Blog

Gallaghers, right? Our favorite beleaguered South Side family decides their inherited family name is a diagnosis unto itself, or at least it should be, and they’re not wrong. They come to this conclusion while in the jail waiting room; this time they’re waiting on Carl, who has been caught attempting to smuggle, let’s call it way too much heroin, across state lines. Carl has no formal diagnosis to explain his gallivant; then again neither does Fiona. Or Lip, or Debbie. (Liam is yet too young to be quite so fucked up. The jury is probably still out on Sammie.) This idea of “crazy” as a relative thing (pun intended) permeates the episode, and makes for a continued treatise on the idea that this family, maybe, just doesn’t have its shit together because its members are fundamentally incapable of doing so.

The ghost of Monica hangs over “Uncle Carl,” as Ian returns home a shell of his former self. But he refuses to take his medication, and flushes the entire prescription almost immediately. Ian doesn’t see himself as another Monica. Fiona’s been to jail and Carl’s on his way there; what makes Ian the crazy one? To the audience, of course, the answer is obvious—Ian is cursed with Monica’s specific brain chemistry, whereas his siblings are simply products of their upbringing. But there’s considerably more grey area from Ian’s point of view, and one can hardly blame him for seeing things that way.

Here’s the thing: Frank and Monica did a number on these kids, genetic predisposition to bipolar disorder notwithstanding. We have seen since day one the effects of Frank’s particular brand of parenting, and in fact he’s still fucking things up for his kids even now. Chuckie and Carl are in jail in large part owing to Frank, who views Carl’s drug dealing as a good work ethic (something Frank wouldn’t know if it bit him in the ass), and who even still essentially called the cops on his own kid when his plan went belly-up. But “Uncle Carl” sheds some new light on Frank as well, as his kids continue to reenact the various aspects of his own youth with Monica. As Mickey drinks himself into depression over Ian’s current state, Debbie informs him that Frank reacted the same way to Monica. It’s not a statement meant to generate sympathy for Frank; rather, it’s a warning to Mickey, that he needs to be there for Ian rather than feel sorry for himself. Despite their horrid childhoods, the kids are (or at least have a shot at being) all right.

“Uncle Carl” has a lot to recommend it. As Ian’s story calls back to the Gallagher’s collective past, it serves as a lynchpin for the various other adventures the characters are on. The episode strikes a strong balance among its various components through this conceit. Fiona struggles to communicate with Gus because her case study for married life is not a very good one. She can do passion, spur of the moment; getting married on a lark is nothing for Fiona Gallagher. But everything that comes after is hard. Commitment is hard. Complacency is hard, and Fiona isn’t used to that sort of challenge. Even after a big speech and a declaration of love, Gus is still heading off on that tour bus, and Fiona still isn’t going with him.

Or take Lip, who has so much potential—more, if we’re being honest, than anyone else in his family. But he is so ready to self-sabotage, even in his attempts to stay in school. His decision to turn the dorm for which he is responsible into, basically, a pot dispensary is colossally stupid. But he breaks free of his Gallagher-itis by, at least, being able to acknowledge his propensity for poor decision-making. He knows that if he doesn’t stay at university, he’ll fall right back into his old life. If Ian can grow up like Monica, there’s nothing stopping Lip from growing up like Frank. Jeremy Allen White gets a huge scene with Lip’s financial aid advisor this week, capturing Lip’s perceived helplessness and imbuing the character with a newfound sense of tragedy.

The specter of their parents hangs over all the Gallagher kids, but at the same time they find it impossible to escape their parents’ influence. As a result, they find themselves constantly in situations that on the one hand, they bring upon themselves; but on the other hand, these situations are more or less inevitable. The difference is that the Gallagher kids feel guilty about their nature, and seek to fix the messes they create (mostly—Carl is either too crazy or too young). Compare to Sammie, who attempts this episode to “train” Frank, but has so far done so by shooting him in the arm and proceeding to manipulate him emotionally—in other words, the usual tricks of the Gallagher trade. It all boils down to the classic nature versus nurture debate that, in some way or another, has run beneath Shameless’s surface this whole time.

