Shameless Review: “South Side Rules” (5×10)

There’s really no way to even begin talking about “South Side Rules” without mentioning that knockout of an ending. Looking back on it, it’s a classic bait-and-switch. Ian and Mickey are too happy—seriously, how adorable is their drunken “Love Is a Battlefield” sing along—and that should be the first sign that something is about to go horribly wrong. But who really expected Sammi to go so far in her vengeance quest against the Gallaghers who have so shunned her? It’s the first truly tremendous closer the show has had all season, and it comes not a moment too soon.

Here’s the thing: Sammi believes everything she says to Ian, incongruous as it may seem, before turning him over the United States Army. She doesn’t bear any ill will toward Ian at all; he’s just a way to jab at Fiona and repay her for what she sees as her complicity in Chuckie’s jail stint. And you know? She’s not wrong. There’s been just one empirically provable consequence of these so-called South Side Rules, and it’s that, sooner or later, they wreak as much havoc as possible.

South Side Rules are also total bullshit, as Professor Wallace correctly calls Lip out on. The Gallaghers use them constantly, against all reason, to rationalize their bad decisions and their bad habits. Lip covers for Kevin: South Side Rules. Fiona comforts Sean despite that oh-so-obvious impending kiss: South Side Rules. And, yeah, Sammie throws down, an eye for an eye: that’s South Side Rules, too.

From the perspective of a non-Gallagher, it’s way past time to call the Gallaghers out on their bullshit. Is it likely that lip will take Wallace’s admonition to heart? Nope. She’s already making her own bullshit rationalizations, putting a great tenured position on the line for—well, okay, I’ll give her Jeremy Allen White, but still—and beside, Lip’s similarly underprivileged resident decides not to rat him out. We might see the wreckage that “South Side Rules” wreaks, but for the Gallaghers, the system works. At least, for now.

And yet there’s one Gallagher for whom South Side Rules seems truly to work, against all odds, spitting in the face of God and fairness and all and sundry, and that’s Frank. Bianca first tries to distance herself from Frank after their bender, but before long she’s right back in his orbit again. He really is what she needs in her life right now. Somehow. And there’s somehow something truly genuine in his feelings for her. Granted he’s trying to have sex with her, and the story is a hair’s breadth from becoming super fucking gross. But right now it’s actually kind of sweet.

A lot of the value of “South Side Rules” comes from its shock ending, but the episode does a great job both building up to its cliffhanger and cleverly distracting from it. At first it seems curious that, after last week’s ending, we don’t check in with Carl and Chuckie in juvie. But in retrospect it makes sense—we need to not be thinking about Chuckie’s fate in order for Sammi’s decision to have the maximum impact. Meanwhile the other characters slowly dig their heels in: so we are more concerned that Fiona will find a way to betray Gus’s trust again, that Lip is going to squander the gifts that life is quite literally showering him with at this point, and that poor Debbie is going to get herself pregnant.

In fact for everything that happens in it, “South Side Rules” is a relatively non-chaotic episode by Shameless’s usual standards. So often the various characters are in total free fall, and this episode is unafraid to hit the pause button, at least briefly. Check out the lovely shots of Fiona cleaning Gus’s empty apartment when she’s so used to tending to a house full of crazy siblings. This relationship is taking way too much effort on her part, and she knows it. She knows she is just going through the motions. It’s part of what draws her to Sean—he’s got her number, and she knows that, too.

It’s not all gloom and doom, though. Really, “South Side Rules” does perhaps the best job this season of balancing the show’s more serious side with its sillier indulgences. Plenty of laughs, heartfelt moments, and yes, an emotional gut punch at the end—it may not be a series best, but it’s textbook Shameless done well enough.

Stray Observations:

– Debbie just steamrolls right over Derek’s total non-response to her too-soon “I love you.” Abs will do that to a girl.

– “Cheap weed!” Honestly, Kevin and Lip selling drugs in the dorm was a bad enough idea without having the weed turn out to be weird drugs instead.

– The dynamic between Lip and Amanda is exceedingly odd, isn’t it?

– I feel like there would be absolutely nothing appealing about Skype sex, so Fiona and Gus probably lucked out there.