In many shows or movies, when a character does something that we strongly oppose, we tend to dislike them more and lose sympathy for them. Sure, genres like fantasy and sci-fi have plenty of likable villains, but that’s because those characters are usually far from anyone you’d ever encounter in your life and their level of badass often surpasses the terrible things they’ve done. Shameless, being a show in a present-day setting that tries to be as realistic and believable as possible, faces challenges many other shows don’t. It forces you to watch these characters make bad decisions and hurt people around them while managing to make you keep caring about them as if they were people you knew in person. Every character in Shameless has many flaws, but as a viewer, you can’t stop hoping things work out for the Gallaghers.
This week’s episode, more than any other this season, made that clear to me. Fiona, despite what she tells herself, continues to go after Mike’s brother, Robbie. Lip, in a fit of anger after not being allowed to write a test he was six minutes late for, smashes a bunch of random car windows on campus. Carl drugs his father and breaks his leg while he’s out. Sammi, after finding out Frank is her father, tells him, “you dry-humped my thigh for half an hour yesterday!” to which he replies, “dry-humping is not incest.” Despite how funny that last one is, none of these traits are ones people look for in friends. These aren’t redeemable qualities. Still, by the end of the episode, these characters have each gone some way in redeeming themselves for their past errors.
Even though I don’t like seeing Fiona go back to Robbie, I’m glad the writers have Veronica step in and push Fiona to admit her problems. This helps her image a bit this week after she lets Robbie have his way with her on the train, but this still probably won’t end well for her. If she really stops seeing Robbie, won’t he just threaten to tell Mike?
Just as Veronica plays parent to Fiona here, Kev has some great moments with Lip trying to convince him to go back to college after Lip starts telling everyone he’s going to drop out. This was the best episode this season for Lip’s college storyline. His arc had been heading towards a breakdown, and this week we saw it. After smashing the car windows and coming home, Lip sees Mandy again, and after they have sex he tells her he wouldn’t mind if she got pregnant. Furious, Mandy says she worked hard to get him into college and, after a fight, Lip ends up at The Alibi. Kev throws down some heavy words of wisdom for Lip, telling him to “grow a pair.” I liked his whole bit about Lip being the best at beating the system, and Kev asking Lip if he really wanted to end up like him, with kids on the way and struggling to pay bills. Kev and Veronica have had their own storylines with V’s mom and the babies going on lately, and this episode reminded us just how important those two characters are to the Gallaghers.
That’s not it for Kev. He also hires some Mexicans to do cheap work around The Alibi and accepts Mickey’s proposal to run a Russian whore operation out of The Alibi to bring them both more customers. The Alibi sees a lot of action in this episode, and I’m excited to see more of Kev and Mickey’s business partnership in the coming weeks.