Blog

I have to admit that as the season wears on, it is becoming increasingly difficult for me to write about Shameless. It’s still a bridge too far to call the show weak at this stage—in fact I think it’s attempting a number of really interesting things—but there is a spark that, for me at least, has undeniably gone out. Part of that is just simple aging. Shameless is five years old now, and what was one fresh and edgy is now old hat, especially for a series so very reliant on envelope pushing. But part of it is also the show’s refusal to engage fully with its most viable aspects, instead choosing to hold on to things that don’t work anymore simply because it feels like it should.

I’m obviously talking about two things here primarily, and let’s get the one out of the way right now—I do not care about Jimmy/Steve. Not one bit. The character was always a lukewarm love interest for Fiona, useful insofar as he played straight man to various Gallagher antics. But as we got further acclimated to the Gallagher clan and began to see them not as a motley crew of South Side weirdos but as actual people with actual personalities, that narrative usefulness ran out. That the writers chose to replace it with the batshit incongruous insanity of Jimmy/Steve’s subsequent plots remains, to me, their most baffling decision. When he’d finally seemingly been killed off, it was a dumb but merciful end for a character who had gone way, way off the rails. His return this season (we are, after all, still pretending that the last scene of last season does not exist) shows no signs of being any less contrived, needlessly complicated, and ultimately unnecessary. The season needs a kick in the pants, but this is not what I had in mind by a long shot.

Fortunately Jimmy/Steve is but a small part of the episode. Unfortunately, our other vestigial character, fucking Frank, is once again front and center for entirely too much time. On the one hand I get it—William H. Macy is a hugely entertaining performer who is capable of some legitimately great stuff in this role. God knows Frank would be completely insufferable in less capable hands. But with the rest of the Gallaghers having shunned him and Sheila having run off, Frank has little to no place in the world of the show, and the haphazard employment of the character becomes more problematic with each episode. I get that Frank’s time with his organ donor’s parents this episode is black comedy, but I’m just not in on the joke here, I guess—or more accurately, there is just one joke here, being beaten senseless into the ground. The father is uncomfortably weird, and doesn’t garner the laughs that the script so clearly expects. Ditto the turn where Frank sleeps with the mother. The whole thing perpetuates the tonal whiplash that is so problematic.

Frank’s greatest sin, though, is the time he steals from the other, vastly more interesting characters and conflicts. The game of marital chicken that V is playing with Kevin is tremendously stupid, but is a thoroughly fascinating dynamic to explore. Why, then, is it relegated to C-plot status? It’s by far the most compelling aspect of the episode, and of the season, and it’s past time the show starts giving these characters their dramatic due. The same is true of both Ian and Lip, who once were so vital to the show, and who now both feel like afterthoughts to me. Ian’s increasingly wild mood swings have been jotted off carelessly in the margins of the show, making his decision to run off with Mickey’s baby at the end of this episode seem jarring more in a bad way than a good way. The way this story has reversed the emotional roles of Ian and Mickey should be paying way more dividends than it currently is, and it’s because the script is dealing with it in the bare minimum number of scenes possible.

Lip’s story is also playing out in the margins, and for no discernible reason. The fantastic shot of him standing, alone and slightly off center, in the middle of the empty Gallagher house is more compelling in its brevity and silence than anything that Frank has to offer. The kid has a serious problem—there’s no other way to explain how he ends up with an AK in his hands and running from the cops. Why can’t we delve further into the internal conflict here? There’s an amazing scene between him and Fiona early on in the episode, but then the characters go their separate ways. These two have a wonderful dynamic—take advantage of it!

The biggest sign of trouble, I think, is that I can get this far in the review and only now mention Fiona. She’s mostly basking in the afterglow of her shotgun wedding here, until her co-worker Jackie ODs on heroin right before the court hearing to retain custody of her daughter. Jackie and Sam are both dark mirrors Fiona can hold up to herself. Maybe her current brand of chaos and destruction is of the meet-cute, let’s get married and damn the haters variety, but it’s really just another side of the same coin, and deep down she knows that. That subtext runs throughout these scenes, but it might be too subtextual.

Shameless is a show with many, many strengths, and it’s just a shame (no pun) to see them squandered. This Sunday will bring us to the halfway point; in other words, to the point where it will be too late to say, maybe this all has a point. We need an episode with the laser focus of something like “Iron City,” and it can’t come soon enough.

