What I’m Watching: Shameless

Shameless: Season 1, Episode 7 “Frank Gallagher: Loving Husband, Devoted Father” (B+)

What an episode this was! There isn’t much the Gallagher family won’t do to protect one of their own, even if the family member in question is hardly a devoted father and is actually rather rude, insensitive, and excessively irresponsible. I, like most of the other family members, was fairly worried that Frank wouldn’t be able to play dead long enough to fool the guys who wanted to bash his head in, but fortunately he did alright and managed to only ruin the TV in Kev’s bar. This show does a magnificent job of visualizing Sheila’s debilitating condition, and having Liam stranded outside presented the perfect opportunity for her to have to confront the outside world, at least in a limited capacity. We got some surprising revelations involving the characters that interact with Ian, involving Mickey’s homosexuality and the rather angry discover by Kash’s wife of his extracurricular activities. I love Marguerite Moreau, and her delivery of a line I wouldn’t dare type here was absolutely hilarious. I’m glad that she didn’t fire Ian and that Kash won’t have to stop sleeping with him since Linda doesn’t want to have to be a white Muslim woman without a husband, and this means we’ll hopefully get to see more of both Kash and Linda. Steve is proving himself to be a truly sentimental guy, and it’s great that he was able to succeed in executing his highly romantic date night at the hotel with Fiona. She did have quite a unique reaction to his admission of “I love you.”