#Your writing and Mickey baiting won't be missed

[koganphrancis]

Sheila’s Swan Song

Or: Ian Swap That Mic For Mickey And Then We’d Have Something Worth Watching

Sheila Callaghan has written her last episode for Shameless, and while it wasn’t as bad as I feared it could have been (I was really worried she was going to give us some Ian and Terror romance), it was probably the most boring episode in a very, very boring season.  

A quick recap of what some of the other characters were going through before I get to “Gay Jesus”...

Svetlana just seems really sad-I don’t like what they’re doing to her, and Isidora is playing Svet like a declawed lioness remembering her former power or something.  It hurts to watch.  And why should Svetlana get stuck with a gross old man-why doesn’t the show have whatever the standard for male beauty between 30-40 years old is these days walk into the Alibi and fall head over heels for her?  (and I guess maybe that could happen, the season’s not over yet, but it feels more like a John Wells fantasy being played out-hot Russian who knows every sex move in the book willingly riding off with rich old puke)

Also-I don’t watch The Ellen Show but there’s a scene with Kev that I’ve seen as a skit on The Ellen Show-it wasn’t funny, and I hope life imitates art and The Ellen Show sues Wells and he loses the show like it appears Fiona will lose the apartment building.

Fiona and Ford finally have sex after he creepily tells her he’s “asked around” about her (but the shit he found out is only stuff the people closest to her would know-would they really tell him all about her past?  Of course not, but this is Shameless and we’re supposed to forget about loyalty and “South Side rules”).  They still have no chemistry-he’s her Faileb and I want him to take his pretentious attitude and go fuck himself.  

Fiona has what was probably to Sheila a soul-baring moment: she tells Ford she might not want to have kids.  First of all, is this really something you bring up as pillow talk the first time you bang a guy?  And second, Fiona doesn’t take care of the three kids she’s still legally responsible for (and she totally dropped the ball when 17 year old Ian went missing)-are we supposed to think she’d be more interested in kids if she pushed them out of her uterus?  And where was her dog this week?  Who is taking care of him while she’s not staying at home and banging Ford in that house he’s renovating?  

Nessa is still in competition with Ian for “Least Likely To Be Found At Their Job”, plus Sheils throws in the plot point that Nessa had a miscarriage...it was a very odd thing to put into the show-it was weird when Nessa and Mel told Fi they were both pregnant with Ford’s kids to begin with, but why even write that in only to have Nessa’s pregnancy end so quickly?  They are shortchanging so many storylines this season, wtf waste time on a very minor character going through something that should be very traumatic when all you have her do is shrug it off and say she hasn’t even told her partner about it?  

Moving on-Lip goes through something major-maybe.  Youens dies in prison and then Lip gets angry, but we don’t know WHY he is angry.  We can guess all we want, but the show’s not telling us.  There’s a huge gap between “open for interpretation” and “what the fuck is going on?” and Shameless is always falling on the wrong side of that equation now.  Is Lip angry because he finds out Youens had special connections with other students?  (If so, he’s an ass and needs to get over his special snowflake self.)  Is he angry because of all the wasted potential?  That Youens was a great educator and his disease robbed him of his ability to motivate and advance others?  Is he angry because of his own wasted potential?  Is he angry because he’s afraid he’ll wind up just like Youens-and Frank?  Why wouldn’t the show clue us in?  I felt a disconnect during all Lip’s scenes because it’s all too easy for me to believe he’s only upset on his own account, not the professor’s.  Lip has been established as a self-centered character for years, so that’s how I’m still perceiving him since the show isn’t giving me any reasons not to.  When Lip walked into the bike shop my first thought was, “He’s going to trash the place.”  Then I took a second to think maybe that wasn’t fair, maybe the show was going to clue us in that Lip HAS grown-at least he wasn’t drinking-and maybe I was too quick to assume he was going to get violent like when he smashed up all those cars a few seasons back. But, nope, Shameless once again goes to the old recycling bin and has Lip lash out and engage in some pointless destruction.  If the show wants me to think he’s progressing and growing and learning, they should’ve had him go to an AA meeting.  

One last note about Lip’s storyline this week: Youens’ daughter was played by Fiona Dourif who is kick ass on Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency and I wish she was a recurring guest star over oh so many people Shameless does have on week after week.  

Now a brief word on Carl (although his wedding is stupid and not worth my thinking about)-Kasammi continues to be too much.  She’s just exhausting and if Carl can’t see that he truly won’t be able to put up with her for the next few years-let alone a lifetime-then he really is stupid.  She wasn’t AS bad for most of this week, but I can’t let myself be amused by her or get into her at all because of how I know Shameless treats characters that get involved with Gallaghers.  I’m not even going to try to let her into my hard heart, because she’ll either be gone or disrespected or both before too long, I’m sure.  

