I know, I suck. Read me being insightful about the important world of television. You'll forget how terrible I am after a while, honest. Note that this is a year old, so it's only about the first season. Which was awesome.
I haven't watched the second yet. Because, again, I suck.
Look! My excellent words about stuff that makes you forget about how inadequate I am.
"Shameless" is the story of the Gallaghers. The family consists of a mother who walked out eight years ago, a drunk dad who couldn't give two shits, and six children who have had to rally around each other to keep their ramshackle group together. Fiona, the eldest of the kids, is the one charged with keeping the bills paid, food on the table, and everyone alive long enough to get out of the house, and it's only because of her that the family's been able to keep on keeping on.
As a show that tries to make people laugh to keep them from crying, "Shameless" has the difficult task of being hilarious while also being poignant. And while sometimes the tone of the episodes can veer wildly into one direction or the other, more often than not the series is able to find the perfect balance between comedy and drama, the result of which is a damn fun TV show.
Emmy Rossum is great (granted, I mostly think this because I still find "The Phantom of the Opera" to be emo-tastic. Emphasis on the 'tastic') as Fiona, all the young actors are surprisingly impressive, and while William H. Macy wouldn't be my first choice for the despicable Frank Gallagher, he's almost too good at portraying the wreck of a character. Rounded out with a group of entertaining recurring characters with personality to share, there's a lot of entertainment to be had with the motley crew presented to us in the pilot.
Not that the show hasn't had some hiccups. Like a lot of TV nowadays, "Shameless" is an adaption. And while the writers have remained relatively faithful to their source material - a British series of the same name - there's an inherent difficulty in creating a 'black comedy' and really making it work. Audiences can typically greet commentary on family dysfunction with either laughter or tears, but it can be much more challenging to make them do both within a single one-hour episode without turning to petty manipulations and sentimental stupidity. (I'm looking at you, "Glee.")
But when done right? I love black comedies. I think they're impacting in ways that simple (and oh-so-delightful - note how much I love "Phantom of the Opera") melodrama can't be. Creating a scene sad enough to make people cry about is hard enough - how the hell do you make a scene so sad that it makes people laugh? And why the hell would an audience like that? After all, the things the Gallagher family goes through aren't funny. The context the show provides can make the hilarious, but in the, "Oh dear god I'm about to burst into giggles at my great aunt Mildred's funeral" kind of way. You're laughing, but you're mortified about it at the same time.
We do see plenty of despair as "Shameless" makes its way through its first season, particularly powerful because the show wants us to empathize with the Gallagher siblings. We understand from the get-go that this is a very damaged family, and that the six young people paying the price for having raise themselves in squalor without anyone to depend on but each other, all because their father couldn't be bothered to make half an effort. None of their futures look particularly bright, with all on various paths toward jail, addiction and failure. The whole set of circumstances has tragedy written all over it. You want to be sad and to feel sorry for this damaged family, since they have so many things going against them.
But instead of letting viewers languish in this depressing state of mind, more often than not, "Shameless" spends it time showing us the Gallaghers in moments of triumph. We see the kids throw their extra money into a shoe box to pay the electric bill over breakfast. Lip shares a cigarette with his younger brother Ian in a broken down van after the latter comes out of the closet. When no one can watch after the toddler Liam, Debbie take her likely-half-sibling to school for show-and-tell. Fiona scares off a guy who is (understandably) a bit out-of-sorts when her dad's unconscious body gets hauled into the house by the cops, and then he comes back a night later to join them in a drunken/high dance party with the (freaking awesome) neighbors. It becomes clear that while there are plenty of trials to go through and woe to be had, our protagonists spend relatively little time bemoaning their misfortune and much more time celebrating their successes.
This doesn't make the situation at all nice. Frank's a fuck-up, and his kids aren't exactly saints, but the Gallagher clan takes care of their own because they love each other. And when that's what motivates a cast of delinquent misfits, it's awfully hard to not to be delighted by their ridiculous exploits. It's a show about family persevering when they shouldn't be able to by having each other's backs, and having an awesome time. If the Gallaghers don't feel sorry for themselves, then we sure as hell better not. Instead, we should sit back, open up a beer, and enjoy being a part of the insane ride.
No comments:
Post a Comment