Stray Observations:

• Holy shit Kevin’s playground game is absolutely horrid, and is also the episode’s biggest laugh.
• Mickey’s type: red head, batshit crazy, packing nine inches. Favorite character right here.
• Gus meeting Chuckie is fantastic, as is everything to do with Chuckie.

Perhaps inevitably, “Where’s the Black Lady?” does not quite reach the fever pitch of last week’s “Run,” though it sure tries like hell to. That said, Scandal packs in some really great scenes this week, and guest director Debbie Allen does some uncommonly great work here, as does Tony Goldwyn in what is one of Fitz’s greatest episodes to date.

Where the episode unequivocally succeeds is in its many smaller (at least, by Scandal standards) scenes and character moments, which are heightened by Allen’s lovely camera work. It is impossible not to marvel at the magnificent shots of Fitz and Mellie at the residence, tight shots of their tense conversation as Mellie airs their dirty laundry left and right and Fitz fears that their every word is recorded. (It’s equally impossible not to marvel at Goldwyn’s acting here, as Fitz’s silencing of Mellie is equal parts anger with her and desperation to get her to shut up for their own safety; Mellie takes it as the former, the audience as the latter, and either [or both] interpretations are valid.) Ditto Allen’s canny use of flashback, along with some spectacular sound mixing, during Fitz’s meeting Abby, Cyrus and David. In other words this is an exceptionally stylish episode of an already pretty stylish show.

The plot isn’t shabby either, even if it is a little bit shoe-leathery. That’s owing as much to the episode’s placement in the season as it is to any particular aspect of the script. After the rip-roaring yet withholding premiere, “Where’s the Black Lady?” is a veritable info-dump, obligated to catch us up with the rest of the cast and to give greater context to Olivia’s current plight. It’s fairly thankless work, and the episode tends to do it in a circuitous, repetitive manner. Multiple scenes of Huck torturing Liz, for instance, make the same point they could in half the time. There’s a real sense of padding here, of over-explaining, which is never more apparent than in Andrew Nichols’ scenes with Fitz. The Vice President has seemingly overnight become Dick Dastardly, but his constant explication of his Improbable Plot to Kidnap Olivia Pope, And Thereby Ignite War, doesn’t make the plot any less improbable, or any more engaging.

We already have the emotional stakes necessary for this story, and while this episode does a stellar job of filling in the blanks on Fitz’s side, deceptively little else of import happens here—we end in much the same place as before, save a war in West Angola, of course. In fact I’m not even sure that “too little happens” is the criticism I’m seeking. Ultimately this feels like half an episode, giving information that is necessary in parallel with “Run,” but that can’t help but feel superfluous a week after the fact.

I’m nitpicking, though—especially considering how very high octane “Run” was. At the end of the day this is solid episode that does a particularly excellent job of tying the more tedious aspects of the conspiracy plot (i.e. most of them) to tangible character moments and conflicts—Cyrus feels boxed out, but really Fitz is shielding him; Fitz is truly in love with Olivia, and will absolutely ignite war if it means saving her; Mellie learns that truth and continues to assert herself accordingly; and so on. Ridiculous things continue to happen, as they always will in this funhouse mirror version of Washington, but it’s all anchored in the very real drama between these characters, which keeps everything with at least one foot firmly planted in reality, and which helps the stakes really land as a result.

Plus it’s gorgeous to look at. Can we please keep Debbie Allen?

Stray Observations:

• We can officially lay this Helen of Troy metaphor to rest. I’m beginning to think that The Iliad is the only thing Tom has ever read.
• Further potential Helen of Troy inferences: Fitz and Jake cooperating to save Helen? Surely bound to be a lasting partnership.
• Though Huck’s scenes are largely plot filler, Guillermo Diaz does a nice job portraying Huck’s singular obsession with protecting/avenging Olivia, and does so in a more measured way than he usually performs the more extreme aspects of Huck’s character. (Which, let’s face it, all aspect’s of Huck’s characters are extreme.)
• How bizarre was that scene of the Secret Service telling Fitz what’s up? On the one hand it almost crossed the line into silliness, but on the other, it starts the episode on truly shaky, uncertain ground, which is a nice touch.
• Pretty sure Huck repeats the exact line about breadcrumbs twice in this episode, vis a vis the repetitive nature of same.
• Mellie’s invocation that she “took care of anything” will surely end well for all involved, yes?

First and foremost, fuck that title, which is a bitch to type and is not clever in the least.