And Carl?  Since Frank was the only one telling you to marry her, isn’t that enough of a reason not to?  Sheesh.

Deb’s storyline was so contrived I can’t be bothered.

Frank is back to being totally irrelevant, and poor Liam is back to hardly having any lines.

And now frigging Ian.  His story is so out of control I don’t know where to start.  I guess by saying what everyone’s been saying-they didn’t even show his whole scene at the Gay Jesus church, despite the title of the episode.  When he and Fiona were walking into the church and I saw how little time was left in the episode, I wondered if he wound up taking off his shirt (and red shoes) because he was nervous to be in front of so many people and Fiona said something to him like, “What’s the big deal?  You had hundreds of eyes on you when you danced at that club.”  (Not that she ever went to see what was going on there, but whatever.)  Then Ian would say they weren’t looking at him, they were looking at his body or something, and they’d decide he should take his shirt off, LOL.  But, nope, it never happened, however he got to that point.  I guess they need something to sell the DVDs of this shit season, and they’re counting on that deleted scene to do it.  

Remember a few seasons ago when Frank went around talking to groups and that one private school about being gay, and about groups oppressing gays?  Why are we watching Ian do something similar, yet worse?  

At the beginning of the episode, Ian is in a corner of the Gallagher living room where he’s set up an Axis/Allies-style map full of pushpins stuck in locations of “gay hating” churches.  No one in the family seems to find that odd or worrisome.  

Next he’s going to work for the first time in forever.  Outside he meets up with a group of people who have been waiting for him (I guess they didn’t know they could just walk inside to where the ambulance is parked like Fiona and Terror always do).  In my opinion, the scene-and a later one where Ian interacts with his “fans”-was really poorly done.  I have a feeling Sheila thought she was slyly social commentating on the way fans act around their idols when they meet them on the street (remember the scene she wrote where Fiona and Snore snarkily read Yelp comments?), but all these scenes did in this episode was take me out of the story and think, “That’s how Cam would interact with fans, not Ian.”  Instead of being overwhelmed or leery-or assuming they’re there for some other reason, he walks up to them and says, “What’s up, guys?”  Ian is not fazed at all by this fairly large group of complete strangers waiting around to talk to him, and I’m sorry, but why wouldn’t a regular person be at least a little freaked out?  How do they know exactly where he works, for one thing?  Or that he’s even an EMT-he wasn’t wearing his uniform in the viral video.  Later he signs T shirts for “fans” while he’s carrying on a conversation with the minister guy, and again it was played like he’s a seasoned celebrity, not a regular guy just out to help some kids.

There’s a weird exchange where one guy wants him to film a message for his boyfriend and a minister pushes a girl who’s been through two attempts at gay conversion at him, and then someone asks him if he’s a healer and Ian says, “I’m a paramedic.”  Oh, honey, you’re not!  You’re an EMT!  Paramedics need more education and training than you’ve had-unless the show wants us to believe you’ve found even more time to do that while holding down a full time job, getting plenty of sleep to keep the bipolar under control, and chasing Terror to ground since you got back from Mexico (remember-he specifically told Mickey he was an EMT under the bleachers). 

Ian goes inside and sees Sue, and she asks what the people want from Ian, and he says, “I guess they just want to be seen by someone who sees them back.”  Oh, please.  I don’t know what exactly the show is driving at, but Ian can’t see them back as individuals, there’s already too many of them, and geez if they could only know how he looked the love of his life right in the eye and said, “This isn’t me anymore,” and didn’t keep “seeing” him for the precious treasure he is, just turned his back and walked away!

Anyway, Sue makes it weird (but not to Ian, he doesn’t take it weird at all), saying, “Looks to me they want to douse you in syrup and slurp you up with a spoon.”  Ian makes a creepy face and says, “I could be down for that.”  WHY did the show turn it into something sexual?  The “fans” on the sidewalk weren’t acting like that.  Although the show does have one thing right-if all this was happening with a character who wasn’t young and hot like Ian, most people wouldn’t be listening to what he supposedly has to say, especially the faction of real life fans in the #Shameless tag on Twitter Sunday night who were saying how amazing Ian is and what a great “message” he’s spreading-it’s really not, kids.  Shut off your tv and your twitter and go talk to real life people, I beg of you!  But I’m getting ahead of myself. 

