A while ago, I got my mother hooked on Shameless. I don't know what I was thinking! She constantly calls me to complain about how hardcore the show is, yet she caught up with all seasons in days and is currently watching on a week-to-week basis. I'm kind of relieved that this has happened now that the show went as dark as its ever gone - and that's saying a lot in the Gallagher world - so that she could take a break after this episode's shocking ending.
Spoilers ahead!
Throughout this episode, I constantly got the feeling that things were walking towards a resolve. Not a finale, but getting there. Lip is getting it somewhat together in college, only to learn that his brother has stolen his Social Security to join the Army (and steal a helicopter!). Kevin is in on the Rub-n-Tug, which is going to be a good source of income (and trouble), Fiona finally pushes Robbie away and has to walk away from the most mature relationship she ever had. Frank learns his scheme won't work exactly the way he wanted to, and resorts to some interesting Native American rituals.
All of this happens during Fiona's birthday. Her day starts out with a visit from Robbie at her house, alongside a gram or two of cocaine. The cocaine was Chechkov's gun (the idea is that, if there's a gun, it's going to be fired later in your story), but somehow it didn't seem that way. I didn't think the cocaine was a "plant" for a later "payoff", and when it was, I was floored. So was my mother.
Shameless has gone darker than probably any other show on air right now, and constantly. When "Get on All Fours", Girls' darkest episode, aired, it was a scandal, probably because Girls is more mainstream that Shameless. But Shameless walks that territory constantly, since season one. Either by Sheila and her, let's say unusual sexual preferences, to everything Frank does, which includes abandoning his only loyal kid to hang out with his newly discovered daughter, which tries to kiss him and gives him an erection, to, finally, a baby overdosing on cocaine and nearly dying.
This was such a great narrative decision. It took Fiona, who, I feel, hadn't, up to this point, really suffered the consequences of her life choices, to the darkest hole she could ever crawl into, and there's really little hope of her getting out of this ok. What I thought this episode did beautifully, besides pulling the rug from under our feet and taking us in a whole, new, unexpected direction, was the tying between all storylines. This weaving was done, mostly, via Lip, who had his best episode of the season. He finally has things somewhat together. The poster he writes for himself, "No Distractions", was a great little piece of irony, since everything that happened after that is very much distracting: learns that Ian has gotten both himself and Lip into trouble. There was a wonderfully done scene of Lip finding Ian working at a gay club, and high out of his mind. Debbie is too young to understand why "he's acting weird" (even though I would think that a Gallagher would notice what it was instantly) and Lip has to shelter his little sister while trying to save his lost little brother. And when he gets home, finally, to relax a little bit, the older sister that should be taking care of all this in the first place, gets arrested for being completely irresponsible. Lip always feels like he has to carry the world on his shoulder, and maybe, this time, he will actually have to.
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