TV Review: SHAMELESS: Season 6, Episode 4: Going Once, Going Twice [Showtime]

Showtime‘s Shameless Going Once, Going Twice TV Show Review. Shameless: Season 6, Episode 4: Going Once, Going Twice saw the central theme, ‘Save the Gallagher household,’ serve as a unifier for the Gallaghers.

Everyone cared about the house or at least the mixed bag of memories they all had there. What was strange is that they couldn’t come together like that for each others’ benefit. Ian Gallagher (Cameron Monaghan) (dropped out of high school, no one really seems to care) and Carl Gallagher (Ethan Cutkosky) (has been held back multiple times, needs a tutor, no one cares) live on the fringe of doing nothing with their lives yet no one says or does anything about it that matters.

Fiona Gallagher (Emmy Rossum) never having owned a credit card was a surprise and her being able to get a $100K home loan was even more surprising. Is Fiona Gallagher, a felon with a G.E.D., a good credit risk? Was the bank that desperate to open up a new loan? Dubious but this scenario did just play out hundreds of thousands of times recently in the United States housing market, to almost everyone’s detriment.

Ian Gallagher (Cameron Monaghan) has been running from his mental condition for two years now. The Chicago Fire Department could be a stabilizing force in his life, far less overbearing than he perceives Fiona to be. Ian’s eventual path was clear as day in Going Once, Going Twice, especially since there was a shift made up entirely of gay firefighters.

Does the Fire Department take people that are diagnosed as bipolar? Then there is the six months of firefighter training that Ian would have to complete.

Frank Gallagher (William H. Macy) is diabolical and unscrupulous in a oh-so-entertaining way. Debbie Gallagher (Emma Kenney)’s umbrage at his plan was sanctimonious. She got pregnant to trap a boy and get a new, loving family. Now she was unwilling to work in a house-hold until a woman with Stage 3 cancer died in the hopes of landing her husband and her home?

Both acts would get her exactly what she wanted in an underhanded way. It was only the fact that she saw how vile the second act was that morally (Lol) prevented her from doing it. There was no one in her life to show her how vile the first act was and there still isn’t. Now that vile first act has been transmogrified in her tween mind into: she wants to have the baby because she wants to have the baby.

Helene Runyon (Sasha Alexander)’s intoxicated words to Lip Gallagher (Jeremy Allen White) were a game-changer, in good ways and in bad ways. Helene said what she was actually feeling to Lip, sentiments he had been harboring for sometime. That was how her words were a game-changer for their relationship in a good way. Those words were bad for their relationship when Helene was sober the next morning and took it all back, as if squeezing toothpaste back into the tube were possible. Helene saw reality and the age gap between her and Lip. Lip was blind to it. He had never been in love before Helene. Helene had been, most-likely multiple times. She was able to see around love and through it to practicality and sustainability. Lip was not standing where practicality and sustainability stood when she peered into the future.

Carl’s courtship in Going Once, Going Twice would have been of minimal interest if it weren’t for what the viewer learned about Nick (Victor Onuigbo) and his past. It was succinct and written with a cleanliness of logic. The viewer completely understood what had generated Nick’s previous homicidal episode. His words made him more human and Carl was able to see a different side of him because of them.

Fiona saw a different side of Sean Pierce (Dermot Mulroney) through his words as well in Going Once, Going Twice. The bombshell he dropped was stunning. Fiona had bigger things to worry about at that moment but the viewer can’t imagine she will ever look at him the same again. The viewer now knows why Sean is such a zealot about going to meetings and staying drug free.

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