Shameless: Is Change Possible? | Video Essay

We discuss what we’ve learned about William H. Macy’s Frank Gallagher, Emmy Rossum’s Fiona, Lip, Ian and the rest of the Gallagher clan over the seasons (up to season 8). “Shameless” is a show about addiction, about poverty, about family. It’s a show about whether change is possible. Every character wrestles with bad habits and self-destructive habits as they cope with their environment. “Shameless” show how difficult and rare it is for people to truly change.

Transcript provided by Youtube:

00:02
Shameless is a show about addiction, about poverty, about family.
00:06
It’s a show about whether kids born into the worst situation can ever really get out
00:11
of it, and it’s a show about whether change is really possible.
00:14
So the ghetto girl thinks she can live the American Dream, huh?
00:17
From the opening montage introducing us to the characters, the show plays on how each
00:23
of us navigates our best and worst selves
00:25
Lip, smart as a whip, straight-As and the honor roll.
00:29
Boy’s definitely going somewhere.
00:35
How we have great potential within us, wrestling with the bad habits that tend to dominate
00:39
more often.
00:41
Shameless’ alcoholic patriarch, father of 6, Frank Gallagher, is introduced as the “addict”
00:46
of the show.
00:47
Alcohol is a gift!
00:49
Yet it emerges that Frank and the kids’ mother Monica are not the only addicts in
00:54
the Gallagher clan.
00:55
Every character we grow to know and love is also in some way addicted to something.
01:00
Even if, for some characters, it might take us multiple seasons to pinpoint exactly to
01:05
what.
01:06
We’re all addicts Fiona, trying to fill a void.
01:10
Some of us are just better at hiding it, right?
01:14
Over the seasons, the kids struggle not to become more and more like the parents who
01:18
disappointed them.
01:19
As the system is rigged against them, their environment constantly pushes them down and
01:23
they resort to destructive habits to cope.
01:27
You’re Frank’s kid?
01:28
And this is your first felony bust?
01:29
Gettin’ a little late start for a Gallagher, aren’t ya?
01:32
As we watch the characters try and often fail to overcome their self-sabotaging behavior,
01:37
Shameless shows how difficult and rare it is for people to truly change.
01:42
The show is a soap opera featuring lots of continuity and repetition from week to week
01:46
and season to season.
01:48
And while we’re hooked on the show and can’t look away, we also get frustrated and mad
01:52
at the characters for not being able to break out of these cycles.
01:55
Then, just when we start to give up hope, the show encourages us, after many false hopes
02:01
and many, many failures that seemed like rock bottom, change may still be possible.
02:06
It’s important to rise up again after each fall, and to keep the faith — even if everyone
02:11
else has given up on us — that we can fight our inner demons and become more our better
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selves.
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I know I haven’t been the most exemplary father for the past three, alright 15 years, but
02:23
now I’m gonna need your help to get through this.
02:26
From this point forward we’re gonna be a family again.
02:30
What the hell is that?!?
02:33
Shameless is a story about addiction that is also addicting.
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So in this way it achieves that golden ideal of fiction storytelling, synchronicity of
02:41
form and content.
02:43
It uses soap operatic romances and cliffhangers to keep us hooked on the show in the long-term.
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And within each episode, it’s full of audiovisual techniques that recreate the sensory experience
02:53
of mind-altering substances, to make us feel a high from the inside.
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Shameless mirrors the feeling of a buzz through its frantically cutting editing style, its
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shaky camera, the hectic choreography of its scenes, and the loud adrenaline-fueled music.
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As Trainspotting told us…
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People think it’s all about misery and desperation and death and all that shite which is not
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to be ignored, but what they forget is the pleasure of it.
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Shameless also understands this truth about addiction.
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In addition to pleasure, addiction is about escape.
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Frank lives a life that is wholly escape into the pleasure of intoxication.
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He’s the unrepentant addict — he rejects the need for anything but escape.
03:33
This is not a dictatorship, Fiona.