The Gallaghers weekly find themselves in one mess after other, many of their own making. Otherwise we wouldn’t have a show. But the Gallaghers we actually like struggle to make good on their promises, to clean up their messes and fix their mistakes. How long do we have before we’re no longer allowed to fix the things we’ve fucked up? That’s a question the Gallaghers seek to answer, and there’s quite a bit more seeking left to do. By episode’s end, Carl is speaking with a state attorney and the Gallaghers all strongly advise him not to give anything up. Bad advice, maybe, but typically Gallagher. But also by episode’s send, Fiona has re-committed herself to Gus (at least verbally), and Mickey has gotten into bed beside Ian after all. They’re trying.

Stray Observations:

• Svetlana extends her fulfillment of wifely duties to Veronica as well, and gives the same explanation practically verbatim, thereby bringing this joke back from creepy all the way back around to hilarious. In general, Svetlana is a font of practical marital wisdom, and I’m enjoying her increased presence on the show.
• “In my younger days I slept with every member of the Guns n’ Roses cover band Buns n’ Hoses.”
• So many phenomenal Chuckie gags this week, it’s impossible to pick a favorite. That he sleeps on the floor in a dog bed? Sitting in the middle of a bus stop with pounds of heroin taped around his tummy? Standing in a jail cell, excited that Uncle Carl will be his storytelling neighbor?
• Debbie and Derek are pretty adorable together.
• The gentrification runner returns this week after a couple weeks off. The Lisas are building a community garden next to the Gallagher house, and want Fiona to join them for just a two thousand dollar buy in. First of all, that sounds fucking terrible, and second of all, what the hell kind of a garden are they building?
• Sam’s back too, intentionally throwing wrenches into Fiona’s marriage. This character is all over the place to me, and I’m not convinced the writers have a handle on him either.

Let me start by saying that while I largely enjoyed this episode, I found it to be sort of all over the place. Take the opening shot, a goofy look at Susan Ross (henceforth Artemis) as she’s prepped to become Vice President. Never mind the outlandish cartoonland politics that are behind this appointment in the first place—outlandish cartoonland politics are Scandal’s bread and butter. What is not generally Scandal’s bread and butter is slapstick humor, and this VP plot is laden with it.

Contrast that to a scene like Huck’s deposition, or any of Olivia’s interactions with Rose—all high drama and devastating sadness. I’ve used the term “tonal whiplash” before in my television writing, usually about Showtime’s Shameless, but man, does the term ever apply here, on an episodic level as well as on a more macro, season level. Consider: besides a token reference to Olivia’s kidnapping and planting the seeds of Artemis, “The Lawn Chair” took place in isolation from the rest of the season.

Meanwhile, “The Testimony of Diego Munoz” entirely ignores the events of “The Lawn Chair,” except where it continues the saga of placing Artemis one heartbeat from the presidency. (By the way, I was right last week—that development could absolutely have begun in the episode and brought us to the same exact place, and would have strengthened both episodes.) And within the episode, we are bounced back and forth between Artemis’s wacky hijinks to B-613 Part Two: The Quickening to Olivia and Rose’s veritable sobfest. With this a cast this large and this many plot balls in the air, it’s inevitable that individual episodes may contain more disparate threads than is appropriate, but rarely has an episode of Scandal veered so wildly within itself.

But concerns about the episode’s structure aside, this is actually pretty entertaining. Like, for as outlandish and out of place as Artemis is in the White House, she’s hilarious, and it’s nice to see the White House crew get to have a little fun for once, rather than being mired in constant drama and espionage. Artemis Pebdani is obviously a gifted comedian, and she steals every scene she’s in. Abby and Leo’s fling gets some play this week too, and while it’s a by-the-numbers office romance plot, it’s still a pleasure to watch. In fact it feels right out The West Wing’s playbook, which is not bad at all.

