Somehow, against considerable odds - including a Gay Men's Chorus, copious musical numbers and Barbra Effing Streisand - last night's Shameless actually managed to out-gay the Oscars.
Here's how!
We start with Brittany from Social Services packing the Gallagher kids into a minivan like Chicago's most dangerous tee-ball team. She's apparently managed to place wee Liam and Carl (Ethan Cutkosky) in a foster home together, while Debs (Emma Kenney) will be on her own at another home and Lip (Jeremy Allen White) and Ian (Cameron Monaghan) will be housed in some sort of juvie prison camp. This has Lord of the Flies written all over it, and I don't like it. As they depart, Fiona (Emmy Rossum) asks Brittany who reported them but she's not talking. Fiona assures the kids that they'll be home before long, reminding them that last time it was only for nine days.
This is very sad.
Over at Chez Jackson, Sheila (Joan Cusack) gives Frank (William H. Macy) Himey to watch, because she has hypnotherapy. What I wouldn't give to be a fly on the wall in that session. Frank - panicked that the cops are going to find Ginger's corpse and come after him - drops Himey in a crib and bolts.
Fiona is late for work because of the whole "my entire family was just taken away from me" thing, and none of the "evil c*ck gobblers" at the grocery store will take her shift. Since she won't blow Bobby and he won't fire her (and then have to pay unemployment), she's forced to quit her job on the spot. Damn. I guess their days of living high on the day-old cake are over.
The kids hug as they get split up - one of several teary moments for the week - and Lip and Ian are introduced to the very fit black man named D'Andre (Mustafa Shakir) who runs the group-home-slash-petty-criminal-training-ground that they will now call "home". He takes their cell phones and cash, telling them that they'll have to earn them back, and makes a reference to "D&D" - not dungeons and dragons, but delinquents and deviants. Their game sounds much more fun! They are shaken down by the local heavies (one quips to Ian, "Hey, it's that chick from the movie Brave!") but Lip smooths it over with a little payoff.
Debs, meanwhile, gets placed with a woman who is clearly hoarding children, either for a sweat shop or for food. She seems nice at first but the moment Brittany is gone she snaps at Debs to get off the good furniture (Debs replies, "This is the GOOD furniture?") and puts her to work babysitting the other kids. Brittany, to her credit, slips Debs her card in case things go horribly wrong.
Carl and Liam end up drawing the longest straws: they are placed with an affluent gay couple downtown. Cassius (whom I'm fairly sure is played by Chris Butler, the actor who played Emory, Sam's gay shapeshifter pal on True Blood) and Lanier (Mike Doyle, adorableness incarnate from Gayby) have been looking for a mixed-race baby, it turns out - so aside from the sociopathic budding teen that is attached to him, this is a big day for them. Carl - who last week became obsessed with the mechanics of gay sex - wastes no time asking, "Does sh*t ever get stuck on the tip of your d*ck?" Hey - can't fault a kid for wanting to learn.
Fiona visits Brittany and finds out that if she can find a family to foster all the kids, they'll consider putting them back together. She runs to V and Kev's - where V (Shanola Hampton) is prepping the bed to shoot a DIY video about enemas - and asks her if she'd consider adopting all the kids. V is reluctant at first but eventually agrees, noting, "I'm gonna be the one black dot on a map of Ireland." Unfortunately, when meeting with her foster contact V learns that she and Kev are no longer eligible to foster after Ethel ran away. So they frown upon your actually losing the child? Good to know.
Back at Diff'rent Strokes: Gay Edition, Cassius catches Carl watching a gay cowboy porn. (Oh. My. God.) Carl asks, "Why do they all have mustaches?" as he's dragged outside to the balcony for dinner. He also drops a fisting reference - between the soup and salad courses, just where it belongs. See? He'll be society-ready in no time!
Fiona comes home to an empty house, and she cries. It's heartbreaking, seriously. She then cleans and the place looks just as much a disaster when she's done as when she started. Jimmy (Justin Chatwin) joins her - they make up for the fight, and he apologizes for going on and on about his gay dad, and she apologizes for not being there for him. They try to track down Monica and Fiona finally accepts the fact that she's going to have to go to Frank for help: "He's my sad-ass Obi-Wan Kenobi." She tracks him down at the Alibi and he agrees to go sober to help get the kids back in return for Fiona letting him back in the house. She agrees. They go to visit Lip and Ian at the home - they hug Fiona and give Frank the finger. Sounds about right.
Carl fills a box with things to steal from the "gay robots" and takes them to V, asking if he can stay there. She says that the cops will come looking for him there, so he'd better go back and wait it out - but it might be a good idea to convince the guys that they do NOT want to adopt Liam.
V, meanwhile, doesn't think that her mom got pregnant from the turkey baster, so they need to step things up. She feeds Kev (Steve Howey) sperm-boosting foods and drops the bomb on him and her mother that she wants them to do it the old-fashioned way, because it's the most effective means of conception. Her mom asks, "What hard liquor you got in the house, and how much?" Atta girl!
