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Show of hands: who here still actually cares about B-613? Even a little, I mean. Because do you remember how sorta fun last Scandal was? Well we’re back to B-613 big time now. Everyone get in on a collective UGH with me.

UGH.

To fully explain how lame this episode is I’ll have to give away the twist right at the front. Rosen, Quinn, Huck and Charlie round up a bunch of (former? current but laying low? who knows?) B-613 agents/known associates of Jake, who is decidedly not playing along with their scheme to take down the evil organization once and for all. So all of the agents get killed, presumably by Jake, upon whom Charlie walks in as he’s surrounded by their dead bodies; this causes Rosen’s whole case to fall apart. Except that it turns out that Jake didn’t kill them after all, and Rosen’s assistant Holly is secret B-613 and has been on to them all the whole time. Jake knew that and he’s been working secretly with Olivia the whole time, and Rosen will just have to learn to trust him, which means literally never trusting him.

Folks, this is what I like to call “square one”. The plot of this episode is a misdirect, meant to call into question the audience’s loyalty to, and perhaps affection for, Jake Ballard, before another OMFG twist pulling the rug out from us while simultaneously reaffirming our loyalty to, and perhaps affection for, Jake Ballard. This narrative bait-and-switch is lazy, but we can forgive lazy. But it also assumes an undue amount of interest in Jake, who is such a milquetoast character by now, pliable to whatever needs the plot has of him, that it’s not even that unbelievable or shocking that he would turn coat at the last minute and decide that B-613 is maybe worth keeping around after all.

This is, after all, the man who killed James Novak. A fact that David Rosen fucking knows yet is still ready to pardon Jake for. And yes, everyone is a terrible person, blah blah blah. But given this and given also the fact that Huck still killed an innocent girl two weeks ago and we’re still totally unperturbed by this fact and in fact are cracking jokes about, I’m a little wary of the show’s moral scales vis a vis taking down terrorist organizations and where exactly black and white fall on the landscape. Put more simply: Fuck your white hats.

A slippery moral scale doesn’t damn a show in and of itself, but it can be the final nail in the coffin of an otherwise dull or poorly made episode, and “Honor Thy Father” is both. Never mind the B-613 plot winding us in circle so that we can end up at exactly the damn place we started. Because we also spend the an inordinate amount of time with Mellie’s half-sister Harmony, who is dug up from the bogs of some southern bayou for vetting by the ever-wonderful Lizzie Bear. Harmony is a walking cliché who injects some obvious drama into Fitz and Mellie’s new working relationship, and the upshot is that Ftiz needs to learn to start playing the role of First Gentleman. Never mind that he is an acting president. Never mind that Mellie is planning a Senate run for a state in which she does not currently reside. These are minor obstacles. (At least Cyrus is open about the fact that she doesn’t have a shot in hell—but then Cyrus is openly bitter about most things these days.) Their dinner scene itself is entertaining in the way that we’ve made awkwardness its own form of entertainment in our modern lives, and the central idea of what Mellie’s doing is particularly interesting given Hillary Clinton’s now-official run for the Whie House—but it doesn’t exactly have the makings of a B-plot, especially not in an episode that’s in desperate need of a lively one to anchor the duller season-arc proceedings.

There is also of course the case of the week. This time Olivia works for Congressman Nicholas Reed, whose father is on death row for a murder that Nicholas doesn’t believe he committed. (Spoiler alert: Nicholas did the murder and his father is taking the fall.) There is a moment of unintentional (at least I hope it’s unintentional…) hilarity here, when, despite the fact the elder Reed does not act even remotely like an innocent man, Olivia decides for no good reason that he is and goes HAM on the case. Something something Olivia is trusting her gut. She turns out to be right, but based on literally no information that was available to her, and in service of a perfunctory, Law & Order style twist.

I don’t know, guys. Maybe I’m just burnt out on the network season model. But “Run” was so inventive and engaging, and an indication that Scandal is still capable of some awe-inspiring television. So why am I so bored?

Stray Observations:

With a title like “Honor Thy Father” one expects Rowan, and sure enough he shows up at episode’s end. Here’s hoping Joe Morton gives the show the kick in the ass it needs, a task that he’s generally up to.

Seriously though, Mellie and Harmony’s relationship is dredged right out of some imaginary book called “101 Television Clichés For When You Don’t Know What to Write Next.”