If super espionage-y Scandal is more your speed, then the writers have you covered this week with Huck and the return of the return of B-613. Remember those files Huck left his wife Kim? She takes them to David Rosen and a whole ordeal ensues. Long story short, David Rosen has decided, white hat planted firmly on head, that he’ll be taking down Rowan’s organization once and for all. But the meat of this story isn’t really the titular testimony (which is delivered in the exact same, overdone cadence that Guillermo Diaz uses in every single scene on this show), but the emotional hit of watching him try to lie about B-613 while moments of his life with Kim flash before his and our eyes. It’s heartbreaking, and manipulative? Sure. But it works, and at the end of the day that’s all that matters.

And then there’s Olivia, who is so walled off from the rest of this show still. She spends the episode trying to locate Lois’s body for Rose, the “where’s the black lady?” lady from two weeks back. This is an interesting plot for Olivia—a case of the week to which she already knows the answer. Instead what’s to be handled is finding a body and providing an appropriate lie for poor Rose, who had been Lois’s secret lover across the decades of their lives. Maybe this episode isn’t so removed from last week’s—the more I think about it, the more Olivia’s story with Rose feels like a further examination of her black identity, as well as her feminine identity. This whole idea of Liv as an outsider, in any of the ways one can imagine her as such, is a key component of the back of the season. Rose’s fate is in many ways a glimpse into the future for Olivia—loving someone from a distance only to lose them abruptly and without reason? Check; Olivia can barely even look at Fitz in the White House, until suddenly she’s yelling at him instead. He finally proved he loved her, but he didn’t do it in the right way. He should have let her die, she doesn’t say, but you can tell she wants to. And just as Lois was killed by a random bullet, for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, so it goes for anyone in Liv’s orbit. With the life she lives, everyone is a potential casualty. It’s not her own safety she fears for, at least not solely; it’s everyone else’s.

So it’s a scattered episode, sure. But it’s one that eases us further into a back half that (hopefully) will permanently rid of us of B-613. More importantly, it’s a back half that’s treating Olivia seriously as a character independent of her romances, something that’s long been missing from the series. We’ve had a bit of a pause; now I look forward to getting back into high gear.

Stray Observations:

• Let me chime in on Lena Dunham’s wig, which is completely insane looking. I’m looking forward to watching her play a character that will hopefully be more separated from herself than Hannah Horvath is.
• Kim is so fucked, you guys. Somehow or some way she is going to be violently murdered before we’re done here. Bets on whether it’s Rowan or Huck himself?

Here we have what might once upon a time have been marketed as a Very Special Episode of Scandal. And yes, “The Lawn Chair” is primarily concerned with delivering a message, but I don’t think that it falls into the same traps that so many message episodes can. For instance the message does not come at the expense of the characters. It does come at the expense of the overall series arc, but we’ve just had a long and involved, multi-episode arc—a one-off episode here makes sense, structurally, and why not use it to say something worthwhile?

That’s the big thing here: “The Lawn Chair” is saying something worthwhile. This is an important episode of television, socially conscious and emotionally gutting; its message is one that Scandal is uniquely suited to deliver in the current television landscape. The fact of Olivia’s blackness has rarely ever been front and center on Scandal. Instead it has been a given, as worth mentioning as Fitz’s whiteness (which is to say, basically unmentioned). But thrown into a situation like the one in this episode, Olivia’s race suddenly becomes the most important thing about her. She might be a black lady (as we were so frequently reminded two episodes ago), but she’s so entrenched in the establishment that she might as well not be, as activist Marcus reminds her here. And so “The Lawn Chair” is more than a moment on the soapbox for Shonda Rhimes (though it is that, and that’s fine); it is a test of character for Olivia Pope unlike any she’s been through before.

Olivia begins the episode with a new client, who just so happens to be the D.C. Metro police department. They’re in need of Olivia’s services because one of their officers has shot a black teenager dead, in self-defense of course, and they need to control the optics, given the alarming frequency of such incidents across the country. It’s an unsettlingly familiar notion, and it puts Olivia, one would think, into a difficult position. The moment where, mid-way through the episode, she abandons her client and joins the growing group of protestors just outside the crime scene is a moment in which Olivia validates her identity as a black woman, and values it above her identity as Washington’s fixer-in-chief. Good for her.

