Season 2 Finale All About New Beginnings

Although the season 2 finale featured plenty of action like a rooftop police chase, a breakout from a psychiatric ward, and Frank's wife leaving him for a lesbian – the episode focused greater attention on the blooming relationships between characters, especially Fiona and Jimmy. There wasn’t a cliffhanger ending, but there might not need to be when the trailer for season 3 starts off with Frank waking up from a drunken stupor in Mexico.

Instead, the finale stirred that very human desire to find some semblance of family in what's left of the Gallagher household. It's them against the world, and by the end of every episode, after battling the poverty-stricken streets, after fighting and screaming and leaving, they somehow, just somehow, managed to make it back home. We craved reconciliation, more than over-the-top cinematics, and we were not disappointed.

At the beginning of the episode, Fiona and her on-again, off-again boyfriend Jimmy, picked up where the previous episode left off, cleaning up Monica's (Fiona's mother's) blood from the kitchen floor where they found her bleeding and unconscious on Thanksgiving after attempting suicide. The music is soft and folksy and Fiona is crying and the moment really works to bring the two back together. There is such gravity in their task that the rest well... just becomes water under the bridge.

To say their relationship has been rocky and unconventional would be to say the least. In previous episodes, Jimmy was actually known by everyone, including Fiona, as Steve, an alias he used to protect his identity as a seasoned car thief. After coming clean to her about leading two lives, Jimmy/Steve finally realizes that he needs her, but of course, the complications are already looming… 

Jimmy's beautiful ex-wife ran away from her husband and shows up in the middle of the night hysterically screaming. The real significance is that her new husband, an intimidating and powerful head of some nefarious cartel, is hot on her 3-inch stiletto heels.

That same need for the Gallagher's to be part of something more than themselves is where we find the greatest joys in the episode. After Fiona passes her GED, she begs her brother Lip – who has moved out of the house and into an apartment with his bad-mannered girlfriend – to go back to school. She reminds him that they made a deal: if she gets past high school, Lip, who despite his South-side upbringing has a 4.6 GPA, has to go to college. Lip just walks away, while his girlfriend pushes Fiona to the door, sauntering around in only her T-shirt and panties.  

But the point is that Fiona cares and somewhere under his grievances and his Luke-Perry-like indifference for his future, Lip does too. So he shows up for his Physics final exam, unannounced, to the befuddlement of his professor, who only drops him a knowing nod and an empty Scan-tron booklet. Later that night, when he goes back home, Fiona is the first to run into his arms.

The best part of the ending, thoughk is that after Frank sneaks into an insane asylum to break out his wife who has 60 more days after attempting her life; and, even after he finds her in her room, and she’s in bed with another woman; and, even after he breaks both of them out, she still leaves him for that woman. Even after all that, Frank still comes back home.

But this time, after a physical fight with his teenage son, Ian, the clan gang up on him, knock him unconscious with a frying pan, and help each other drag him out to the front yard. The last scene pans over fresh snow falling down on the Gallagher home, and feelings of new beginnings, when the forgotten Frank sits up from the snow, dusts himself off, and scurries away. Finally, after two seasons of not even being able to stomach him, Frank finally ends up where he deserves: out by the trash covered with snow. 

Families That Play Together, Stay Together

"Shameless" is really all about what the characters are willing to do - or often times, subject themselves - in order to make a few bucks. Selling marijuana, gambling, even underground fight matches are not beneath the Gallagher family when it comes to paying rent. (Or, as Fiona elegantly put it, "feeding the children come winter," which sounds more at home on the Oregon Trail.) Although the second episode in season two, called "Summer Loving," had a fair share of just that – both gay and straight sex scenes – the storyline really hung on the omnipresent need to score a quick buck.

Let's set the storyline: Frank has been living with Sheila for several months, but Sheila doesn't know about Frank's cantankerous alcoholism because she suffers from agoraphobia and can barely take 100 steps outside her front door. With her condition improving, Frank worries about keeping a roof over his head. When he hears that his old drinking buddy Dottie might have only a few weeks to live, he goes to her house with dinner and offers his services around the house. What’s in it for Frank? Dottie has a city pension to last him a lifetime. 