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This is America.
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Give me liberty, or give me meth.
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To him, that free feeling is living, and there’s nothing worth giving that up for.
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Frank’s commitment to his drug of choice, alcohol, goes far beyond his basic physical
03:48
need — it has shaped his entire philosophy of life.
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Thanks for the liver, kid.
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Here’s to you.
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Like a reincarnated Dionysus, Frank believes that life is only truly lived, or worth living,
04:01
if we reject the tyranny of sobriety and get a good buzz on.
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We may not have much but all of us to a man knows the most important thing in this life:
04:13
we know how to f***ing party!
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Every time a real crazy drunken adventure begins again, whenever he’s able to lure
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one of his family members to join him, he’s free and he’s happy.
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These are the moments he lives for.
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While the show is periodically immersing us in the good feeling of highs, it also includes
04:30
us in the comedowns and the aftermath.
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We see the devastation Frank causes his family.
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My mother is bipolar and my father is an alcoholic and an addict.
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He takes what he pleases and he offers nothing.
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We feel the frustration and anger of his dependents who watches the addict endlessly repeat bad
04:50
behavior.
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My spirit is like a cockroach.
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It can’t be crushed.
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When we’re first introduced to Frank, we see him through Fiona’s eyes as a no-good
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father, who uses his children and would make life better if he just left them alone.
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But now and then, in moments we start to get seduced by his worldview.
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This is the best place to shout at God.
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We start to wonder if he doesn’t, sometimes, have a point — wouldn’t any of us be tempted
05:13
to escape from a hard daily reality like this?
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Every day’s an opportunity you don’t get back, so don’t blow it working.
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And we enjoy his resourcefulness.
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He reveals a level of intellectual ability that makes us suspect that, if not for alcohol,
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he could have been a very successful man.
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You can’t go teaching equality and then get your human rights panties in a bunch when
05:35
it comes with a couple of wedgies.
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Every asshole is entitled to his beliefs.
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That’s the yin and the yang of democracy.
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Over the seasons, Shameless manipulates us to switch back and forth in our feelings about
05:47
him.
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Even at Fiona’s wedding in Season 6, we’re echoing his children’s annoyance and wishing
05:52
he’d go away, until he suddenly throws us another curveball — he’s the only one who
05:57
knows the truth that Sean has started using heroin again.
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Oh, he’s a junkie through and through, your husband-to-be.
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I’m surprised we’re not friends, Sean.
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We have so much in common.
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So a key part of the show is constantly pushing and pulling us toward and away from Frank
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— winning us over with his philosophy, only to remind us again of the manipulation and
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abuse he’s guilty of toward his family.
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How did I get cancer?
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You must have caught it from Grammy, son.
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Shameless would never allow us to resolve this ambivalence for the addict, just as his
06:28
family feels both love and disgust for Frank.
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Frank’s drinking spurts are far from the only buzzes we experience on the show.
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And we start to realize that he’s not the only character who’s indulging in extreme
06:45
pleasure and forms of escape.
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Every single one of them reminds me a little bit of me.
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We’re increasingly sure that Fiona is some kind of addict, too, though it’s not immediately
06:55
obvious what exactly is her drug of choice.
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First it seems to be sex, or new relationships with men, then specifically Jimmy/Steve, then
07:04
briefly drugs, but not really.
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Eventually the show tells us that her true addiction is to chaos.
07:09
No, it’s just you’re a chaos junkie, Fiona.
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And I’m a junkie junkie, so I love chaos, and when I get into chaos, bad shit follows.
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Given that Fiona has rarely experienced anything but chaos in her life, it makes sense that
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she’s more comfortable in the flow of dynamic disorder.
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And that she has no idea how to maintain that stable, somewhat boring consistency of a more
07:30
healthy routine
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She’s never seen any adults give her an example of that.
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In Season 4, Fiona seems to be making steps toward that secure life.
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He sales job has benefits and a 401K.
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What’s a 401K?
