Episode Title: “There’s the Rub”
Writer: Davey Holmes
Director: David Nutter
Previously on “Shameless:”
Episode 2.04 “Strangers on a Train”
Mike (Jake McDorman) is willing to let Fiona (Emmy Rossum) continue selling cups. But in the end, Robbie (Nick Gehlfuss) ends up costing her much more than her job.
Happiness is something the Gallaghers have to get where they can find it. In “There’s the Rub,” it’s the baggie of coke Robbie leaves on the table after Fiona chases him out of the house with a baseball bat. Though she isn’t in the mood to celebrate her birthday after Mike dumps her for screwing his brother, Fiona could certainly use a pick-me-up and before she knows it, the party’s started.
But just as soon as Fiona starts to feel herself again, the Gallagher clan is visited by another crisis when Liam gets into the coke. He’s rushed to the hospital, where everyone waits for answers about his condition. Unfortunately, Fiona will be the last to know as she’s arrested on the spot, leaving the kids, Lip, Vee and Kev in shock.
After three seasons, we’ve gotten used to “Shameless’” brand of humor, as things like statutory rape, incest and making your kid believe he has cancer have made for countless punch lines. But every now and then, “S*** gets real,” as the saying goes. For the Gallaghers. This is definitely one of those times.
To be fair, Fiona wasn’t laughing her way through her brief, but very damaging affair with Robbie. There was way more at stake than just her job as Fiona genuinely cared for Mike, though he may not have been “interesting” enough to keep her. The sad truth of Fiona and Mike’s relationship is that she would give anything to have the simple yet stable “normal” life he has. The trouble is, Fiona’s grown so use to dysfunction, she can’t truly relate to anything else.
But enough with psychoanalyzing Fiona; there’s plenty of other folks in need of therapy giving her a run for her money in this episode. Frank (William H. Macy) enlists the help of assorted friends and family to build a sweat lodge, Sheila’s Native American boyfriend, Roger Runningtree insists will fix his liver. Frank’s also bonding with daughter, Samantha, which is making Carl jealous, especially when Frank tells him she’s his “last chance to get it right.” Ouch.
Meanwhile, we finally get an update on Ian (Cameron Monaghan) when Lip (Jeremy Allen White) and Deb (Emma Kenny) go looking for him after military police show up at Lip’s school. The MPs tells Lip that Ian is wanted for stealing helicopters and boxer shorts. But when Lip and Debbie track Ian down at the gay club where’s bartending, he’s more concerned with making his tween sister an Apple-tini than the charges he’s facing.
At the Alibi, Kev (Steve Howey) and Vee (Shanola Hampton) are in desperate need of money when Alan shows up demanding his monthly payment. Luckily, the gang of intramural tennis players Alan brings to shakedown Kev are willing to trade a beatdown for a ”rub and tug” from Mickey’s Russian hookers.
Though there’s plenty of the usual black and bawdy humor in this hour (Samantha finds learning the man she thought she’d have “amazing sex” with is her father to be “like, an adjustment,” while Frank admits to initially seeing his eldest daughter as an “organ farm.”) “There’s the Rub” feels heavier than the average episode of “Shameless.” We see Deb confide in Lip about her misadventures with trying to lose her virginity and Lip act like the caring big brother he can be when he tries to protect his little sister from a potential run-in with their estranged mother, Monica. It may not be as funny as other episodes, but every now and then the Gallaghers need to take care of each other, because as they know all too well, no one else will.
