TV #18 of 2020:
Shameless, season 3
As always, I wish I could separate the parts of this series that I like from the ones I really don’t. There’s a compelling family drama here, but it’s generally couched amid so much tasteless shock humor and tedious subplotting that it’s hard for anything to ever land meaningfully. One episode this year, for instance, has Child Protective Services temporarily move the younger Gallagher children into foster homes, forcing oldest sibling Fiona to scramble to prove she can look after them all. At the same time, their neighbor Veronica is recruiting her mom to sleep with her partner as a low-cost infertility solution. Such disparate stories as those barely feel like they belong in the same broad narrative, let alone the same hour of television.
This season does help rehabilitate the character of Fiona’s boyfriend, turning him from a sociopathic jerk into a hapless failure and underscoring why their relationship is flawed in a way that I’m not sure the writers truly recognized before. I still don’t particularly like the guy, but at least now that seems like the result of an intentional creative choice rather than my negative reaction to shenanigans that are apparently instead designed to please. If the show at large could just tweak its formula more in that direction — say by spending less time with deadbeat dad Frank and everyone in his orbit away from the kids — I’d be a much happier viewer.
And hey, credit where credit is due: the last episode of this run ameliorates a lot of my above concerns, keeping most of the more outrageous elements in check and centering the various personal struggles to produce my favorite hour of Shameless yet. With any luck, that becomes the model for the program moving forwards and not just a fluke of a finale.
[Content warning for rape, transphobia, homophobia, conversion therapy, ableism, and slurs.]
★★★☆☆
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