There were a couple of others but they got so little response we just consolidated. Feel free to comment on any episode from either season.
The AVClub guy gives really good reviews of each ep, though I often disagree with him. I was glad, for example, that they literally threw Frank’s sorry ass to the curb in the snow last night in spite of “humanizing” him by showing his mom and all; the fact he grew up in dysfunction doesn’t exonerate him for being a shitbag father and husband.
I thought the Jimmy:Fiona relationship was great in the last couple of episodes. I really wish that whatever went down twixt Marco and Estefania had gone down back in Brazil though; she adds nothing. (Of course if you’re a straight male she might add a lot more than she does to me.)
When Frank was dealing with the security guard, after springing Monica, I knew she was going to run off with the other chic. I was afraid they would take Debbie with them.
Sampiro,
Estefania is definitely hot but she, and that whole plot line, are just annoying. Fiona and Veronica are plenty hot. The show doesn’t need more if it means having an annoying distracting side plot.
Another fan of this show checking in - and as previously stated, this show doesn’t get the credit it deserves. Well written, well directed and fantastically acted. This is in my top five and will stay there.
Count me among the really bummed that we have to wait so long for the next season. I love this show. My husband and I are in the habit of watching the same episode a few times a week, just because it’s on and we love it.
I think Karen.
Frank does some pretty despicable things, without a doubt, but I generally think of them as things he does as a result of being an addict. Karen, on the other hand, I think has sociopathic tendencies completely unrelated to any substances she may or may not partake in.
I’m generally well able to separate out what I see on a TV show from real life and remind myself that these are fictional characters, but I really, truly felt hatred and rage for Karen over the past few episodes.
One of the very very few moments I saw even a glimmer of anything remotely like caring about any of his children in Frank was when he stood in the lawn and let Lip pee on him after the video of him with Karen was posted. In the first place, his sex with Karen was about the only illegal thing he did that I really didn’t consider his fault (she didn’t quite rape him, but I don’t think he had full control over his actions due to being high/drunk and she was totally the instigator), yet he didn’t try to get out of being punished.
His allowing Lip to get some satisfaction was enough of a paternal gesture that I’d reduce his sentence for other crimes and misdemeanors to ‘life at hard labor and 13 lashes per month well laid on’ to ‘life at hard labor and 12 lashes per month well laid on’. Not that this would help that much since I’d send him to the gallows anyway for causing the death of Butterface (sorry- don’t remember her real name).
I’ve never seen any glimmer of caring about others in Karen, at least not since her meltdown with her dad at the Purity Ball. Of course he had that coming to a degree (and it was the catalyt for her mounting Frank), but the only reason she was there in the first place was because he promised her a car.
The fact she was so intent on selling her baby to the highest bidder with no concern for any other factor is even more evil when you remember she got $75K from her father’s insurance.
For some reason, Frank’s hightailing it out the door when Monica tried to kill herself just struck me as particularly good acting by William H. Macy. It showed not just Frank’s cowardice, but also the fact he really does love this woman and can’t bear to see her die.
I was so glad to see Ian refuse to let him take the beer. That was just one damned thing too much after all the shit he’s pulled; he stole enough from the Kash N Grab, basically blackmailing the kid after witnessing the gay sex going on, that Ian probably didn’t have a paycheck for a month.
I hope Louise Fletcher gets an Emmy for playing Granny Gallagher. She was great- over-the-top and believable at the same time (and looks so much like my great-aunt who used to expose herself in the highway it was eerie watching the bathing scenes).
I think they got a liiiiitle too cutesy with the plotting by making Jimmy’s dad and Ian’s lover the same guy. That’s just too much of a coincidence to be believable.
It’s not very believable, but for showing us Ian naked, they could make Monica’s butch black lesbian truckdriver friend Jimmy’s older sister the nun and I’d forgive them.
See, now this I don’t get. I can think of at least two episodes where the Gallagher family freaked out and went on an exhaustive search because they thought Frank was either dead or missing. Then they leave him outside to freeze to death? Does not compute.
I think Frank may have finally exceeded that. Between trying to sell off the baby, ditching them for Sheila, taking ALL the squirrel money with Monica for massive amounts of drugs, the last straw may have been his attempt to fight Ian for the beer. They may have just had… enough.
I think the $9,000 squirrel money is the big one. Fiona and the kids busted their ass making that money, every kid but Liam pitching in, and it was to last them for months, and this sorry piece of shit and his crazy wife go through it in three days without so much as a “sorry hon”, and this after years of neglect. Frank even prided himself on neglect with Lip as “making you independent”. I think he’s officially been disowned.
The kids need to frame Frank for a crime that was committed by a rich person who can pay them. It would be an excellent solution: he gets three hots and a cot, the kids are rid of him, the rich guy gets off, win-win-win.