Next Ian’s hosting a big meeting in the Gallagher living room.  He’s saying stuff like, “We all have a holy spirit.  We’re all holy.  We’re all divine.”  Where is this coming from, exactly?  In the Den Of Geeks recap of this week’s episode, the reviewer wrote this: “Ian is offering a very powerful and necessary message: if you are Christian and gay, you shouldn’t live in shame or fear.”

I’m completely serious when I ask since when is Ian a Christian?  That has not been established on the show at all.  I know very little about organized religion, but I do know that Christians are different from Catholics, which is the closest the Gallaghers have ever been associated with religion in canon.  In the first season when they’re plotting to blackmail a priest into fake marrying Kev and Vee, both Lip and Ian talk as though they used to go to church but left when the priest made sexual advances.  But now suddenly Ian is “Christian” (implying he’s been baptized somewhere other than the Catholic church) and is talking about holy matters and reading from the Bible.  He literally says at the end of the living room scene, “I want to read from Romans...”  I’m not saying a religious conversion couldn’t happen, but I am asking why and how it happened, Shameless.  

Moving on, we have our first Terror sighting of the week.  Fiona goes to the youth shelter to ask him about finding a shelter for a family, and he answers her “Hey” with, “Where’s Ian?  Fiona says, “I don’t know” (and I would kill for her to add, “is Mickey back in town?”), and he spits out, “Fuck!  He was supposed to be here like an hour ago to help set up.  Doing this thing about careers in emergency services for our life skills program-a shit ton of people signed up cuz of him but...whatever.”  I cannot convey how whiny and bitchy he was in this scene.  First of all, Ian’s job could’ve easily been what was holding him up.  Or, what if he was having a depressive episode and couldn’t face either Terror or doing the program?  And, did he even agree to being a part of it, or was this all Terror’s idea to throw the emergency services element in there and he just told Ian to show up and help?  It didn’t sound like Terror had even tried to text or call Ian to find out why he wasn’t there, and I’m willing to chalk that up to Sheila’s lazy writing, but it’s just tedious on shows when people get pissy about things that could be cleared up with the simple act of using their phone.  UGH.  

Once Terror finds out what Fi is actually there for, he brings her to the office where he banged her brother to find a pamphlet.  He asks Fiona, “What’s your take on this whole Ian ambushing all these ministers?”  And for ONE SECOND I think they’re finally going to compare notes and say maybe there’s more going on despite Ian’s claims that he’s on his meds, but, nope.  Fiona only says, “Not really sure what to make of it.”  Well, she obviously cares deeply, doesn’t she?  And then Terror doesn’t let me down, makes it all about HIM, and says, “Part of me is psyched...that he’s helping people, but another part is, I don’t know (fucking pissed as hell that you’re not the only thing he pays attention to anymore?), kind of bummed that I have to crowbar my way into his life if I want to see him.”  Oh boo hoo.  You don’t DESERVE to be in his life!  All you do is take and take and take from him!

BTW, the Transgender Day poster that played such a big role in their “first time” is now hanging on his latest office door.  Eye roll.

There’s a scene where Frank and Liam are making the Gay Jesus hot dog T shirts and Ian demands that the proceeds go to “Trevor’s kids��-and he had also told the people outside the EMT station they need money.  But why?  Why doesn’t he just pimp himself out for tens of thousands of dollars at a time like with the old couple?  Surely that’s a faster way to get money for the kids?  

Next Ian’s at the Mickey Wedding Hall Youth Shelter, and he hangs a notice up on the bulletin board.  It’s unintentionally hilarious-it says “A Night Of Good Grief Featuring IAN GALLAGHER” and his name really is in all caps, and it looks like a poster for some no name band featuring some almost famous singer.  Ooh, it also says this exciting event is taking place August 15, 2018, so that’s where we are in the timeline, at least for this week.  

Terror completely ignores what Ian’s doing, but once he’s put that notice on the board, Ian begins talking to Terror.   Ian: Hey, sorry about last night.  Something came up last minute.  I’m trying to juggle everything but it’s snowballing and I had like forty people show up to this meeting yesterday... Terror: Yeah!  (said in a very bitchy tone) And I had fifty kids show up to a career symposium about how to be a paramedic, but I guess since yours is about god you win, right?  He stomps off, Ian chases after him. Ian: I’m helping people in need, same as you.  Are you saying it’s only cool when it’s your idea?  

WELL LOOK WHO FINALLY BOUGHT A VOWEL!!!!  Yes, Ian, he IS saying it’s only cool when it’s his idea, he’s been saying that right along to you about EVERYTHING, whether it’s been about you having sex, or getting over your mom, or helping the kids!  