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Your retirement savings plan.
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You’re eligible to participate.
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Every month you deposit part of your salary into your 401K and the company matches it.
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Tax-free.
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Deposit part of my salary?
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But at the end of that season’s first episode, Frank returns.
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And Fiona’s face on seeing him feels like it’s maybe a little bit about her — that
08:00
the symbol of her father, and his presence back in the house, is a reminder that her
08:05
fresh new office life can’t work and can’t last because of who her father is and how
08:09
she was brought up.
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Sure enough, two episodes later, she’s cheating on her boyfriend and boss, Mike, with his
08:15
brother, even though doesn’t seem to want to do any of this.
08:18
Instead of addressing in a mature way that perhaps she doesn’t want to be with Mike,
08:22
she launches into harmful actions that will both hurt an innocent party and blow her shot
08:26
at the best job she’s ever had.
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The Fiona who in early episodes seemed to always be right when it came to her family,
08:32
soon puts Liam in the hospital after he accidentally ingests her cocaine.
08:37
We can easily imagine the younger Fiona using this kind of story against Monica or Frank.
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It’s a tragedy when a young man ends up behind prison bars.
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Bad parenting.
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Oh, don’t blame yourself.
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Lip is likewise hooked on some form of chaos
08:51
He seeks out hijinks that carelessly risk the special opportunities that come to him
08:56
thanks to his smarts.
08:57
Stop behaving like the world is out to get you when it is so clearly dropping gifts at
09:01
your feet.
09:02
He’s also addicted to falling in love with women who break his heart, and he’s addicted
09:06
to alcohol.
09:07
Drinking just turns the volume down.
09:11
Makes the world a little more tolerable.
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And as we see him getting in his own way, we worry that he’s following in Frank’s
09:18
footsteps.
09:19
Frank says you’re drinking too much.
09:20
You think that’s true?
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I don’t want you to end up like Frank, okay?
09:26
Lip is the Gallagher with the most obvious chances at success, so it surprises us at
09:31
first to see him becoming like his father, but though we sometimes forget it, Frank is
09:35
also a very intelligent person, almost at times something of a genius.
09:42
We have long been wronged.
09:43
And it’s time for legislation that allows our private parts be aroused by the people
09:49
God intended to arouse them.
09:53
At the end of Season 7, Ian realizes that his relationship with Mickey Malkovich has
09:57
become unhealthy and has to leave it behind.
09:59
I love you.
10:00
Then get in the f***ing car.
10:03
This isn’t me anymore.
10:04
Just as Fiona eventually has to acknowledge by Season 5 that Jimmy is a bad influence
10:09
and addiction for her.
10:10
Hey you ever wonder what would’ve happened if you ran off with Jimmy-Steve?
10:17
My life would be non-stop psycho thriller.
10:21
I definitely dodged a bullet with that one.
10:24
The show paints the addiction to self-destruction as a Gallagher tendency to work against themslves.
10:30
I don’t mean to be an asshole.
10:34
It’s just…genetic.
10:36
But it’s not really that the Gallaghers have inherited some gene to get in their own
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way.
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It’s nearly impossible not to be influenced by childhood experiences, and Frank and Monica
10:47
were the only examples they grew up with.
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I was chased from my own house, and now I’m hiding in yours.
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Holy sh*t I’m you!
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It’s significant that Frank opens the very first episode by declaring —
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Nobody’s saying our neighborhood’s Garden of Eden.
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Hell, some people say God avoids this place altogether.
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While his point is that the South Side of Chicago is no paradise, the phrase carries
11:08
connotations of a place before sin, a paradise before the fall from grace.
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And so the statement is telling us this is a story about people who never had that moment
11:17
in Eden, never had a childhood where they could be blissfully unaware of the real world
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even for a few years.
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You’re almost nine.
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You’re gonna have to start pulling your weight.
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These kids were born knowing just how imperfect adults were.
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From the start, they’ve had to make the best of world that’s highly messy
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Over time they must deal with the unpleasant reality that they, too, are messy and imperfect.
