TV Review: SHAMELESS: Season 5, Episode 6: Crazy Love [Showtime]

Showtime‘s Shameless Crazy Love TV Show Review. Shameless: Season 5, Episode 6: Crazy Love‘s opening beating was ‘Gallagher’ to the utmost. Few emotions can illicit such rage and its perpetrator was in the grips of it. It was one of two ‘theater’ moments in the episode, complete with riveted audience.

The victim of the beating took it without physical retaliation in part because they knew it was their comeuppance and the rant the perpetrator was on during the attack was filled with truths.

Their later tender moment outside of The Gallagher’s home was ‘theater’ moment number two but this time the audience was familial and therefore had an emotional stake in the proceedings. The Gallaghers became audiences members of the melodrama as if viewers watching the events transpire on a television screen. It was high-yield opera, with highs, lows, and music, the music of romance.

It was a re-awakening moment for one of its participants, a moment of lies, deceit, and facing reality. The struggle on Fiona Gallagher (Emmy Rossum)’s face bespoke of a war of emotions going on inside of her head. The moment could have gone either way but like her boss accurately deduced: Fiona Gallagher is chaos.

There were members of the Gallagher audience for the reconciliation and there were members against it, keeping their sibling’s now married status in mind.

This ‘theater’ event also held a completely different milestone. It was the first time Sammi (Emily Bergl) was seen as a fully accepted member of the family. During the second ‘theater’ moment, her outsider status ceased to exist.

This was ameliorated by Sammi integrating herself into the Gallager machinery left vacant by Fiona, taking over the role of house mother, advice giver, and food preparer. Sheila Jackson had deftly slipped into a similar role in the household at the beginning of Season 4 before focusing back on her own life once more.

The crying sex scene in Crazy Love was pivotal: the person crying wanted to have sex but also wanted to preserve the other relationship they had that they were in the process of destroying. The crying character had been on a journey since the very beginning of the episode and that moment was that character seeing the truth and weeping over it (they had done it again, made the wrong decision). They could see the ruin that they had just caused in front of them and tried to put a stop to it, a decision made too late.

Also coming to their senses too late in Crazy Love was Mickey Milkovich (Noel Fisher).

Galvanized by a threat of indefinite hospitalization, the road trip in this episode showed through escalating circumstances that Ian Gallagher (Cameron Monaghan) is the new Monica Gallagher (so far as having her disease and going unmedicated). His downward spiral showed how destructive his disease is to himself and to others around him.

The writers of this episode went so far as to have Ian do the exact same thing to a baby that Frank Gallagher did to the infant versions of Fiona and Lip Gallagher. In that moment, because of his disease, Ian became Frank. It was surreal seeing elements of both of Ian’s parents surface in Ian but it was also great writing. The writers of Shameless know their characters and do not treat fans of them like idiots (reference Dexter for more on that deleterious practice) but rather, reward those that have watched the show and paid attention throughout its five seasons.

The ‘long white walk’ in Crazy Love was one of those rewards.

The ‘long white walk’ was actually short on screen time but protracted in its implications for Ian and his life. The beginning of the ‘walk’ was a harrowing experience for all those present. Everybody knew, including Ian, that this was necessary. The camera and those that set up the ending of the scene knew it as well. By centering the camera on Ian’s face with white flanking him to the left and to the right, Ian was surrounded by reality, his new reality: Ian was a person suffering from bipolarism.

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