This has been a sort of formless, shapeless season, and it has in “Love Songs (In the Key of Gallagher)” a finale to match. And yet this episode achieves a sort of formal grace, a specificity of vision, that I wish had been more present in the season as a whole. It’s like a tone poem of grief and fucked up relationships. Or at least, it has this specificity of vision as its goal, and occasionally achieves said goal. In practice “Love Songs” is kind of a mess, leaving no clear direction for the next season of the show, and not really commenting on the preceding season beyond to say, “well that was pretty fucked, right?”

And maybe that’s the point. Over twelve episodes we have watched Fiona fall in love, again, twice, and by the end of the “Love Songs” she has managed to implode both nascent relationships, before she’s really given either of them a chance. The thing is, Fiona is so oblivious about romance much of the time, she doesn’t even realize that she ruined any chance she had with Sean ages ago, when she decided to marry Gus; so now, she’s throwing away her marriage for something that doesn’t even exist. Not that Fiona would find happiness, or at least lasting happiness, with Sean anyway. “Happy is overrated,” he says. “Grow up, Fiona.” He might be in love with her, but he knows her, and he knows better.

It doesn’t help that Debbie spends much of the episode throwing Fiona’s indecision back in her face. Debbie’s story is slight (even if it does feature teen pregnancy, about which more in a moment), but it serves to contrast Fiona’s in a key way. Fiona has only ever defined herself in one role, that of mother hen, and that’s a role that has been denied her since she went to prison. Lip filled it, then Sammie. She’s never really come back, not the way she was before at any rate. And she can’t figure out what she wants to be now. Debbie, with all the self-assuredness of a teenaged idiot (not that there is another kind of teenager), knows exactly what she wants right now. She hasn’t yet led the kind of life Fiona has, where seemingly simple decisions like who to love, and how, become hopelessly complicated.

“Love Songs” also goes a long way to suggest a particular Gallagher “charm”, if you can call it that. Lip’s relationship with Amanda has been nonexistent for much of the season, but it rears its head here in a big way. She’s been falling in love with him in the background and he hasn’t even noticed. Now granted, they had a pretty strange dynamic, and a pretty explicitly open one—but there’s no accounting for love, and to hear Amanda tell it, Lip didn’t have to do much of anything. Just by virtue of being him, he “made” her fall for him. It’s another facet of the charmed life Lip’s been leading lately, and we see it in Helene too, who combines both aspects: she falls head over heels for him, or appears to be, because he is Lip Gallagher and of course she does; but she also represents the economic and academic gifts that await him in this new world he’s carved for himself.

And then there’s that final love song, as always, that of Frank and Bianca, which takes a turn for the tragic here. They made it to Costa Rica after all, and the few sun-drenched days they share there are, somehow, the most normal and romantic thing happening in the episode. At least until Bianca plays Russian roulette with herself and then accidentally shoots Frank in the other arm. Now the Gallagher-ness of it all comes into play. The whole thing is so fucked that Frank can’t help but laugh. What is Bianca, if not Monica all over again—a series of manic highs, undercut always by a melancholia, Bianca’s brought on by cancer rather than bipolar disorder, that promises nothing but sadness to come. Would Bianca have drowned herself if she hadn’t met Frank? Or found another way to end her life on her terms? Or would she have conceded to her family’s pleas, gotten treatment and gone through chemo and watched her body fail her and her hair fall out until she died anyway?

Would it have made any difference in the end? “Love Songs” gives us the original article in Monica, so that we can compare these two loves of Frank’s life. Monica is just as awful as she’s always been, a toxic influence on all around her, one that can’t be excused even by her illness. The audience can give a no doubt audible sigh of relief when Ian comes to the some conclusion and ditches her to return home—but he does so to break up with Mickey. Not because he doesn’t love him, but because Ian doesn’t want to be cared for. It’s akin to Bianca’s decision in a lot of ways—a kind of romantic self-immolation, because Ian knows that he is no longer the boy Mickey loves, and can never be again.

Anyway if “Love Songs (In the Key of Gallagher)” were more thoroughly the episode I talk about above then we’d be in business. But like I said, “Love Songs” is sort of a mess. So these season capping developments—which aren’t really developments at all, but more codas, summations of themes that have been percolating weakly under the surface of a scatterbrained story—are muddled by forays into weird comedy, such as Kevin and Veronica’s strip to the free clinic or Debbie’s encounter with a pervy convenience store clerk.