While watching Frank take advantage of yet another human being it's becoming hard to stomach him. You just want to scream: go to AA, you asshole. In the beginning he was heartless, we know, but we hoped he, at least, had a soul. After he remarks to his pre-adolescent son that the boy should wake up everyday and thank him that his sperm made it far enough inside his mother that he was even born - well, it's becoming harder and harder to keep up the facade.

The other main character, Fiona is a bit like the anti-Frank. The 21-year-old takes care of Frank's family not because they are his children, but in spite of that fact. They are her siblings first and foremost. She really is quite competent and heads the family in sophisticated style. Managing to work all night at a night club, keep the kids in order, and clean up after Frank, before slapping on a sleep mask and passing out all afternoon is actually impressive.

The episode begins with her older friend Veronica trying to set Fiona up with a sugar daddy. She's not interested, but after talking with her prospective suitor, says: "So, how does this work? I look pretty and hang on your arm, and you buy me really expensive things that I don't really need." I think she’s forgetting something…

But for all her good deeds, the Gallagher family regularly plays with fire. Although the teenage sibling Ian has aspirations to apply to West Point, his budding relationship with ex-con Mickey is of growing concern. Ian went to meet Mickey as he was released from prison and the first thing Mickey did as free man was turn back to the cops, who were standing behind a barb-wired fence, and scream: "Fuck you, fuck you, and especially fuck you."

Although you’re rooting for the rebellious Gallaghers, the viewer secretly enjoys peeking in as the family struggles to survive this rowdy Chicago neighborhood. The tragedy of a family that has resorted to almost everything besides prostitution to support themselves makes for entertaining television so long as you can watch it from a safe distance.

But, the real soul of the show is how the family is able to stick together and look out for each other in the face of real danger. Although the whole family should be sent to jail, you have to admit they are kind of heartwarming. It’s like they say, Families that play together, stay together.

'Shameless' Season 2 Doesn't Dissappoint

The second season of the Showtime hit-series “Shameless” (now in its third season) premiered last January and true to form leaves little to the imagination. Sex, drugs and drunk driving run rampant through the destitute Chicago neighborhood of Canaryville, and often comes off as a bit scandalous, if not deplorable, especially to the uninitiated. But that’s all part of the charm.

Admittedly, if I grew up with these perfectly unguided youths, I’d be right next to Lip and Kev Ball pushing pot out of a beat-up ice cream truck to 14-year-olds at the local park. See, once you get to know them, the gangs really not that bad, they’re just trying to get by... they’re not hurting anyone but themselves, and that turns out to be the most entertaining part of all.

The first episode, called “Summertime,” opens up with the alcoholic head of the family Frank Gallagher running his mouth at the only local bar that hasn’t banned him, “The Alibi Room.” He bets this gigantic South-Side gangster that the man couldn’t take two shots to the chest with a taser gun and still be standing. Well wouldn’t you know, there’s a taser gun behind the bar, and long story short, Frank loses. Big. $10,000-big.

Between slinging back Budweisers and trying to seduce a chronically ill woman from his past, Frank uses his infant son Liam to panhandle change on a street corner to pay back his newfound debt. But, when the gangsters find him, they bring him and the boy back to their warehouse, and Frank reluctantly surrenders Liam to the gang as collateral.  

The show is quite funny at parts, and somehow sad. It’s much like HBO’s “Entourage” with memorable over-the-top storylines, but without all the Hollywood money, glitz and glamour. You could say "Shameless" is the poor-man’s “Entourage.”

Of course the gorgeous actresses are still a mainstay like the female lead, Fiona Gallagher, portrayed by the beautiful 26-year-old scarlet Emma Rossum. She’s a standout and certainly engaging playing the hopelessly unafraid Fiona.

Once you realize that the characters aren’t flaunting their dirty little habits like Vince seems to on “Entourage,” you find that the characters seem like normal people. They’re not horrible, they are who they are: unapologetic.

There are parts of the show that strangely remind of my own life, although unlike our characters, I’ve never grew dozens of pot plants in my basement or brawled in an underground, no-holds-barred fight ring. Some situations, however, seem somehow familiar, albeit not entirely similar.

I caught myself thinking about my own friends or family while watching, which is a hallmark of a good show. It’s like well-written fiction is a foggy mirror that when done just right, you can find parts of yourself in the smooth glass. There’s a missing memory here, or a notion there, something vaguely reminiscent. If that’s the case, then Showtime’s “Shameless” is polished very close to perfection.