With that out of the way, while this week’s episode of Shameless shows sparks of promise in a few key areas, it does not deliver on these within the confines of the episode itself, which is a sluggish, overly cartoonish romp that plays up the show’s weakest aspects while giving short shrift to the things the season is actually doing well—in other words, the opposite of a successful strategy. I’ll freely admit that a big part of my issue is that I am partial to the version of Shameless that skews dramatic, and this season has been resolutely not that. But even with that bias acknowledged, there’s no getting around the way that this season has so far been a mish-mash of ideas. Plots careen together without much thought or reason, jokes don’t land, structures don’t hold up; and this episode is more of the same, at the end of the day.

The bummer of it all is that much of the character work is pretty solid. For instance this episode returns to an idea that the show began seriously toying with toward the end of the last season—namely, that Fiona and Frank are far more similar than Fiona would ever be comfortable admitting. It’s no stretch to draw a parallel between Fiona’s lost week with Gus, one that ends in an impromptu marriage, with Frank’s lost evening of temporarily rich debauchery. This will always be interesting ground for the show to cover, and in fact I wish it would address the similarities more directly than it does here. Even so, the final shot of Fiona speaks volumes on the issue.

So it’s a shame that the actual storytelling here is so poorly executed. Fiona’s time spent with Gus is sweet for a scene or so, but it drags on forever, and is just bland, boring and predictable, even up through the marriage itself. Gus just isn’t a fully-fledged character, not even to the extent that someone like Mike was, and certainly not the way Jimmy was before the Steve nonsense. What’s of interest here isn’t what’s happening, but how Fiona and, more especially, the rest of the Gallaghers, will react to it, and that’s all withheld from us, save for, again, that closing shot.

As for Frank, he spends the episode reenacting The Hangover, which is every bit as grating as it sounds. He receives his insurance payout, only to lose it in a massive binge (of course), and so has to re-trace his steps from one ludicrous situation to the next in order to find it again. It turns out he donated the money to a charity for kids in need of prosthetic limbs, which is actually pretty funny, and the fact that Frank decides this is a mistake and wants the money back further highlights how much of a total monster he is (as though we needed reminding). The fact that he blew up his wife’s house and is ostensibly homeless himself goes unmentioned, as does Sammie, which feels like another narrative misstep to me.

Meanwhile, Lip takes a break from hauling rocks to visit Amanda, and ends up bonding with her dad over engineering. Credit to the writers—this does not immediately cause Amanda to stop liking him, and in fact it seems like Lip may be growing on her. The story is told in pretty broad strokes, and the dad goes from cartoonishly stand-offish to pot-smoking Cool Dad in an insanely short amount of time, but this is such a great direction for the character, and it’s so satisfying to see Lip with a positive male role model for once, that I ended up buying into it this week anyway. As usual, not enough time was spent here, and I wonder if more scenes would have helped everything feel more three-dimensional than it does as is.

Meanwhile, Debbie takes up boxing after she gets saved from a girl fight by an improbably handsome young man. Age appropriate love interests are always welcome for Debbie, and while there’s not much to this storyline, it’s also nice to see a lighter touch, given that last week she raped a twenty-year old. (The sentences one gets to write when reviewing Shameless!) As for Carl, he starts selling drugs under a bridge, about which the less said, the better. Black humor is Shameless’s bread and butter, yes, but I had a hard time finding the funny with a lot of this story. One exception: Frank teaching Carl “drug fractions”, and Carl studying flashcards on the subject in the tag, had me laughing out loud.

Overall this is about on the same level as “The Two Lisas”, raising some good ideas and suggesting a direction for the remainder of the season, but not making any real strides in the direction. The episode is content with broad strokes, but since too many of the notes fall flat (to mix metaphors), the overall effect is diminished. As always, a caveat that an episode down the line may bring all of this into focus, but it seems increasingly more likely that the obvious explanation is the correct one: this is all a mess just because this season of Shameless is kind of a mess.

Stray Observations:

• Debbie: “Here’s what went down last week on Shameless.” Carl: “Me, a lot.” I laughed.
• Veronica and Kevin’s marital issues continue, and I like the show’s brutally honest portrayal of post-partum depression here, even if it has yet to label Veronica’s condition as such.
• Mickey and Ian have a cute moment involving a dildo (which is not nearly as dirty as it sounds), but man, the show is underutilizing these two so far.

I don’t know about you guys, but I’m still waiting for this season of Shameless to get a move on already. It’s by no means bad, but the sum of the parts is not quite adding up to a cohesive whole, at least not yet. That in itself isn’t a sin, but there’s also not enough sense of forward momentum, not enough promise that, eventually, this is going to all add up to something.