And then there is the ending itself. I don’t know what on earth the writers of Shameless were thinking with Sammie’s eleventh-hour (really more fifty-fifth minute) return here, nor with the sudden heel-turn into slapstick comedy that Ian and Mickey’s otherwise lovely break-up scene takes. Yeah, we get it, they’re Gallaghers. But everyone chuckling about how Sammie is chasing Mickey around with a gun is not a capper to the season that anyone could have wanted.

There are the tags, as well. The first reveals Carl and Chuckie to have become the leaders of their respective gangs, interrupting an otherwise friendly game of juvie dodgeball to stage some sort of brawl. It’s broad and over the top and is another attempt to end the season on a high comedic note, despite a finale that begs a more nuanced touch. The second tag, at least, is lovely, a long overdue conversation between Ian and Lip, interrupted by Frank’s return home. He takes their joint and says only, “she’s gone, boys,” leaving his boys to laugh about how fucking strange their lives are.

So the writers know what they’re doing. They can hit that high water mark pretty consistently. But so often this season they seemingly chose not to, and the last couple minutes of “Love Songs” really are abysmally bad. A finale should sum the preceding episodes and give an indication of what’s to come. “Love Songs” does the former to an extend, but it leaves us scratching our heads as to the latter.

Stray Observations:

The new setting in Costa Rica (I’m not sure where they actually shot it) gives some lovely shots that otherwise wouldn’t be possible on Shameless. Frank on the beach at sunrise after Bianca has drowned herself is a particularly great one.

The episode opens with a montage of sex scenes, in case the title didn’t tip you to the themes here strongly enough. In said montage Mickey is having sex with some chick, presumably to get past Ian. It doesn’t work. Later he goes to the park and picks up some random dude, which is a weirdly triumphant moment for the character.

Speaking of Mickey: rumors abound that Noel Fisher may not be back. That would be a shame, especially given the note Mickey leaves on here.

By the way, Monica is selling meth for her meth cook boyfriend who can’t be older than Lip. So yeah.

Debbie is actually pregnant, as another tag reveals. I would reflexively say that the plot won’t go through with this, but honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if another Gallagher is on the way soon.

Do we think that either Sean or Gus will return in season six? It took a while for me to warm to Sean but I have, so I’d like to see more of Dermot Mulroney when we come back. Gus I can take or leave.

As always the grade below is for the season as a whole. The episode grade is 7.5/10.

Love is a complete sham in the world of Scandal. Or at least that’s the takeaway of “Put A Ring On It,” which, despite this rather bleak worldview, manages to be a thoroughly enjoyable time, and which even wrests from the wreckage of all these romances something vaguely resembling a happy ending. This is an episode that play on one of the show’s greatest strengths, taking its case-of-the-week structure and turning it inward upon one of its own characters: in this case, Cyrus Beene, who has been neglected this season and takes a well-deserved moment in the spotlight. It also employs another of the show’s greatest strengths, sparingly used, which is the flashback.

But there is a curious thing about “Put A Ring On It” as well, which is that it feels dreadfully out of place in the season as a whole. For a moment I wondered if ABC had somehow rearranged the air dates of some episodes, but there’s enough frame of reference here to confirm that that’s not the case. So why are we completely ignoring that Huck killed a girl last week, and that Quinn and Olivia are well aware of that fact? What of B-613, who at any minute will kill any number of these people who are angling to take them down?

Please don’t mistake my questioning of this for an actual desire to have the questions answered. I am more than happy to pretend that B-613 never existed on this show, and for much of “Put A Ring On It” we can do just that. (The flashbacks to James do force us to remember exactly why he is dead.) The bottom line is that this episode is much stronger for cutting the overwrought baggage that has accumulated in these stories.

Really, I just wish Scandal would strip down to this level more often. There’s any number of things to laud about this episode. The focus on Cyrus’s impending sham wedding allows for a flashback structure that investigates his evolution over all these years. His time with his first wife, Janet (played by Shameless’s Emily Bergl, which is no doubt pleasantly distracting for viewers of both shows) reveals a man who has always been externally at odds with his internal self. He marries her not for love but for a leg up in the election for comptroller, of all things. She is a means to an end, and that callousness towards his own personal life eventually chases her away.

