Shameless: Season Finale! Sneak Peeks Promo & Screencaps! @SHO_Shameless @SHO_Kareem

March 23, 2011

Shameless: Season Finale! Sneak Peeks Promo & Screencaps! @SHO_Shameless @SHO_Kareem

Shameless Finale - EPISODE 12: Father Frank, Full Of Grace:

Steve's livelihood and Frank and Karen's secret are revealed.

I'm intrigued by the tiny bit of info contained above. Karen's secret? The website reveal? She tells Lip that she had sex with his [ick] dad?

Anyone ever wonder why Karen (Laura Slade Wiggins) was such a 'slut' at age thirteen? It would be a classic symptom of sexual abuse. Could her 'secret' be that? I wonder if Sheila (Karen's mom, played by the stellar native Chicaogan, Joan Cusack) will be in this episode? She's conspicuously absent from the sneak peeks & promo. It'll be all over for Frank (William H. Macy) once she finds out.

It's going to take a miracle for Frank to survive this episode. He's got Karen's dad (Joel Murray), possibly Kev the bartender (Steve Howey) (who has shown a really sweet side in his empathy for his sexually abused foster child) having been fed info. from the 'perp' (Frank) and Karen's very angry dad, including it seems, visual evidence in of 'the situtation'. (I have to say, I find Karen's circumstances at this point even sadder than Fiona's (Emmy Rossum) and Fi's are pretty damn heartbreaking.) Then there's Lip (Jeremy Allen White).

It appears that 'Jimmy' a/k/a Steve (Justin Chatwin) posts bail for Lip as that is SPOILER Lip in the preview who is giving Frank a beatdown after almost running him over so obviouslyLip must be released from County Jail. From the preview, it looks as if Karen breaks and tells Lip that she had sex with his father--and Lip won't blame Karen. He knows she's an emotional basket case and he already despises Frank. Not much of a leap to wanting to kill Frank.

Now 'Steve's livelihood.' That has really jammed things up for, let's see, himself, Lip, Ian, Fiona--and by extension the entire Gallagher clan. I was really hoping that Steve was a repo guy and that would explain the car stealing, but the plate switching killed that idea so I think like Fiona, we are gonna have to realize that Steve is a car thief who has gotten both her little brothers arrested and Lip at age 17, charged with a felony and she's gonna have to cut him loose. (I'm not ready to do that however. I adore Justin Chatwin and want him back in season 2.)

In the preview, Steve asks Fi to go away with him. Watch her facial expressions in the screen shots. She has her mouth sort of pursed and tightly closed as if to hold back a barrage of anger about what Steve has put her and her family through. Her expression only changes a tiny bit when he implores her to leave with him. It is a stupid question on his part because there's no frickin' way she'd ever leave the kids. Perhaps Tony (Tyler Jacob Moore), the not-so-nice-cop, pounded all sense out of him? If Tony didn't, Fiona's liable to.

Back to Frank, It seems his character will continue to take licking and keep ticking. It is as if Frank is perpetually punch drunk. Bam! He gets back up. Whack! Up he staggers. Smash!--he's like a damn whack-a-mole!

As excited I am about the finale, I'm very sad that Shameless will be gone for 9 months. It is the best 1 hour drama on Showtime (possibly on any network) since Dexter, hands down. It is my very favourite show and I'm totally not a big TV watcher. But day-em! This show, the cast, the writing, the heart. John Wells, the showrunner for Shameless, worked the same magic with 'China Beach,' one of my favourite shows of all time, and with ER, especially in it's first 5 years or so. All three shows have a crucial commonality, despite their vast differences in subject matter.

You have a group of people in very trying circumstances who somehow, over and over again, rise to the occasion and make their situations work while taking quite a few knocks in the process. Also with all three shows, there is one character in particular that you grow to care for intensely. In China Beach, it was nurse 'Colleen McMurphy' (Dana Delany), in ER, originally (before his 'death') it was 'Dr. Mark Greene' (Anthony Edwards), in Shameless it is 'Fiona Gallagher' (Emmy Rossum). Additionally, the shows have stellar writing and awesome casts. John Wells and his team have another winner here. I can't wait for season 2!