I watched this episode again for the first time since it aired on Showtime last January, and my opinion of this episode is pretty much the same as it was the first I’m watched it about a year ago. I thought that this was really great episode, and I thought it was definitely better than pilot was. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the pilot, but I didn’t think the writers and director of the pilot episode handled the big group scenes in the pilot very well. Maybe it’s because I didn’t really know who all of the characters were yet, but my main problem with the big group scenes in the pilot was that while I understand that they are supposed to be chaotic, I found the big group scenes in the pilot to be too chaotic for my taste. I thought that the writers and director handled the big group scenes in this episode much better.
I have to say that so far I think Frank is a pretty despicable person, and I have a really hard time feeling any sympathy for him whenever I watch this episode. While I don’t think it was fair of Sheila’s husband, Eddie, to smash Frank in the face just because he’s mad at Lip for getting blowjobs from his daughter, Karen, that doesn’t justify Frank doing the same thing to Liam.
After the incident with Liam, Frank was banished from the Gallagher’s house and despite the fact that everybody was mad at him, they soon became worried about what happened to him when no one could find him and it was the day when he usually gets his monthly disability check from the state, which he usually cashes right away. It turned out that he was in Toronto, Canada, because Steve had essentially kidnapped Frank and dropped him off in Canada where he was soon arrested.
Fiona figured out what Steve did to Frank after she found the box for a pack of Canadian cigarettes in the trash, which led to everyone having to come up with a plan to sneak Frank back into the United States since he didn’t have a passport and it would have taken too long for them to have wait and get Frank a passport. They ended up finding someone who had an RV that had a secret compartment in it, which they hid Frank in once they had picked him up in Canada.
One of the things that I found particularly interesting about this episode is how action packed this episode was, because they had Frank out of Canada and back home halfway through the episode. I would think that the writers would have wanted to have the whole storyline with them having to get Frank home take the whole episode to tell, but they didn’t. I’m not complaining about that though because I found the second half of the episode extremely enjoyable.
Once Frank was back home, Lip basically told him that he contributes nothing to their family, because all of the kids ban together to pay the bills every month. I know that’s pretty harsh for a kid to basically tell their parent that they are basically worthless and don’t contribute anything to the family, but I’m glad Lip told him what things were really like for their family since he’s always too drunk to notice. Debbie was essentially the only one in the family that was all that happy to see Frank back home, and I have to say that as mean as I think Frank is to people, he was pretty nice to Debbie when he was telling her about Canada. I know that he was lying to her about liking Canada, but I still liked that scene.
Not too long after getting back from Canada, Frank soon found himself back at Kev’s bar where he ended up talking to Eddie about how it has been really hard for him to be married to Sheila due to her agoraphobia. I personally thought that scene was really strange, because Eddie was actually pretty nice to him despite having smashed him in the face at the beginning of the episode. After talking to Eddie about Sheila’s agoraphobia, how she gets disability checks from the state for it and how he’s been sleeping in the basement, Frank cleaned himself up and went to visit Sheila and brought her flowers.
I have to say that the relationship between Frank and Sheila got really strange really fast, because she pretty much told him that she’s feeling very frustrated sexually because Eddie apparently doesn’t like to have sex unless the lights are off. It also turns out that Sheila’s into some pretty kinky stuff in terms of sex. From the looks of it, it looks like Sheila likes to sexually dominate men. It was pretty obvious that Frank was freaked out by it, but he put up with it because he obviously wants some of the money that Sheila gets from her monthly disability checks. Also, from the looks of it Frank had basically moved in with Sheila by the end of the episode, because he joined her and Karen for dinner. You could tell that Karen was freaked out by whole situation, and I don’t blame her. That must have been one very awkward and uncomfortable family dinner, at least for her.
One thing that I still haven’t been able to figure even after seeing all of season one and thinking about the show for almost an entire year, I still don’t quite understand why Sheila would take Frank in and basically make him a member of her family right after she meets him for the first time. After all, the only thing that she basically knew about him was that he’s Lip’s dad. If I had to guess, it’s probably because Eddie is most likely very emotionally distant with her, and she’s both very lonely and very sexually frustrated and just likes having Frank around for companionship.
One last comment that I’d like to make about Frank is that while I don’t like him very much at all, I did find all of his drunken rants that he gave as he was walking around town after he got back from Canada very funny.
Speaking of weird relationships, I have to say that I also find Kev and Veronica’s relationship very strange, because even though this is only the second episode of the show, we’ve already seen them doing a lot of kinky things in the bedroom and simply having a lot of sex. Also, it looks like Veronica makes money with a web camera pay per website where she does household chores wearing only sexy lingerie. Desperate Housewives did a similar storyline last season where Susan basically did the same thing in order to make some extra cash when she and Mike were having financial problems. Personally, I don’t really get why men would get turned on by that kind of thing, but to each their own.
Another one of my favorite moments with Veronica in this episode was definitely the scene where she was flirting with a grocery delivery truck driver in order to distract him while Ian was stealing some groceries for the family as well as Kev and Veronica. What made that scene so great in my opinion was the fact that the guy had the stupidest and goofiest smile on his face after he was done talking to Veronica and the production crew of Shameless somehow managed to make it look like the guy had a huge erection. That was beyond hilarious. :)
I have to say that I have mixed feelings about the character Steve. On the one hand, I love that he’s this kind of dark and very mysterious guy, which I think Justin Chatwin plays perfectly, but on the other hand I find Steve’s savior complex or whatever you want to call it very annoying. Given the fact that he just met Fiona and her family, I don’t think it was his place to act the way he did toward Frank. I get that he thought he was doing the right thing, but I thought the whole thing with him kidnapping Frank and dropping him off in Canada was extremely out of line. I’m really glad that Fiona refused to take the van that he tried to give her at the end of the episode as a peace offering and told him that her family didn’t need his “charity” as she put it. Obviously they managed to get by and keep a roof over their heads even though things are very tight with their family financially before he knew the Gallagher’s, so there’s no reason to think that they wouldn’t be able to continue to get by now that they’ve met him. I don’t get why he can’t understand that.
All things considered, I thought that this was a fantastic episode, and I thought it was even better than the pilot, which I loved. This episode had the perfect blend of drama, emotional tension and humor, in my opinion. It was definitely a very well written episode, and I thought that the whole cast did a great job in this episode as well.
That being said, I give this episode a rating of an A+.
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