When his honeymoon with James rolls around, Cyrus has not really changed; if anything he has become more callous, more calculating, colder than ever. He asks James to use his influence as a journalist to bury a story that would otherwise require him to cancel the honeymoon. It’s the one thing he was never going to ask, and it means that for the remainder of their marriage James is a tool first, husband second. (See Leo and Abby’s arguing about the “separation of church and state” for a counterpoint to this.) And it’s this attitude that got him murdered. More than anything, “Put A Ring On It” parades in front of Cyrus and in front of us just how much of a monster Cyrus has become. The fascinating this is that he did so slowly, without ever realizing it, but also, really, it happened all at once. In a way he has always been this way.

Obviously the other big flashback is to Olivia and Fitz on Cyrus’s second wedding day, when Fitz literally gave Olivia a ring, one she wears at episode’s end to Cyrus’s third wedding day. The look of wistful hope that Olivia gives Fitz at the end of the episode is sad more than anything, because we’ve just spent forty-five minutes explicating the idea that marriage isn’t something that will work for any of these people or for the lives that they’ve built. But damn it if separating these characters hasn’t revitalized their romance in a major way. When Olivia visits Fitz in the Oval, pointedly not wearing his ring, there’s a real weight to her decision (and some great decisions by director Regina King to show the naked hand multiple times—Fitz may be an ass, but he notices right away).

And yet rom all that comes a mostly pleasant, mostly hopeful episode. Cyrus’s speech to Michael at the end, after an episode of calling him “whore”, is oddly sweet, in a way that only Cyrus can be. Of course he feels sympathy for Michael after meeting his heinous (if cartoonish) parents, but it’s not that he changes his opinion of the man. He still won’t love him. But he doesn’t have to hate him. He can engage him on his own terms, as a tool, as a means to an end, and they can build a life from there.

Which brings us, inevitably, to the friendship between Olivia and Cyrus, so often taken for granted, but which is so excellently highlighted in this episode. Even with the horrible things they’ve done, for each other, to each other, with each other, they still communicate with a wordless efficiency. They still understand each other, and their world, fundamentally. It’s why Cyrus can call Michael “whore” and still marry him and still fashion a version of happiness. It’s why Olivia can hate Fitz for saving her life. They just get it. They are one and the same. If ever there was a time to highlight this, it’s now, when the characters are still so scattered from each other in the wake of Olivia’s kidnapping.

“Put A Ring On It” is another one-off episode to be sure, but it’s a hugely enjoyable one. Stripped down, character-focused Scandal is ultimately the one I prefer. As we continue to figure out exactly what this show needs to be, now and going forward, I hope some of this episode’s DNA stays in the mix.

Stray Observations:

• OF COURSE Sally Langston is a Faux News (pun not entirely intended) correspondent. Cyrus: “No one’s going to take her seriously, she’s a grown woman who thinks angels are real.”
• That said, I don’t believe that Olivia, or Fitz, would name Sally as Secretary of State for any reason, ever. Sally is nuts.
• Bellamy Young is on fire this episode. Mellie gets some choice moments, whether it’s her catty dismissal of Liz North or her brilliant mimicry of Olivia in the wedding war room.
• I’m still furious about the way James was dispatched, in the midst of one of the stupidest stories Scandal has done, but Dan Bucatinsky’s reappearance here tugs at the heartstrings nonetheless.

About halfway through this week’s Scandal I came to a realization that surprised me for a couple of reasons. It’s never been clearer than with “It’s Good to Be Kink” that Scandal is having real trouble balancing the fallout of Olivia’s kidnapping with its desire to return to business as usual. And I never really thought that Scandal would be the type of show to 1) stray so far from its formula in the first place or 2) make such an abrupt return to said formula that I would miss it straying. But here we are, desperately trying for a sort of character study on Olivia Pope, while Lena Dunham blackmails every literal dick in Washington.

To wit: “It’s Good to Be Kink” is chock full of wacky hijinks of varying levels of tastefulness. Many of these hijinks are funny: David Rosen tried out super kinky sex once because he was feeling down on himself; Charlie fakes being a torture-porn aficionado a little too well (because he is not faking); Lena Dunham’s wig. It’s all hilarious.