Terror looks shocked his finally being called out on his shit and says: “I don’t ask a lot of you.  (LYING BITCH!!!  You’ve got Ian constantly jumping through hoops for you!)  This was one thing that was important to me.  (He acts like ANYTHING to do with him is important!)  You know maybe what you’re doing is worth pissing off the people who care about you-that’s fine-but don’t insult me by acting like it’s not happening.”  

Make everything about you much?  Holy crap that “argument” was hilarious!  Between my relief that Sheila didn’t have them bang AND Terror’s pissy self-centered attitude I was literally laughing out loud at that scene.  And I loved the call back to Terror’s earlier “that’s fine” when he told Ian he could lie to himself about not wanting to have sex with him last season.  GET OVER YOUR UGLY SELF, TERROR!

Oh, it felt good to laugh again, but now I’ll have to wrap this up.  The final stuff with Ian was just bizarre and so off feeling, but as always, is it because something’s truly wrong with Ian or is it just horrendous writing?  There’s a scene where he and Fiona are talking and getting along like nothing ever happened-how is SHE not curious about “larger concerns”, but I digress.  Ian’s got his Bible on his lap the whole time, they each smoke (first time Ian’s done that this season, I believe-oh, and Sheils didn’t leave us before having Ian drinking a beer again-wish that was a cue he’s not on his meds, but we know with this shitty show he can drink all he wants), and Ian asks Fi for a ride to church.

They get there, the place is packed, and he nervously gets up on stage and the spirit (of bad writing) overtakes him.  He slips into a new version of the weird accent and says, “When they say don’t use fake words like nonbinary, gender fluid, cis whatever, it’s like, ‘those are my terms, bitch’!”  The crowd goes wild.  But, aren’t those just labels?  And aren’t labels what the wrong side of this issue uses?  Like all the slurs they have for gay and trans people, and labels like sinner, fornicator, and abomination?  I don’t understand why Ian or the show thinks people on the other side are going to change or be swayed by labels.  

Ian continues, looking more and more glassy-eyed as he goes on, “Which means we have to be so big, so noisy, that there’s nowhere else to look!  And we do it in god’s name because God hates haters!”  

Oh man, so FAKE DEEP!  I thought Ian’s message is all about love, and god is love, and god loves love?  Plus, if god hates haters, why did he make them then?  This whole topic is way too big for a show like Shameless to handle (at this point the writers can’t handle making a grocery list) and it’s just tiresome how they keep saying stuff that circles back and contradicts things they’ve said in earlier episodes.  

And none of this is revolutionary-organized religion isn’t known for it’s openmindedness and inclusiveness.  So many religions treat women, children, minorities, people who belong to OTHER organized religions, and anyone they consider unworthy like shit.  I don’t understand why the show is wasting so much time-and throwing away Ian’s character-on something that’s not only not going to change, but that the conversation and debate has already been raging on for decades.  

Because they’ve really painted Ian into a corner now-where are they going to go with his character from here?  Is the religious fervor going to leave him and he just returns to the life he had to rush back to from the Mexican border?  Knowing this show, that’s entirely possible-they’ll just act like none of this had an impact when they come back next season, just like Ian giving up at the finish line with the love of his life didn’t affect him this season.  Or will they have him have a TV ministry and get more famous, rich, and corrupted for next year’s story arc?  Again, it’s such a shitty idea they just might.  

I would like to see this all end thusly-a scene opens on Ian, in bed, thrashing and moaning in his sleep.  A close up of a hand firmly but gently grasping his shoulder, the letters F-U-C-K visible on the back of the fingers, shakes him awake. Mickey: You alright, Ian? Ian: Mickey?  You...you’re not in Mexico? M: Mexico?  Why the fuck would I have been in Mexico? I: For trying to kill my sister? M: Your...Sammi?  Bitch shot at me, remember? I: I must’ve been dreaming.  (Yawns)  I dreamt I was Gay Jesus. M: Jesus, huh?  Pretty sure Judas had the red hair.  (Affectionately rubs Ian’s hair) I: So, you never went to jail...?  Am I a paramedic? M: A para...Ian, did you hit your head or something?   I: I don’t think so... M: You’re not a paramedic.  You’re about to start your senior year at the University of Chicago, you’re studying to be an occupational therapist, and you live with me and Svetlana and Mandy and (door opens, interrupting him)...this little ankle biter right here. (One of the Henckel twins runs towards the bed)  Hold up, Yev, Ian might have a fever or something.  Go ask Mommy to make him some tea. Y: Okay!  (Tiptoes out to find Svetlana) I: I don’t think I have a fever...but maybe I should see Dr. Warner today, check out if my meds need adjusting.  Will you come with? M: Of course I will.  

  (photo source: camonaghantrash)