Shameless Review: “Love Songs (In the Key of Gallagher)” (5×12)

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.