Also to wit Huck slashes Lena Dunham’s throat in a most chilling and pragmatic fashion because he is a dangerous psychopath and she is a loose end. Said dangerous psychopath continues to be presented to the audience as a sympathetic character despite having done very little to earn the audience’s sympathy, and having done a hell of a lot more to not earn it.

I cannot square this throat-slashing psychopathy with wacky hijinks. Just can’t do it, and in fact won’t do it. “It’s Good to Be Kink” left me with such a terrible taste in my mouth; it has soured me one a season of Scandal that until now I’ve been pretty sweet on. I mean, I don’t know. Where do we go from here? What is left to say in terms of Huck’s characterization? Because he hasn’t changed, and this act makes it clear that he never, ever will. Huck is already a flimsy, tedious character—I felt empathy for him last week on the strength of a particularly well-written and -acted scene, and that’s it. But this is finally the bridge too far. Stop asking me to feel for this character.

The funny thing is that this is a question raised throughout the show. Everyone has done terrible things, but the other characters have other, non-psychopath aspects to them. The other characters tend, usually, to show some damn remorse. Huck does no such thing. Huck sits there and silently signs the paperwork guaranteeing his freedom from B-613’s wrath while David Rosen prattles on with guilt over Lena Dunham’s death. Fuck Huck, you guys. Fuck this redemption arc, since the path to Huck’s redemption seems to be a loop straight on back through the behavior he’s supposed to be redeemed from in the first place.

Like I said: my taste is soured now. The rest of the episode is honestly fine, if a little wheel-spinny. The plot is a little too goofy for me, and the idea that a pending sex scandal is what throws the B-613 takedown into crisis mode is more than a little ridiculous. But Lena Dunham really is perfectly cast, and hilarious in every scene of hers that does not involve her throat being slashed. (“I mean define ‘violate’, for you.”) There’s a lot of showing going on—Mellie and Liz are going to team up; Cyrus keeps trying to bring Olivia back into the Washington fold—but it’s all promises of things to come, and nothing much in this episode itself. The sex book scandal would have been fine as a standalone episode, a pretty entertaining case of the week. It’s the attempt to tie it into the show’s ongoing (and misguided) arcs that cause trouble.

This week is as good a time as any to also address that I really, really wish the show would get its cast under control. Cyrus, Mellie, and even Fitz have all faded to the background of late. It’s not a question of having too little to do, but of the scripts giving us too little reason to care. Even Olivia has taken a back seat, though this at least is intentional. And considering that her scenes are the best of any given episode, it tends to be worth the wait to see Kerry Washington on our screens again.

Speaking of Olivia: I’m loving Washington’s portrayal of her PTSD. You can see Olivia going through the motions, whether in talking with Cyrus or in trying to intimidate Lena Dunham; and the latter sees right through her. There is a spark missing in Olivia Pope. She seems like she might have gained it back at episode’s end, taking to bed a stranger from the bar in her own apartment. And, after Marcus questioned her blackness in “The Lawn Chair,” I do think it’s significant that it’s a black man she takes home. Something is brewing here, in terms of race and identity, and how Olivia’s involvement with the establishment has made her lose track of the “black” part of herself. I don’t know that Scandal is equipped to do much more than skim the surface of this, but we’ll be tracking it for the rest of the season for sure.

Stray Observations:

• How much did Abby rock this week? So much, is how much.
• Fuck Quinn, too. Her bullshit distinction between justice for Lena Dunham and Olivia’s “family” made me almost as angry as the actual throat slashing.
• Mellie, a sitting First Lady, is planning to run for Senate in Virginia. Good luck with that, Mellie.
• Cyrus has become such a dick lately (well, more of a dick), but since we’ve seen literally none of his internal life in weeks, we’re lacking necessary context. Next week’s episode looks like we’ll get at least some of that context.

Even the title of “Carl’s First Sentencing” encapsulates perfectly the waggish sense of irreverence that permeates Shameless. That rebel attitude is on full display in the episode, for better or for worse. But hey—for once, it’s not Frank acting as the dead weight dragging the show down, and for that reason alone I’m pretty taken with this episode.