So, what to make of this? “The Two Lisas” is perfectly alright, but it continues a trend of stagnation, like the show can’t shake this malaise that seems to have settled in over the hiatus. Is it because things got so heavy at the end of last season? Maybe. I can’t quite put my finger on it yet to be honest, but the pulse of this season is not as strong by a long shot, and it’s hampering my enjoyment a little more each week.

A lot of the issue is that several of the stories feel trivial. Frank conquered death itself last season; now he’s brewing some truly potent beer and ambling around the South Side like some demented soothsayer, warning of the perils of gentrification. Now, gentrification in itself is a really smart thread to weave throughout the season, especially given how very important a sense of place is to Shameless. But until the show starts grappling with the concept directly, rather than paying it lip service and easy jokes, it won’t be able to reap the full benefit.

Even Fiona’s storyline this week is meh-inducing, as she more or less by accident falls into the arms of a good guy, who is the band mate of the bad guy that she will almost certainly fuck instead in two episodes’ time. Not only does this feel an awful lot like going through the motions, it’s also going through motions that we’ve been through before. Again, I think a big part of the problem, insofar as there is a problem here, is that we’re coming down from a super-dramatic, high stakes season, and so far Shameless is not interested in building up to that fever pitch again. That’s fine, but nothing equally worthwhile, regardless of its tone, has sprung up instead.

The other main thread of the week follows Kev and Veronica, as the Rub and Tug is permanently shut down, leading V to employ what appears to be every hooker in town as part of her new breast milk farm business venture. It’s an outsized plot to be sure, but one rooted in the central conflict of her and Kev’s marriage, and his outburst to her at the end of the episode carries real weight as a result. For the third week running, these two are the best part of the show, which is not something I ever thought I’d say about either character. They’re so often used for comic relief that it’s actually a nice change of pace to see them and their relationship given equal time, especially as the more prominent characters take some time on the back burner.

That said, I don’t necessarily want the more prominent Gallaghers to take time on the back burner. As Carl and especially Debbie get older, it’s natural to want to give them more to do. But given a choice between Debbie and Lip’s stories this week, I would much rather have spent more time with Lip. His lone major scene is with Mandy, and it is gorgeous and heartbreaking. He tells her every good thing about herself that no one has had the decency to say to her before, and she tells him she loves him, and he can’t even say it back. The next day she skips town. In a few scenes, Shameless lands one doozy of a emotional sucker punch. Debbie’s story is similarly heartbreaking, but in a more twisted and, I think, less effective way. It’s almost impossible to sell Matt in this situation. I am vaguely interested in the almost role-reversal approach the episode takes with Debbie’s (unintentional?) rape of him, but Matt is too problematic of a character, and the situation still too icky (for lack of a better or more effective term) for the turn of events to really hit home.

Now, given that by episode’s end Frank blows up Sheila’s home and she takes off in an RV, it stands to reason that the pace picks up after this. It’s certainly a surprising turn of events, one that jump starts Frank’s story in an interesting way, and one that comments on the note of gentrification in typically Shameless fashion. (If the show has any sense, Sheila is gone for good, if not at least for a good long while.) But the season is way too uneven, and at times perilously boring, and “The Two Lisas” doesn’t do anything to change that.

Stray Observations:

• Frank whores Sammie out in exchange for brewery equipment, which leads to his falling out with her as well. Sammie has become a total cartoon this season, but now that we’ve reached the breaking point, one hopes the dynamic here will improve.
• That said, “I don’t wanna make the same mistakes I have with the last thirty or forty guys I’ve been with” is a pretty funny line.
• Frank’s Dangers of Gentrification: This week it’s gastro pubs and stores for dog clothes
• Chuckles, staring at Frank as he works. Chuckles, effortlessly hilarious.
• “We call him Carl-lingus. I’m going back for seconds.”

Say what you will about Scandal, but Shonda Rhimes and her team know how to do a mid-season opener right. “Run” is energetic, tense, revelatory, and downright pulse pounding for early every minute of its running time.

Seriously. “Run” is definitely a season best and mostly a series best episode. I didn’t get to watch it live, but it was impossible to avoid the cavalcade of accolades being heaped upon Kerry Washington across social media throughout the night. None of those people was wrong. Washington is a powerhouse in this episode, commanding every scene she’s in even as Olivia Pope is backed into a situation of near total helplessness. She is phenomenal, carrying the episode so forcefully and effortlessly that you won’t notice until they show up about two-thirds of the way in that the supporting cast has been largely absent from the episode. “Run” is essentially an Emmy reel, and one that deserves to pay its star dividends come September.

