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Shameless Season 5 (1 Viewer)

Dave Scarpa

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Yeah ok start, definitely a bit lighter in tone to last season, least so far
 

MarkMel

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I felt like they may have had some new writers or a new director. Some of the dialogue choices seemed different than previous seasons.
 

Adam Lenhardt

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MarkMel said:
I felt like they may have had some new writers or a new director. Some of the dialogue choices seemed different than previous seasons.
The episode definitely had a different feel to it. The stylized editing, beginning with the opening flyover of Chicago, felt especially jarring given that the show is normally very naturalistic in both the cinematography and the editing. That being said, the episode's writer (Nancy M. Pimental) has been with the show from the very beginning, and the director (Christopher Chulack) was responsible for last season's "Liver, I Hardly Know Her".

Other than that, I really liked the premiere. Some of my favorite episodes are the ones like this one, where the show basically circles around the neighborhood and peeks in at what everybody's up to.

A shame they couldn't get Jeffrey Dean Morgan back as the diner's owner, but Dermot Mulroney was very good here as a very similar but maybe slightly softer character. Bringing him in as a separate manager character was a smart move. I hate when shows recast characters. While the recasting of Mandy was necessary when Jane Levy got the lead in "Suburgatory", it still bugs me. Even though he's way too old for Fiona, I liked that she's attracted to someone who's trying to rebuild his life like she is hers, instead of yet another bad boy.

I'm always taken aback seeing the kids when this show starts a new season. It's strange seeing Debbie as tall the adults now. And it was nice seeing the return of mercenary Debbie. Hopefully they let her sex obsession go, since that storyline really icked me out. I barely recognized Liam, the twins who play him having grown so much. And I wonder if Ethan Cutkosky actually broke his leg, and that's the reason he was on the crutches.

Ian's infidelity was disappointing, but not at all surprising given his bipolar condition. I know a couple bipolar people, and his behavior tracked very closely with what I know of them when they're leveled out but off their meds. The only thing that really surprised me was that he was still holding onto his job at the club. The bipolar people I know can never seem to hold onto a job for more than a couple of months when they're not on their meds.

I like the oddly functional household that's operating at Mickey's place with Ian, Mickey's Eastern European bride and the rub-and-tug girls all pitching in on the child rearing.

The character of Frank works best like this, with him off running his cockeyed schemes and not being actively malicious toward anybody. The mid-credits stinger with the art class was just priceless.


I wonder what the deal is with Dichen Lachman's character, Angela. We saw her in the car with Steve/Jimmy at the tail end of last season, and now she's buying pie and leaving $100 tips at Fiona's diner. Did Steve/Jimmy send her as an advance scout?


EDIT: Renewed for Season 6
 

Paul D G

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Thanks for pointing out the diner owner was recast. We totally didn't know where he came from when he appeared at the beginning. That threw me off for the rest of the episode and once you mentioned he was a replacement it all came together.


I have to wonder if there was some foreshadowing in the final shot of the episode - the sketch of Frank laying out like a corpse...
 

Kevin Hewell

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I like the oddly functional household that's operating at Mickey's place with Ian, Mickey's Eastern European bride and the rub-and-tug girls all pitching in on the child rearing.
That's one of the things this show does so well.

I wonder what the deal is with Dichen Lachman's character, Angela. We saw her in the car with Steve/Jimmy at the tail end of last season, and now she's buying pie and leaving $100 tips at Fiona's diner. Did Steve/Jimmy send her as an advance scout?

That totally escaped me. Thanks for pointing it out.
 

ScottH

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Paul D G said:
Thanks for pointing out the diner owner was recast. We totally didn't know where he came from when he appeared at the beginning. That threw me off for the rest of the episode and once you mentioned he was a replacement it all came together.

I don't think the diner owner was recast - it was a completely different character. They made that very clear from the beginning when he said, "I may not have hired you, but I can fire you."
 

mattCR

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I thought the last few minutes this week, when Fiona realizes that he was right, and that a big part of her life is being addicted to the thrill of chaos - those two minutes were great TV.
 

Adam Lenhardt

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mattCR said:
I thought the last few minutes this week, when Fiona realizes that he was right, and that a big part of her life is being addicted to the thrill of chaos - those two minutes were great TV.
I agree. Really well done. And I think Dermot Mulroney might be doing the best work of his career here. His desperate, confessional monologue in the Gallagher kitchen was incredible.