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They can’t shake off how much they’ve been shaped by coping with their own parents
11:43
and experiences.
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You got to let kids learn for themselves.
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The best gift you can give, neglect.
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Neglect fosters self-reliance.
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As the show goes on, and the other characters become more and more like Frank while trying
11:56
not to be like him.
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They all show tremendous promise, talent and charms.
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Taking steps forward while periodically falling off their respective wagons.
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That’s the Gallagher sperm: ambitious, relentless, everything we’re not once we’re born.
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In a traditionally structured movie, the protagonist learns from their mistakes within an hour
12:17
or two, and changes irrevocably.
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Television is more like real life, than the movies, in this respect.
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Real-life people often need many chances and do-overs before we can really change, if that
12:27
happens at all.
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And even if we manage it, we might still relapse into bad behaviors.
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Long-running shows like Shameless have to fill so many episodes, the show ends up being
12:36
ultimately more about how people don’t change, most of the time, how they disappoint us when
12:41
we want them to change.
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We share in the frustration the characters feel toward themselves and each other.
12:46
The minute you kids start following Frank’s example is the minute I put a gun in my mouth.
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But, in Shameless especially, it’s a false expectation that we want these kids to somehow
12:54
rise out of the abusive environment they were raised in and become rich, happy, healthy,
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fully unscathed adults.
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We’re used to seeing stories where the poor, difficult childhood is prologue to the story
13:05
about exceptional people rising out of adversity.
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But Shameless is about how people continue to live in the midst of that adversity.
13:12
The exhaustion of the not-changing also gives us a sense of what Fiona experiences as the
13:17
head of this household — there is never rest, never quiet.
13:20
The show, like Fiona’s life, is constant noise, and repeating the same cycles all over.
13:25
Money buys people quiet, solitude and space to themselves, and this is exactly what the
13:29
Gallaghers don’t have.
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The opening credit sequence emphasizes this hectic yet beautiful chaos of so many people
13:35
sharing the same space.
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This house is so quiet.
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Kids!
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Breakfast!
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Like Fiona, we take pleasure in moments when the family somehow works and manages to hang
13:46
together as a dynamic unit.
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But we also come to emotionally understand her desire for the occasional rest or escape
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— an end to the cycles of noise and chaos.
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Over the seasons, we tend to lose our faith that the characters will really change their
14:00
behavior
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Just as the people we know in real life very rarely do change, at least not when and how
14:06
we want them to.
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But then just when we think we know these people to the point that they’re entirely
14:11
predictable, a character will suddenly surprise us.
14:14
When we least expect it, they do change — even a little.
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And that moment of the unexpected change is the moment we fall in love with them.
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These little glimmers of surprise, after long stretches of repetition, reinvest us in the
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show.
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We start to even like Frank now and then when he doesn’t act the way we expect him to
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and defies all that we think we know about his character.
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I don’t get it.
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This sudden interest in my happiness?
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Fiona’s story is the most powerful example of this progress that we root for.
14:42
Fiona personifies the determination and will of her family’s future.
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So we look to her especially to choose the best way forward, however many times she messes
14:49
up and has to start over.
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Meanwhile, as Fiona tries to better herself, we see that this, too, isn’t as straightforward
14:56
as simply being reliable, responsible and trying hard.
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She has to take some gambles — because the world isn’t set up so that someone in her
15:03
situation can improve things just by working and staying the course.
15:07
When you’re poor, the only way to make money is to steal it or scam it.
15:11
Even more challenging than personal change is generational and social change.
15:15
The characters on Shameless have all of the odds stacked against them.
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But the show argues that we have to forgive ourselves and the people we love for not always
15:23
being able to overcome those impossible odds.
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But most importantly, we have to cling to our hard-earned personal progress and do our
15:30
best to drown out that self-defeating voice within us, telling us to throw it all away.
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No love lost, huh?
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It was an eventful childhood.