "Yeah, but so am I."
Eddie's going ice fishing this weekend. Hasn't even checked his email yet. When he sees the subject header, he grins wider than Frank Gallagher. He closes the door of his office, checks it twice with his hands nearly down his trousers already. Sits down to see what Daddyz Girl is up to; see what the Father of the Year's gonna give her . Little slut.
Frank eats his pie, starts in on Sheila's; Sheila wants to cheer Karen up with a car, since Eddie reneged on that little deal. Frank offers to take the money and find her something real nice. "Maybe a Vulva," Sheila suggests, on her way to answer the door. "I heard those are real safe." Eddie smashes through the security chain when she opens the door, back into the house she's barred him from, but Frank's already out the back door.
Debbie tries to tell Fiona about Jimmy, but she assumes she's talking about the stolen car, so she pets her hair and kisses her and explains that life is messy, and people have secrets. "You're still a kid," Fiona says. "So just be a kid, okay?" Fiona asks. Fiona tells her baby sister the biggest lie of all.
"The grown-ups around here have got things covered."
Frank's hiding behind the bar at the Alibi Room when Eddie gets there; Kev covers for him, shoeless and shivering.
Steve asks Fiona to leave the kitchen lights off, when she comes downstairs; he doesn't want her to see his face. She shouts at him about giving the boys a stolen car, and he asks her to run away with him. "Costa Rica," he says, out of nowhere. "It's beautiful." She follows his change of subject gamely, asks as usual who will care for the kids, and as usual they talk about how Ian and Lip can do it with Kev and V's help, and it's the usual conversation so we don't really need to discuss it -- "When are you gonna finally do something for yourself?" he asks for the millionth time, and even does a near verbatim gloss on how old she'll be when Liam is of age -- but the endpoint is that he's leaving for Miami in the morning, they can get passports there, and head out of the country immediately after. He leaves, Lip's like in the shadows with words of support after he's gone; it's all very empty and rehearsed and whatever, lazy, unconvinced. Fake drama we've already worn out by this point.
Frank is now fully homeless, with Eddie still stalking the streets screaming his name and looking to kill him, well into the night. morning, his coworkers are crowded around his computer, watching his daughter fuck the man who stole his wife. Over at the Kash & Grab, Lip runs into some boys laughing about the old Gallaghers, what they're up to, and the cuter big one offers to take Daddyz Girl off his hands once their family's done with her. He races home, eventually finds a Wi-Fi connection, and fires up the video. By the time Karen leaves her house, no doubt to do more havoc, he's waiting.
"Frank?" he groans, but she just keeps walking. He can't hate her half as much as she already does; it's already broken, this is not survivable. "Frank?!" he screams again, but she just keeps walking.
Veronica and Fiona have that same exact conversation everybody has already had with Fiona about her big choice or whatever, Fiona is the put-upon center of the universe who like the pelican of yore feeds the masses on blood from her breast, yadda-yadda, and Fiona randomly confesses that she is in love with Steve, so she breaks down crying or something and Veronica gives her a hug, and it's like, Costa Rica or don't, but shut up already.
In better news, Lip very nearly runs Frank down with a stolen car, but settles for beating the everloving shit out of him. Sheila gives Frank this whole speech about whatever lie he's told her about the beating, and they love each other, and it's pretty sweet considering how worthless Frank is.
In even better news, Eddie heads out to the ice hut, cuts a hole in the ice, ropes himself to a cinderblock, and dives deep. Until the boys at work saw, he wasn't ashamed. All that ugliness came bouncing right back, the second they saw what she'd done to him.
Lip finds Karen, hands still covered in blood and bruises, and they head out into the night while Fiona goes looking for her luggage. It's everywhere; it's covered in toys and trash and memories, but she finds it.
Karen apologizes to Lip, and he takes her hand. They are quiet. And the night is quiet, and absolutely shameless:
Ian: "She is kind of a slut."
Lip: "Yeah, but so am I."
Fiona waits for the train to take her to O'Hare; Steve waits for her there. The couples are kissing, and the security guys can't help but notice his bruises.
Lip's reading in his bedroom when Frank arrives on the front lawn, screaming his name: "I'm a shit. No, I am!" he shouts, as though anybody was there to disagree. He's making even less sense than usual; his words are spreading apart, into scripture and astronomy, Led Zeppelin lyrics, his own victimhood. There's something true behind his words, but the emergent structure is so desperate and useless that it just sounds like gibberish. "We're both victims!" he screams again and again, but whom he means, and victims of what, it's hard to say. It's sad. Lip finally opens his window and Frank sighs, in relief.
And Phillip Gallagher pisses on his father, in the snow. Frank jumps back, startled, and then shrugs. Fair enough.
They called him "Father Frank" when he was young; he was first in his class at Catechism. The metaphor's not lost on him. He steps back into it. It's warmer than rain, and heavier than snow. And when Lip is done, and closes the window again, Frank walks away, shameless and stinking, into the steaming night. But they are both smiling.
If we're both victims, then neither of us are victims. If we're both sluts, then there's no such thing. In a world of dirty girls and boys, there is absolutely no room for shame. They will tell you this isn't true -- you will spend your whole life being told this is a lie -- because their empire rests on its denial, on your self-loathing and fear. Because the grownups around here have everything figured out. But it's the only truth that matters:
The absence of shame is grace. Your natural state is shamelessness. If we're both dirty to the same degree, then we are both clean.
Steve finds a girl, whirls her around in his arms, but it's not Fiona. She's still standing on the platform when the train rumbles by. Finally, Steve heads onto the Concourse, and Fiona heads to Jasmine's office. She walks the whole way. It's warm inside.
Sometimes we are baptized, and sometimes we drown. Those are the choices.