Frank and Fiona visit Frank's lawyer, who is played by the amazing Alex Borstein (who's also a producer and sometime writer for the show). She tells him no drugs or booze, and they'll have a much better case if he brings Monica - or someone who can pass as Monica - to parenting classes with him. Frank asks Sheila if she can pretend to be his crazy ex-wife, and somehow after a bleach job she fits the bill perfectly (although Frank does amusingly point out to Brittany that years of meth will really take a toll on a person's face). Sheila remarks, "I feel like cotton candy."
Ian, meanwhile, is let out for work, and Mickey (Noel Fisher) asks him at the store if he's had sex with anyone in the home. So thoughtful of him to ask! He points out that it would be a bad idea to get frisky in the home, as someone will doubtless use it against him. He then mentions that his dad is away and they have the house to themselves, if he wants to stay over. Pajama party! Later, Ian sneaks out and Mandy sneaks in, to mess around with lip in a closet, or something. How romantic! D'Andre also drops a Cider House Rules reference, which makes me love him even more.
At Mickey's, the boys argue the relative merits of Steven Segal and Jean Claude Van Damme, and they smoke and drink and watch action movies. In other words, totally stereotypical gay date, right? Come on, Shameless! Get creative!
Over at V's, her mom is wasted on Hennessy and V puts a sheet over her to separate her and Kev while they procreate. Her mom wails, "I feel like a ghost prostitute!" and Kev points out, "I feel like I'm f*cking Casper."
Speaking of f*cking Casper, we are then treated to the palest gay sex scene in television history: a nude Mickey struts out into the living room carrying the only sex toys in the greater Chicagoland area that Jody and Sheila did not snatch up. At least I think they're sex toys - either that or a giantess somewhere has lost her friendship bracelet. Mickey explains that Ian is to shove these dozen baseball-sized orbs on a string up his bottom, and then pull them out. Jeebus! Hey, Frank - I think your "Grand Canyon" title is about to be challenged!
Ian tosses them aside and just bends Mickey over the couch instead, and they make beautiful alabaster love. It's like a marble statue of Zeus, as a white swan, making love to a glass of milk. But their pigmentally-challenged bliss is soon interrupted by the surprise arrival of Terry, Mickey's psychotic, daughter-raping dad. Oh crap. Terry hits Ian and pulls a gun on him, and then beats Mickey unconscious. Oh more crap. He calls someone and tells them to "Send the Russian." What?
Debs manages to fire off a text to Fiona, and Fi comes to visit, bringing her books and a bag of Hershey's kisses, which she says are gold in a foster home. Debs opens the bags and gives Fiona one right away. So sweet.
Over at the gay robots', Carl is peeing on the sofa and has Liam drawing on the wall. Fiona comes to visit and Cassius and Lanier welcome her in and waste no time telling her that they've filed adoption papers for Liam and Carl. Yikes! Carl points out that Liam pissed all over the couch and drew on the wall, and Lanier freaks out. Is that the end of that?
Back at Mickey's house, a very sad-looking woman enters, and Terry tells Mickey she's going to "f*ck the f*ggot" out of him. Um... I think Ian had that more than covered before you arrived. Terry makes Ian watch. After a moment of not responding to the girl's half-hearted lapdance, Mickey flips her over and goes to down. Ian looks like he's about to throw up. I probably do, too.
Speaking of things I never needed to see after dinner, over at Kev and V's, they are making another effort to "shoot one in and destroy the Death Star" (two Star Wars references in one ep!), and this time things really get out of hand: Kev has sex with V's mom as V sits on his face. He looks like a broken teeter-totter.
Frank, meanwhile, freaks out at parenting class and demands that Sheila - who is actually hoping to learn what went wrong with Karen - give him a Valium. She does, and he goes over to the snack table and pees into a plastic cup before taking it. We later see Frank and Sheila being taken in for drug tests, and a doctor follows Frank into the bathroom to make sure he doesn't have a stash of urine on him. He looks clean, and is allowed to go to the urinal. In one of the most disgusting moves the show has pulled yet, Frank looks down, opens his mouth, and spits a mouthful of his own piss into the cup as the doctor watches from behind, none the wiser. Well, I guess it is sterile - and it can't make his breath any worse than it already is.
Fiona stops by Kev and V's just as her mom is leaving. V says, "She slept over after she and Kevin had sex." Fiona doesn't have time to get into the "Biblical sh*t" that's been going on, because she has to get to her appointment with Brittany, who tells her that she's a great sister and has done everything she can. Fiona asks who turned them in, and Brittany says it was an anonymous male caller. Fiona presses that it's very odd for a man to report child negligence, and Brittany tells her that she has the audio of the phone call on her computer, adding, "I have to go to the restroom. I'd appreciate it if you didn't click on this file when I'm gone." Atta girl, Brittany!!
Fiona clicks, and hears Frank's voice ratting them out.
Batten down the hatches, kids - because I think Hurricane Fiona is about to touch down on the South Side.
SCENE
WOW. Seriously, I don't know how this show does it. And I don't understand how it doesn't get more credit than it does for consistently turning out heartbreaking works of staggering wrongness that take us from screams of laughter to gasps of horror to fat, hot tears in a single scene. I love these characters so much, and it causes me actual physical pain to see them suffering.
Plus, you know... mustaches.
Maybe it was the fact that I watched this midway through the Oscars, or maybe it was just because there was no Estafania involved this week, but I would give this ep the first ten outta ten Old Styles of the season:
What'd you gay robots think?