Even the structure and craft of “The Lawn Chair” feels just slightly different from previous episodes, because the case of the week here is so intensely personal not just for Olivia, but (one hopes) for the viewers at home. It’s the kind of “ripped from the headlines” story one might find on Law & Order, but it’s not so by-the-numbers formulaic as those episodes tend to be (at least, not at first). At the end of the day, this is a fantasy situation, taking a too-real moment from our world and filtering it through Scandal’s distinctive worldview. But it’s also a call to action. This is an important episode of television. It’s a necessary thing for people who watch ABC on Thursdays at 9 to see, especially if those people have already welcomed Olivia Pope and Annalise Keating into their homes but still don’t “get the big deal” with Ferguson and Trayvon Martin and Tamir Rice and Eric Garner and the nameless, faceless others.

Even in Scandal’s fantasy, there is no clean solution here, no simple answer. “The Lawn Chair” presents the issue as morally complex; even if the officer who shot Brandon does turn out to be just a vile racist, his boss is not, and most of the police on the force are not. He is an exception, not the rule, and one we need to work together to weed out. On the one hand I wish the episode erred more on the side of moral complexity—the scene where the offending officer explains his thought process, in which he shot an unarmed black boy because the boy was “disrespecting him”, and then proceeded to cover up his crime and frame a dead black boy for attempted assault, is an over-the-top, cartoonishly racist screed. But fuck it. Read any comment on any news story. Hell, maybe read any comment on any review of this particular episode of Scandal. Perhaps a racist screed isn’t so cartoonish.

There is no happy ending for this episode, which ends still with a shot of Brandon dead and being zipped into a body bag. His murderer is behind bars, but murder is not among the charges. His father is still left alone. But it’s a happier ending than we are afforded in our America, where the murderers of black boys walk free and their crimes go unpunished and even our black president is not permitted to embrace the grieving fathers and mothers.

I wish that an episode of Scandal could fix our world. It won’t. But it’s one hell of an important start.

Stray Observations:

• The episode is ungraded, but suffice to say that I found it to be an incredibly strong, potent episode of television in the Norman Lear tradition.
• Throughout the episode is a B-plot of Fitz trying to navigate the situation but being unable to say what he really wants to due to his office. This gives way to the search for a new vice president, but since he’s “promised” the next presidency to Mellie, the goal is to find someone totally unelectable. So he and Mellie scheme together, which is a fun new dynamic for them, and they land on none other than Artemis! This story is a minor part of the episode, and there to provide levity even as it connects back to the A-story time and again—I’m just not sure how well the juxtaposition really works, and it may have best been left until next week.
• I will never not be immediately distracted by the presence of Perd Hapley on this show.

After a much needed kick in the pants, it’s nice to see Shameless mostly keeping up the momentum. “Tell Me You Fucking Need Me” is perhaps more interesting in concept than it ultimately is in execution, but the concept is so strong, and goes so far in uniting the several disparate elements of the season to date, that it’s sufficient to make a for a satisfying episode.

Obviously the episode is named for Sammie’s plea to Frank, right after she shoots him in the arm in the middle of the Gallagher living room and starts literally pouring salt in his wounds. This is quite the scene, to put it mildly. On the one hand it is outrageous in the way that Frank stories so often are, but on the other it taps into the unbridled, unabashedly crazy pathos that also often runs beneath the surface of the show. Sammie’s assault on Frank comes after a particularly galling speech in which Frank admonishes Lip on the nature of adulthood and responsibility, which nicely sets up the audience for wanting to see Sammie put a bullet in her dad. Her place on the show has been somewhat extraneous for a while now, but with this latest, absurd development, she brings into relief many of the other conflicts in the show, too. All of the other Gallaghers have moved away from Frank, emotionally speaking, but the same basic needs continue to drive them in their new relationships.

