Shameless - Fiona Interrupted

What Happened - The kids come home from the hospital, and Fiona cleans up Monica’s blood in the kitchen, crying. Jimmy helps. Fiona invites Jimmy up to bed with her, but they are interrupted by Carl and Debs, who need their older sister to hug them. They end up sleeping in Fiona’s bed.

The next day, Fiona tells Jimmy that she wants to meet his family. Jimmy’s parents are wealthy, still married, rich, and blessed with two other good-looking children. It’s all a front though, because we recognize Jimmy’s dad as the same guy who slept with Ian last week.

Jody and Sheila care for Karen’s baby. Karen wants the boy gone, so she calls the police to take him to social services. The police show up and refuse to take the baby away, realizing that it’s better for him to live with Sheila than on the people’s tax dollars. Karen gives her mother an ultimatum: Karen or the baby. Sheila chooses the baby and Karen walks out, despite Lip’s good advice and warning that she will regret her coldhearted decisions.

Meanwhile, Frank tries to get Monica out of the psych ward, but she signed up for a couple extra months of care. Frank sneaks into the ward with Debbie to break Monica out. They succeed, but Monica runs away with a new girlfriend (screaming “I love you Debbie” as she drives away).

Frank runs home looking for alcohol and takes Ian’s case of Old Style. Ian confronts him and Frank hits him. Estefania runs to the Gallagher home after Marco beats her. When Estefania sees Frank hit Ian, she hits Frank over the head with a frying pan. They move Frank outside to sleep in the snow. Lip goes home and back to school. He crashes on the couch in Estefania’s arms. With all the kids in bed and asleep, Fiona and Jimmy finally have sex.

Comments - After all the devastation of the last episode, Shameless decided to go out on a happier, quieter note. It’s a nice place to leave the Gallaghers until next year. We are glad that Monica is gone. She served her purpose this season, but she made a good decision leaving her family alone again. She even tried to stay in rehab for a long time. Frank ruined that though.

Our first thoughts when we saw Fiona and Jimmy cleaning up Monica’s blood was that they should put gloves on. Who knows what’s in that blood. After that scene, Fiona had better be sure that Jimmy is a keeper. He handled all of this drama like a pro. The scene where Fiona comforted Carl and Debbie was so sad, but it was good for Jimmy to see why Fiona could never have left home in last season’s finale. These kids need her.

When we saw the baby, our first thought was that it looked nothing like a newborn. However, it must be hard for the show’s casting people to find Asian babies with Down’s Syndrome who are available to act. We laughed so hard when we saw that Ian slept with Jimmy’s father. This show doesn’t have sex without consequences.

We liked the twist with bringing Estefania into the house and family. This show is already overstuffed with characters though, so she had better be used wisely. Estefania is clearly a train wreck, but anything is better than Karen, Lip. At least Karen showed some emotion over Sheila and the baby this week. She is still the freaking worst. Those cops were awesome. Sometimes rules need to be broken.

The thing that made this finale good to us was Lip going back to school. Yayy! It’s also cool that Fiona got her GED. We don’t know how long she and Jimmy will live in bliss, but they are clearly endgame and we love them together. Frank’s shenanigans were the most disgusting to us this week. They just showed how much he doesn’t really fit into this family that continues to fight for each other, despite being so screwed up.

Yeah, we are supposed to laugh at them and they are supposed to make bad decisions. But at the end of the day, we root for this unconventional clan and hope that the whole series ends with all the Gallagher kids having futures and Frank dead. His death had better be funny and epic.

Episode grade: B+

Season 2 grade: A-