The episode is structurally strong, and often even inventive. The opening is hugely energetic, playing through the winter finale’s excellent closing moments multiple times, with an ever increasing sense of dread. After that, the episode maintains a tight focus, eschewing the typical trappings of a Scandal episode for some pretty gripping psychological drama instead. The structure here is so atypical for the series, and yet nestled within it is an extremely typical Olivia/client relationship. Throughout the episode she is “handling” her own damn kidnapping, and her slowly deteriorating resolve is something to behold.

“Run” words so very well entirely because of its restrained scale. It is close, focused, unconcerned with conspiracy or with explanation, and it mostly rocks as a result. Given its strengths, it is somewhat disappointing when the episode’s final twist rolls around and brings us right back to the oblique conspiracy theorizing that has come to define the series at its worst.

I’m not inherently interested in the identity of Olivia’s kidnappers, or what their relationship is to Lizzie Bear and company back in DC, who are thankfully completely absent from the episode What I am interested in is Olivia herself, and how she reacts to these extreme circumstances. So when “Ian” is murdered to punish Olivia, it’s a rare moment of failure on her part, an acknowledgment and rebuke of her hubris, of her total conviction that because she is Olivia Pope and for no other reason, she will triumph. The reveal that her cellmate was playing her all along robs the earlier sequence of some of its power.

That hardly ruins an otherwise stellar episode, though. “Run” sets the stage for an exciting back half, and even if the question of Olivia’s kidnapping may not be the most exciting about the show at this point, the fact of her kidnapping is fertile dramatic ground. Al that “Run” really needed to do was get us all pumped for Scandal again, and it achieves that in spades.

Stray Observations:

• “Batty dream sequences under duress” is a bit overplayed, but Olivia’s rescue fantasy at least reveals itself as such more or less immediately, and also provides the impetus for her getting out of the prison by her own damn self, rather than waiting on either of her men. (Of course, freedom is short-lived, but the moment is still a triumph in itself.)
• “You make jam for a living now? Do you know how to use a Dutch oven? Do you know how to turn on a regular oven?” Even in improbably dream sequences, Abby is the best.
• That said: I’m not sure how funny the dream is actually meant to be, but some of the lines and deliveries in the Vermont sequence especially had me laughing out loud, not least Washington’s enthusiastic declaration of “boysenberry!”
• Echoes of “Bitch Baby” probably were not meant to make me laugh out loud, but they did kind of deflate that moment for me.
• So that these aren’t all about the dream: Jake calls Huck and Quinn for help tracking Olivia. Quinn immediately suggests she has simply run off to an island with another man, and is clearly angling for a role as New Abby.

After six long years, the last few of which were rather unexpected, Parenthood draws to a close in solid if unsurprising fashion. So much of this finale has been more or less locked in since the season premiere, if not even before then, that it’s hard to really consider this episode as anything other than the final flourish on a pretty flagrant victory lap of a season. Even for Parenthood, the stakes are relatively low. There is no Big Bad, no final crisis—even the conflicts between Adam and Crosby or Joel and Julia are subdued, halfway resolved before the opening credits even roll. Even Zeek’s death (spoiler alert, but come on) is a tragic grace note, rather than a central event.

But, as the bottom of my review notes read: I mean, who can complain about that? And at the end of the day those are my sentiments still. Finality is not a construct that is familiar to Parenthood, which has always been a show about the process of life rather than any of its specific moments, even if those moments are milestones like birth, marriage or death. “May God Bless and Keep You Always” is a collection of such moments, but it’s not an event—it’s just another day in the life. It’s a structural mess in the exact same ways as “We Made It Through the Night,” yet for some reason I am not as bothered. In fact, the finale is even more of a mess in some ways, a formless menagerie of montages and songs, but because it is a finale, and a finale of a show that has often been supremely unconcerned with plot in any conventional sense, it’s hard to really hold that against Jason Katims’s script.

The real test of “May God Bless and Keep You Always” is whether it is emotionally satisfying—has the show brought this leg of the collective Braverman journey to a good enough close? The answer, unfortunately, is that it depends on which Braverman. The cast by now is so sprawling that it would have been impossible to do right by every single one of them in the space of forty-two and a half minutes. But I mainly came away from the episode like most of the Bravermans got short shrift, and some of them unforgivably so.

