The Past Two Episodes of Shameless

 Parenthood-

 We were surprised when we saw that Sheila had taken in Frank and his mother. Did we miss an episode where Shelia and Frank made up and Frank convinced her that he wasn’t actually a user? There wasn’t a word to explain why she did this. Jody is even hanging out there (the actor has been made a series regular, so get used to him), so we guess Sheila’s house is an open house. Jody is a nice guy; he’s just really bad in bed. Freakishly bad.

We liked Lip’s idea to force Fiona to go back to school. His guidance counselor is the best. Lip is being an idiot, but we get that he doesn’t want to be everyone’s golden goose. Call him selfish, but we think that’s a lot of pressure. He’s just a teen rebelling against that pressure. Fiona was right to kick him out. Poor Carl though. We were sad about how the Lip storyline turned out last week.

Thank God Karen is going to sell her baby. That’s a weird statement, but in this case, it’s great. She is a freaking psychopath and “all the work” of pregnancy to her means staying off of drugs. Which she doesn’t. The whole thing is hilarious, but we do want a happy ending for Karen’s baby because we are human. After what Frank did to Butterface, we aren’t shocked by him stealing his dying mother’s morphine. The episode wasn’t tame though. “Statutory or catch-and-release” was one of our favorite lines of the episode, sick as it is.

We hope V gets pregnant soon so that we don’t have to watch her try to get pregnant all season. Peggy’s first suicide attempt was pretty great. We loved her death. Mike trying to kill Frank was dumb and not even that funny. It was funny that Frank didn’t care at all about catching Ian in gay coitus. Frank sounds politically conservative when he rants at the bar, but he thinks gays are natural. He just cracked jokes.

Episode grade: A-

Hurricane Monica-

Monica returns. The absent mother moves back in and no one is happy at first except Frank. Fiona is especially angry about Monica and Frank getting back together. When Frank and Monica throw a spontaneous drunken party in the living room, in the middle of the night, Fiona allows them to stay so that Deb can make a memory with her mother. But she’s not happy about it. Later, she comes around to house parties with the whole family, because Steve tells Fiona that she deserves a break now that Monica is back.

We love that people were hesitant to let Lip live with them. You don’t want to enable self-destructive behavior. Everyone gave Lip the tough love and straight talk he needed. Until Steve. Fortunately, Steve wised up and Lip had to move out. Is the program that Lip used to listen to Steve’s wife’s Portuguese real? If so, is it free?

Monica helped Deb out with Little Hank by existing and looking good, much to our dismay. Deb, he’s not good enough for you. We think that Monica should retire the pigtails, as should any woman over 30. Ian has the worst parents, but they are so good about his homosexuality. They smoked Peggy’s ashes, but they aren’t always terrible parents.

It boggles the mind. In reality, Jody and Sheila would be perfect together. They are both sweet and stupid. It’s really messed up to sleep with the same guy your daughter did though. For an episode with the word “hurricane” in it, it sure took a while to get going. There was too much bickering and too few laughs. We don’t think we got enough Kev and V either. Please tell us it wasn't Lip who knocked up Mandy because we know it wasn't Ian.

Episode grade: B-