TV Review: SHAMELESS: Season 5, Episode 10: South Side Rules [Showtime]

Showtime‘s Shameless South Side Rules TV Show Review. Shameless: Season 5, Episode 10: South Side Rules‘ had one of the most powerful conclusions of the season, surpassing the one in Rite of Passage. “Revenge is a dish best served cold” but the revenge served at the end of South Side Rules was not only nuclear winter frigid, it was also completely misguided. The recipient of that revenge had nothing to do with what had transpired beforehand. Fiona Gallagher (Emmy Rossum) didn’t have anything to do with it either. It was all Carl Gallagher (Ethan Cutkosky). The misguided perpetrator blamed Fiona, as the de facto parent of the household, but the true culprit was Frank Gallagher (William H. Macy) and his complete lack of parental guidance and oversight all of the Gallaghers’ lives. Fiona had nothing to do with Chuckie Slott (Kellen Michael) being incarcerated but she was blamed for it anyway. This after Fiona let Chuckie and Sammi Slott (Emily Bergl) stay in Gallagher home rent free.

Mickey Milkovich (Noel Fisher) stood by and did nothing as his sister was brutalized by her boyfriend (he even let the guy back into his house afterwards). Will he stand by again as someone else he loves is treated harshly by another or will he react?

By letting Lorenzo (Michael B. Silver) kiss her, Fiona showed that she had not changed and had once again become chaos. Fiona can’t help herself. She was never given the tools to do so. Will she tell her husband that after sleeping with one man, she let another one kiss her, or will she keep this second indiscretion to herself? I think she will keep it to herself.

As Debbie Gallagher (Emma Kenney) was walking to her room for coital insemination, she said that no one cared what she did. A truer statement was never spoken about her or the Gallagher children in-general. Debbie is her own parent now. In the span of two seasons, Fiona has gone from surrogate mom and protector to lukewarm friend that is sometimes around for advice.

Debbie purposefully deciding to have sex with no contraceptive of any kind was attached to strange logic: she wanted a child so she could become a member of Derek (Luca Oriel)’s family, even-though she has no means of supporting it. Debbie currently lives on the precipice of squalor. When she has a child, she may descend into its depth as she and Derek drop out of high school to support their baby. If conception happens, Debbie following Lip Gallagher (Jeremy Allen White) to college will go from reality (she’s says she gets straight A’s) to dream.

Carl voluntarily going to juvenile detention for a year was disheartening but the short speech that earned him that sentence was hilarious (to the presiding female judge: “if you lost ten pounds, I’d hit that.”). Now he’ll be behind another year (he is behind three years now I believe) in school. He’ll still in sixth grade instead of high school when he is released.

Frank Gallagher, through a crash of inexplicable circumstances, has somehow gotten the attention of someone ‘completely out of his league’ in every possible permutation of the phrase. The courtship between Frank and Doctor Bianca (Bojana Novakovic) was the most unlikely scenario one could think of yet it was brought to life in a plausible way within the Shameless universe. Frank leaving beer virtually untouched on The Alibi Room bar was a sign that Frank was in emotional turmoil, that something had changed. Not ripping off Bianca when he had the chance in the previous episode and being a gentleman instead of a scoundrel were telltale signs of it as well. The only reason Bianca was receptive to his friendship/courtship was because: a.) she was dying, b.) he had almost died and knew what she was going through, c.) he would never ask her to try and save herself, and d.) he didn’t look at her or treat her any differently than when he first met her. That must have been continually refreshing to Bianca now that every other person in-the-know saw a pity/death stamp on her forehead. To Bianca, Frank was like the Honey Badger (he just didn’t give a sh*t.)

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