TV Review: SHAMELESS: Season 6, Episode 2: #AbortionRules [Showtime]

Showtime‘s Shameless #AbortionRules TV Show Review. Shameless: Season 6, Episode 2: #AbortionRules featured the evolution of one character while another character was unable to see what they had become.

Carl Gallagher (Ethan Cutkosky)’s evolution from last season to this season has been comical and tragic. The stronger tide in the Chicago ghetto has Carl firmly within its grip and he is a transformed teen.

Carl has changed from looking for quick cash to becoming a small scale arms-dealer. His modus operandi for his guns sale were hilarious: he wouldn’t sell a gun to someone looking to scare someone with it but he would sell one to someone with criminal intent. You would think the opposite would be true but then you would be wrong. Carl’s moral compass is a rickety contraption, humbled together from bits and pieces of TV show episode, films, his older sister (his defacto mom: a felon and a drop-out), his older brother (who has no problem with his teen brother drinking alcohol), and his absentee Father, who is the most deleterious influence possible on an impressionable youth i.e. he previously gave Carl proper instruction on how to sell drugs on the streets of Chicago.

Questions –  does getting caught selling guns without a license warrant a lower juvenile detention sentence than getting caught selling drugs? That, and the fact that you make more money per sale, are the only reasons I can think of that would cause Carl to pursue one over the other.

Where is Carl getting so many new handguns (they look new) from to sell? Who is his source? Who would trust a teen with handgun sales? Another question is how can an unregistered child, just released from an 8-9 year stay in juvenile detention randomly audit a class in high school? Don’t students have to be registered to attend class in high school? Why would the teacher allow that?

Debbie Gallagher (Emma Kenney) getting a reality smack was bound happen. Her adolescent mind really thought she could entrap someone in a forced, long-term relationship. I saw Derrick running from that situation immediately. There was no way he could: go to high school, study for high school tests, graduate, study for the SATs (or the ASVAB) and go to college (or in his case, the Airforce) while working a minimum wage job to pay for: baby cloths, baby food, baby medicine, and baby miscellaneous. Instead, brilliantly, Derek used his parents as proxies to take care of all of Debbie’s baby needs, there by freeing him to pursue his Airforce pilot plan. If the game Debbie and Derek had been playing was chess, Derek checkmated her. He completely outmaneuvered her.

As I mentioned previously, Debbie’s outlook on relationships and life have been warped (e.g. Derrick changed his phone number and Debbie still thought they were in love). Derrick’s outlook hadn’t been nor had his parents. Debbie saw nothing wrong with tricking Derrick and getting pregnant without his input on the matter. Derrick saw the situation clearly. So did his parents. Debbie couldn’t. Even when confronted with the lunacy of her plan by: two teen moms in her school, Fiona, and Derrick’s sibling, Debbie was incapable of seeing that the way out of the Gallaghers and into a stable family was not through Derrick and pregnancy. Her older brother had shown her the way out and was an example of it. She has the grades but she is impatient. She wants change now.

Speaking of warped perceptions and realities, Frank Gallagher (William H. Macy)’s realization, administered by Bianca’s co-worker (obvious to the viewer that Bianca was only with Frank because she had Stage Four cancer) didn’t shake or disturb him, like with a normal human being (he’s an opportunist). Instead, he sought out a replica of Bianca and that doomed situation, wearing Bianca’s too-tight-for-Frank white hospital jacket as he did so. Replacing lost affection with new affection is natural but Frank’s method was twisted.

Fiona Gallagher (Emmy Rossum)’s pregnancy announcement was the “Oh sh*t” moment of the episode. All of her preaching about Debbie getting an abortion, about Debbie not being ready to be a mom, about Fiona not wanting to raise another child, landed right in Fiona’s lap. After everything Fiona has said to Debbie about her pregnancy, if Fiona moves forward with her own, in someways it would be “the crow calling the raven black.” Is Fiona ready for pregnancy? She just got finished telling Debbie that she does not want to raise another child. If she tells Debbie (and the family) that she is going to have a child, part of her argument to Debbie goes out the window i.e. “it’s okay for me to have a kid, to be a hypocrite, and to contradict myself.” My guess, Fiona has an abortion. Her personal life is uber-complicated right now and having a baby is life-altering.

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