I'm also liking the contrast between the drunk and/or dying Frank from the first four seasons and the Frank this season who has been forced into moderation. Sober Frank is more or less as much of an asshole as drunk Frank was, but you can see some of the character's intellect emerge and his bullshit theories hit a little closer to home. One thing I've always appreciated about this show is that the Gallaghers are allowed to have large vocabularies and be generally well spoken. Most of the time, if the television's on, it's documentaries or Discovery channel or PBS.

Very inventive solution by Mickey to talk Ian back from his bipolar-driven manic rage. Sooner or later, though, Ian's going to need real help.

Loved Sheila just owning Sammy near the end. Her handing over Chuckie's turd in a Ziploc freezer bag was just the coup de grâce.
 

mattCR

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Definitely zanier this season, which is different, but fun. We've gone back, though, to making some of the characters truly.. shameless and at points just bad people.


I'm going to have to mull over the truly difficult situations both Frank put his daughter in, and Debbie's storyline is both sad, funny and concerning.


The end was certainly explosive.
 

ScottH

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I don't know...I still enjoy the show, and I know it's always teetered on the line between reality and fantasy, but I think it's getting a bit too far fetched for it's own good. So Frank is now essentially guilty of murder (or at least involuntary manslaughter)? And I'm sure nothing will come of that.


And Deb has been so annoying since last season I wish she would have been the one in Sheila's house instead.
 

Adam Lenhardt

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Scott Hanson said:
I don't know...I still enjoy the show, and I know it's always teetered on the line between reality and fantasy, but I think it's getting a bit too far fetched for it's own good. So Frank is now essentially guilty of murder (or at least involuntary manslaughter)? And I'm sure nothing will come of that.

Considering Frank committed actual murder in Season 2, by preventing Butterface from receiving a donor organ that could have saved her life, I think the accidental death of the horny junkyard owner in a fiery gas explosion as a result of Frank's haphazard beer-fermenting operation is mild by comparison.
 

ScottH

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Adam Lenhardt said:
Considering Frank committed actual murder in Season 2, by preventing Butterface from receiving a donor organ that could have saved her life, I think the accidental death of the horny junkyard owner in a fiery gas explosion as a result of Frank's haphazard beer-fermenting operation is mild by comparison.

Morally speaking perhaps. Not sure about legally speaking.
 

mattCR

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Shameless has definitely went into the zany comedy mode this year. Mixed feelings about that. I get that the are playing up the Fiona's love of chaos.. but I'm interested to see how that goes.. (full disclosure: I proposed to my wife after basically one date, and we've been together 18 years..) Retracing Frank's steps cracked me up... the sequence with Lip was also great stuff, and I feel for the obvious bipolar breakdown going on.
 

Adam Lenhardt

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Loved last night's episode. There's something delicious about Frank ultimately blowing all of his money on an entirely altruistic cause. I particularly loved that sober Frank was simultaneously as pissed off and resigned with drunk Frank as everybody else is with drunk Frank.

Interesting development with Lip and his girlfriend's family in Miami.

Debbie getting into boxing is a much more fruitful and much less icky storyline than her quest to get laid.

I've got mixed feelings about her getting married to Gus. On one hand, it's probably the most functional relationship she's ever had. On the other hand, her impulsively getting married like this tracks with her impulsively risky behavior.
 

Adam Lenhardt

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I thought the storyline with the other waitress at the diner was very well executed. A lot of my work deals with funding criminal justice programs that target the heroin epidemic in this country. I've got two doses of naloxone/narcan in my medicine cabinet in case I ever find myself in a position where I'm called to reverse an overdose.

The problem is that the twelve step programs that have achieved such success with alcohol and gambling and other addiction aren't well targeted to opioid addiction, because opioid addiction changes the brain and how it functions. Most heroin addicts in a twelve step rehab program dread completing the program, because they like feeling clean but know with certainty that they'll go back to using as soon as they temptation arises. At the same time, the abstinence wing of the twelve step culture guides treatment philosophy. Unlike other addictions, there are drugs that are effective at treating heroin addiction. Twelve step plus a suboxone or buprenorphine regimen has been extremely successful, but it flies in the face of the abstinence culture of drug rehab.

It's a tragedy what happens to heroin addicts, many of whom were oxy addicts before the feds clamped down on the prescription painkillers. I've read and heard about so many people like this waitress. And I'm so happy the show recognized it as a tragedy and did not judge her or demean her for it. She is living with something that has robbed of control over her own life.

Frank's living situation with the liver donor's parents is even more fucked up than his living situation with Sheila in the early days was.

"Well then, I fucked our son!"
 

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