I’m still not quite sure how I feel about Carl’s storyline, which is the obvious focus of “Carl’s First Sentencing,” but it’s perhaps for the best that the tack they’ve taken with it is one of full-on comedy (if dark comedy). Take it seriously and the whole endeavor becomes too dark, too wholly depressing for a show that is still ostensibly a comedy (at least if the Emmy categorization panel is to be believed). But give it just the lightest of touch and suddenly CHUCKIE’S IQ IS 71 AND IT’S THE BEST SCORE HE’S EVER GOTTEN I’M DYING—verbatim from my review notes, but seriously, Chuckie as a perennial punching bag is undoubtedly the best joke this show has in its bag of tricks. “Even if he is functionally retarded, he’s getting time,” says the public defender given the thankless task of defending poor Chuckles. That’s a tricky line to walk as far as punch lines go, but all of the chokes at Chuckie’s expense undoubtedly land.

An eight-year-old getting a four-month sentence for something that is pretty clearly not his doing is a tragic situation. That “juvie” in this instance is an experience on par with something out of Oz, and that Sammie gives her child not comfort or sympathy but advice on avoiding brutal prison rape (the advice is to simply accept less brutal prison rape) and a shiv, should ramp up the tragedy exponentially, but instead, by dialing every aspect of this story to a ludicrous eleven, “Carl’s First Sentencing” gets the laughs it’s going for, instead of the groans that could (should?) have accompanied this plot.

And then there’s Frank, who spends the episode gallivanting about Chicago with Bianca the ER doctor. She breaks down in the middle of checking up on Frank’s wound—she’s been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and has little time left to live. Meanwhile Frank shouts at God and lives to fight yet another day. It’s cosmically unfair, and Frank is such a vile character that this feels like a twist of the knife. And yet I don’t hate it! Somehow, against all odds, there is some real power to the time Frank spends with Bianca and the strength he gives her to get through her diagnosis. The lake location they’ve found, and to which Frank returns again to contemplate his and Bianca’s mortality, is gorgeous, and wonderfully shot again here—I’m beginning to think it will never run out of mileage.

Something that has run out mileage: Kevin and Veronica. I’ve been very patient with this story, hoping with each episode that we’ll get to explore the substance behind their fight. But we haven’t gotten to do that. There is no substance here. Instead we have Kevin roaming the halls of Lip’s school, having started his own business venture as a “Rape Walker”, escorting drunken girls safely to their dorms. This of course turns into Kevin having sex with sober girls, because sure. And it all leads to a coalition of dorm dudes ganging up on him, to assert their dominance or their property or some shit, and the Kevin realizes that he truly loves V and puts all that Rape Walker stuff behind him. It’s insulting and stupid, a contrived character assassination intended to put V and Kev on equal footing in time for a reconciliation; each scene spent on it is an increasing waste of time.

At least Lip at college is more entertaining. He gets to stay in school thanks to the kindly financial aid officer, who gets an unexpected donation for Lip from his friend who started that topless maid service. It’s the latest in a series of good things to happen to Lip—deus ex boob maid, if you will. I’ve seen grumblings, on reddit and elsewhere, that the continue cavalcade of good fortune is unearned and undramatic, but I think there is definitely a tension here, a tendency for self-destruction that underlies too many of Lip’s actions. He was going to cheat his way back into school, the Gallagher way. He’s fucking a woman who was, then wasn’t, and now is again his professor. He’s the RA of his dorm and he’s selling pot to pay his bills. Carl’s proud of his rap sheet; Ian won’t admit his mental illness; and Lip can’t escape that terrible Gallagher genome, no matter how hard the world pulls him away from it. That’s interesting to me—even if we are waiting to watch it all blow up in Lip’s face.

Like so many episode’s this season, it’s a little uneven. As always, too much focus on inconsequential characters and jokes, and too little focus on characters who should be at the fore. Ian’s one big scene, where the doctor informs him he will be on medication for basically the rest of his life, is great—but doesn’t the character and the story merit more? And Fiona does, I don’t know, stuff? I guess? She’s used here to prop up Sean and not much else, and there’s no real excuse for that. But also as always, what works, works. And at any rate, at this point I’d watch fifty minutes straight of Chuckie doing hard time, so the show must be doing something right.

Stray Observations:

“You’re a robotics engineer, do you own a fucking robot?”

I’ve been calling Sean “Sam” for a few weeks. I have no clue why, but apologies. (He does look like a Sam to me.)

Chuckie falls in with neo-Nazis at juvie (because of course) and he has a swastika tattooed on his forehead, which shouldn’t be funny, but is tremendously hysterical anyway.