Got to give the show credit for making him even worse in season 2. For every moment he has show an ounce of compassion or quasi-responsibility ( i.e. pay-for-gay to try and get his youngest back ), it has been leavened with a quarter-ton of odiousness. The ‘Butterface’ transplant thing ( essentially murder ) was by far the worst we have ever seen him do, but there are plenty of charming little moments like his stinging diss of Carl ( “laugh it off”). Yet for all that he still is oddly charismatic.
I hope we see Frank’s birth family again. Louise Fletcher was inspired as his mom- she was hysterical and shocking and pretty much exactly what you’d expect somebody who whelped Frank would be- but it was more surprising to see how Frank’s brother/Ian’s bio father turned out so well and managed to escape the rest of them and, most amazingly, seems to escape Frank trying to leach. (That must be his wife’s help.) Though Frank’s apparent twin seemed to at least hold down a job.
I really want to see Sheila wise up and kick Frank out. I do at least like that she makes sex very painful for him while he’s freeloading.
The teenaged 4th grader who wanted to have sex with Lip was a darkly funny plot, especially Debbie’s “Well why didn’t you? I need a cool friend!” attitude.
I liked the psycho cheated-on wife plot but kept expecting Fiona to throw down. And also Fiona ultimately deciding to DO THE RIGHT THING with the money she stole from the LV bag she found and then having a great excuse to keep it anyway.
It’s been confirmed that Justin Chatwin is rejoining the show as a regular for the last part of the season.
I prefer the original UK series. I’ve been following the AV Club write-ups of the US version. Some readers there didn’t like it when the family and the rest of the neighborhood stole all of the meat off of a delivery truck that was parked in their neighborhood. (As I remember, the driver was lost.) As someone pointed out in the discussion there, in the original UK series, the family and the rest of the neighborhood live in a council estate. So there is very much an us-vs-them feeling about outsiders. The characters in the US show seem to live in a regular neighborhood, so they aren’t as set aside as they are in the UK series.
A good point. Maybe I’m suckered in by the more, well, professional look of the US version. The UK one seems so amateurish at time. I’m clearly a whore.
Because the thread is about this show, my mind we to a dark place and initially interpreted that not as waving hands in the air but as a spreading open of the legs. Either is of course an appropriate response to the news in question.
I tried watching the U.K. version on DVD from Netflix, but had a hard time following it even though most of the plots are almost identical. I’ll admit the accents being so thick was one problem, but I have to say that Showtime has done a great job of redrawing the characters, and Macy’s Frank totally rides over [the British actor*.
My understanding is that the U.K./U.S. versions fork into different directions after the first few episodes.
How many times has Lip gotten punched or hit in the last few episodes? Poor bastard is a punching bag lately. And I can’t say he doesn’t deserve it. He is a prime example of what happens when you stick your dick in the crazy.
And I’m sorry, Kevin, but you need to go coach a basketball game or two, figure out your star player is gone, and put two and two together. How has he not noticed that Malik is missing too?
Maybe Kev is just too caught up in his grief over Ethel plus having to deal with the dementia of the old guy who owns the bar. He’s not too bright to begin with. Maybe his brain just can’t handle it all.
Speaking of, I’m in my mid 40s and Jack Carter has been one of those “there’s what’s his name…” guest stars for all of my life. Now he’s almost 90. I never ever thought I would one day get to see his ass. Repeatedly. And I really wish I’d been right about that.
I’m loving Grammy. She also helps explain why Frank is Frank to a degree- he’s still a total bastard who needs to be on a chain gang somewhere and doesn’t have a redeeming bone in his body, but it’s interesting seeing how he got his start.
One thing you have to give this show, they don’t play it safe: it’s been confirmed that Harry Hamlin (who is 60 IRL) will have a multi-episode arc as the love interest of Ian (the character is about 16, the actor is 18).
If it involves a kept boy proposition, I would say that as low down the food chain as the Gallaghers are and as many obstacles as Ian already has it would be worth hearing the details of the offer (preferably with Lip and or Fiona there to broker for his interests) before automatically saying “No” just on moral grounds. My guess is it will involve Ian’s West Point quest- Hamlin will probably be a family values politician or power broker able to make that happen and willing to do so for sex.
In any case, brave plotline because they’re going to piss off both sides of the spectrum: those who say “ew” to gay sex in general and hypersensitive gay activists who want to avoid giving exposure to a chicken hawk plotline.
ETA: For anybody who doesn’t know the [fairly old] term, ‘chicken hawk’ is gay slang for an older man who likes really young guys (not necessarily underage, though Ian is, but teens/early twenties), usually with some kind of sugar daddy relationship.
I didn’t really understand why Sheila and Jody (who I am glad have hooked up) kidnapped the baby. The adoption fell through, it’s going to be very difficult to find adoptive parents for a biracial baby with Down Syndrome and foster parents are already overloaded, and I’m guessing it would be a cakewalk for Sheila, as grandmother and as a law abiding homeowner, to get legal full custody.
I’ll admit I totally didn’t see Jimmy’s father=Sexy Older Doc coming. And Cameron Monaghan- I feel like a perv since he’s 18, but damn, seeing him naked was a wonderful treat.
I’m hating that there’s going to be such a long wait now for new episodes. Showtime’s website says "New Season Coming in 2013
".
Either they’ll skip ahead a year in the story, or we’ll just have to ignore how much older the kids look.
We’ll miss a year of Sheila and Todd raising that baby? We’ll miss the fights over Lip completing or not completing high school? Will Karen just be back home or will she have been gone a year (and possibly for good)?
They’ll have to fill in a year of what’s been going on and then take off from there. That can really put a crimp in an otherwise excellent show.