“Tell me you fucking need me.” Who has been more driven by the need to be needed than Fiona? Until very recently she was the lynchpin of the Gallagher clan, the only thing keeping them together, but now she’s rarely even home, and Sammie has basically usurped her role. Subsequently Fiona is floundering a little bit. To her credit she immediately comes clean with Gus, and they give it an honest attempt at mature discussion. Sure, instead Gus punches Jimmy in the face, but it turns out Jimmy deserved it. The episode ends with Fiona rejecting Jimmy, and, presumably, deciding she’ll finally make it work with Gus in a real way. Has she realized that Gus needs her? Does it feel good for her to need someone else, for once in her life? These are the questions that are worth investigating; they’re the questions that made this latest (and hopefully last) go-around with Jimmy worthwhile.

“Tell me you fucking need me.” Mickey fucking needs Ian, and he needs Ian to acknowledge that need, and reciprocate it. But Ian is in no shape to verbalize any of that right now, and that inability is crushing Mickey. The scene where Mickey and Fiona visit him is heartbreaking. It’s expertly shot, too, with the camera work mimicking Ian’s utter lack of focus, zipping around the room, zooming on the background, barely registering Fiona and Mickey. It ends with Ian announcing that he’s tired and leaving them, mere minutes after greeting them.

Sometimes need can be alienating, until we acknowledge it and begin to let it go. Lip has spent this season trying to rid himself of his need for his Gallagher identity, his need to be seen as a specific person, a hood rat made good rather than just a normal college kid with normal problems. He makes a major step in that direction today, after the Gallagher clan’s inability to even forward a simple piece of mail jeopardizes his entire college career, in a deceptively simple way—he opens a P.O. box. Lip is his own man, with his own (almost an) address.

“Tell me you fucking need me.” Veronica needs Kevin, doesn’t she? But she needs him in a way that she can’t vocalize, because, I think, deep down, she knows that it makes her a shitty person. She can’t deal with the fact that Kevin has prioritized her children over her, without acknowledging that it means she hasn’t prioritized her children over herself. It’s selfish, full stop. I’m still fascinated by the idea of this marriage dynamic, but I think the story has started to fail in the execution. How far can this feud really go? Does V really have no attachment at all to her children? Was she so uninterested in starting a family in the past, and we in the audience just didn’t notice? The obvious answer is no, and I think the show fully intends the answer to be no. But with that being the case, the huge extent to which their fight ahs consumed their relationship becomes pretty unreasonable as far as the narrative is concerned. Svetlana’s introduction to this whole mess exacerbates the issue—if Kevin will accept a blowjob from her, why not just fuck V in the first place? The idea is great, but it’s time to start bringing this story back around to a conclusion.

More than anything, “Tell Me You Fucking Need Me” slows down the pace a bit after last week’s breakneck caper, and it’s mostly to the show’s credit. I love these deeper dives into the character’s needs, the emotions that drive them and what they need from themselves and from each other. This is a solid character piece, with some questionable plotting but raising questions so engaging that it hardly matters.

Stray Observations:

• OF COURSE Chuckie has explosive diarrhea in the mornings. At any rate, Chuckie and Carl attending school together deserves a spin-off. Chuckie is the best visual gag Shameless ever devised, and he gets some choice dialogue this week too: “I painted this! And no one made fun of me! And Uncle Carl made me his slave!”
• “I got you nunchucks and condoms.” “I know, I got one on right now.”
• V and Kevin’s babies are fucking adorable.
• These scenes at the psych ward are ROUGH. Ian is completely out of it—why do we treat mental health patients like they’re in prison? The parallels that Shameless is drawing can’t be coincidental.
• I will never tire of hearing Mickey self-identify as Ian’s boyfriend.
• Debbie gets a boyfriend! This story has been slight, but the scene where he kisses her is super cute anyway.

Better late than never, right? For viewers like myself who were growing restless with Shameless’s fifth season so far, “Crazy Love” is a breath of fresh air. Not only is this handily the best episode of the season, it also sits comfortably among the very best episodes of the series to date. The process of setting up the various plot bombs that go off in this episode has been scattershot and tedious to say the least, but the payoff here is so good that it’s hard to hold a grudge.

Ian takes center stage this week, as his psychotic break throws most of the rest of the cast into crisis and imbues the episode with a crucial sense of purpose and momentum. It’s probably no coincidence that an episode that skews dramatic is more favorable to me, but man, what I wouldn’t give for Shameless to be consistently on this level. As it stands, this episode is packed with emotional gut punches, and is just astounding on a scene-by-scene basis.