Is there really any excuse for how far on the back burner Kristina was placed this season? How much of a non-entity Jasmine became over time? Or good lord, Camille, who gets I think two or three lines in this entire episode? Parenthood’s sixth season made some curious narrative choices, including a prolonged focus on Hank’s family, along with on the travails of the Luncheonette, and it seems at the end that these came at the expense of characters and stories that we are arguably more invested in. Not that the Luncheonette story doesn’t fulfill a purpose—it brings Crosby’s series arc to a really touching close, and I love that it’s Zeek who is the one to finally have faith in him and instill some confidence in him. But we reached this conclusion well ahead of the show, two or three episodes ago, and the plot has been running in circles since. I would rather have gotten more time with other characters, in the limited time that remained to us.

Speaking of. The limited time remaining to us, as a concept, obviously runs throughout the episode, both within the narrative and without, as Katims so clearly struggles to include at least a moment with each major character. And let’s give credit where it’s due—he pulls it off. I don’t know how “good” per se this finale is, but I watched much of it with a big smile on my face anyway. The centerpiece montage (in an episode that, seriously, is chock full of montages) is the wedding photo series, culminating in one gigantic cast photo. The wedding sequence, including the lovely song that plays as Zeek walks Sarah down the aisle, is beautiful, and the reception captures the kind of family-friendly, forced fun one finds at these events.

The episode is peppered with little moments designed to warm the heart, and they do so. Max finds a girlfriend maybe! Amber moves in with Camille and Zeek! Sarah is Zeek’s favorite child! Victor has a surprise half-sister and Joel and Julia are adopting her too! Haddie lives! And if we are measuring by these moments—and there is no good reason not to, really—then “May God Bless and Keep You Always” is a success.

After the wedding, just when the episode is winding down and you think, oh hey, maybe no one will die after all!—Zeek dies quietly at home. The episode closes with his funeral, which appropriately enough is a family baseball game. The memorial is beautifully bizarre, and a perfect coda, a final statement on this family’s and this show’s strange and yet familiar aesthetic. It’s not maudlin, not a tear-inducing cryfest (as Vulture might term the series overall), and it shouldn’t be, either. Mixed in are little flash-forwards, giving us the tiniest glimpses of the various Bravermans, not in their old age, but just a few years down the line, as life goes on without Zeek, and is perfectly okay, because the family sticks together. In many ways the Bravermans are his legacy, and what a fine one to leave behind.

I mean, who can complain about that?

Stray Observations:

• The grade below is for the season. The episode grade is a B, on the strength of heartwarming fuzzies. The series grade is a B+. I found Parenthood to always be a solid family drama, and I’m disappointed that there is no immediate heir apparent on television (Transparent may be the closest, honestly), but it also never reached the dazzling heights of similar shows like Friday Night Lights.
• Which, while we’re comparing: This is nowhere near as good a finale as “Always,” although really, what could be? I ultimately find myself thinking that the fourth season finale, “Because You’re My Sister,” was the place to stop here, but I don’t begrudge the good moments of the last two seasons anyway.
• Max leaves us with some gems: “Your complexion is far too pale. You make a terrible assistant.” Or, even better, “You cannot take a selfie, selfies are ruining my industry.”
• Haddie shows up, which is always nice, but then she gives this super forced speech about how Max made her a better person, simultaneously constructing and closing a character arc in the space of two minutes.
• Joel and Julia’s flash forward reveals that not only did they adopt Victor’s secret half-sister, they also had another baby of their own! Not pictured: Chris, just outside the window, drunk and homeless.
• Adam’s secret for chopping onions without crying is to wear goggles, because of course it is.
• Kristina trades her fake job for another fake job, and gives her old fake job to Adam, and the Braverman financial crisis is resolved. Goodbye, strange, economically walled off world of Berkeley.
• Jason Street makes a cameo but hot damn I barely even recognized him. That said, in the future Amber is co-parenting with the Dillon Panthers lineup, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
• Did Drew Holt Get a Haircut? The final word is no, he did not, and he’s got some unfortunate facial hair going on now too. Shave for your mother’s wedding, Drew!
• I really did love this show, even if it’s more on the level of, like macaroni and cheese or grilled cheese or other cheese-based comfort food than it is, like, the gourmet cooking of Friday Night Lights. But it was a pleasure to watch and be reminded of my own family in sweet and often unexpected ways, and as always it’s been a privilege to have you along for the ride. May you all stay forever young.