How good is “Crazy Love”? I’m even amenable to Jimmy/Steve, that’s how good. As annoyed as I’ve been by this character’s continued presence on the show—and even as Fiona quite deservedly beat the shit out of him, I was still rankled by it—his reappearance ultimately serves to force Fiona to come to terms with several of the more complicated aspects of her life, and the resulting conflicts and scenes really are tremendous.

Emmy Rossum has been wanting for a truly great showcase this year, and “Crazy Love” gives it to her in spades. Her confusion and indecision with regard to Jimmy/Steve belies a fragility to the character that has been on the backburner recently. This is a side of Fiona that she does not let others, or the audience, often see, and so this is yet another way in which Jimmy/Steve brings out the worst in her. And so the pair of sex scenes toward the episode’s end function as two sides of the same coin—or, really, as the same side of the coin. Rossum’s performance as Fiona begins crying at Jimmy to stop fucking her is stunning in its tragic beauty, and her silent sex with Gus is somehow even more affecting. Just really great stuff in the Fiona department this week, as finally her story is firing on all cylinders.

Speaking of firing on all cylinders: the writing for Ian this year hasn’t done a truly great story justice at all times, but Cameron Monaghan brings it in this episode, and the writing rises to the occasion as well. His trip to Florida with baby Yevgeny has the feel of a darkly comic road trip, but pulls of a pretty amazing narrative feat, becoming more desperately sad with each new incident. Ian’s pit stop at a convenience store is particularly heartbreaking (though one wonders why no one thinks they should call the police at this juncture), and his final freakout at the police is bad news through and through.

But the real hero of this story is Mickey Milkovich. Noel Fischer has spend the past several seasons earning his promotion to series regular over and over again, and I’m not sure that he has ever made a stronger case than he does in “Crazy Love.” His panicked reaction to Ian’s initial departure, his hesitant acquiescence to bringing the rest of the Gallagher clan in for help, and his final heartbreaking goodbye to Ian as he checks into a mental health facility show so many shades to this wonderfully complex character, and Fischer is constantly revealing a new facet, a new layer, a heretofore unsuspected moment of depth. He carries more than his share of the emotional weight of the episode—I can’t compliment this performance enough.

If I had to quibble with “Crazy Love,” it would be on two scores. First, I still am not feeling it with Carl this season, and I worry that a story that has been played for laughs thus far (questionably so) will take a sharp dramatic turn that the show is not equipped to handle.

Second, I really wish the show would have the balls to kill off Frank. His boy is thoroughly rejecting his liver, because he is too irresponsible to take his medicine, and because he is willfully poisoning his body, because he is a selfish prick of a man who, frankly, deserves to die. Instead he gets a third chance at life, and will re-learn the same lessons he has time and again, and presumably will thumb his nose at god at the end of it all anyway. If that’s the story we’re telling, fine, but there’s no value in telling it over and over again the way Shameless has been so determined to.

Those are quibbles, though, and so much of “Crazy Love” is too arresting to worry much about them. Even the scenes with Frank have a haunting beauty to them. The episode is a visual home run too, with some beautiful shots of the Florida landscape, and a great tracking shot of Ian checking in to the facility that echoes Fiona’s arrival at prison in “Iron City.” In many ways “Crazy Love” feels like the true beginning of the season, and it’s a welcome one indeed.

Stray Observations:

• Lip has been such a non-entity this season. I really would like for that to change. But hey, he’s an RA now, so there’s that.
• Kevin’s scene in the park is played for laughs, but is also a pretty clever riff on his conflict with Veronica. In so many stories their roles would be reverse, and V would complain that Kev was insufficiently devoted to the kids.
• “Shouldn’t somebody call the police?” Suddenly Jimmy/Steve is reasonable. Of course the Gallaghers all shout “NO!” in unison.
• Debbie’s first day of high school goes about as expected, as suddenly everyone wants to fight her. This story is on slow burn, but again, I’m so happy for an age appropriate love interest here that I’m fine with things slowing down for poor Debs.