Why Shameless is one of the best shows on Television.

If you haven’t heard of the hit TV series Shameless then where on Earth have you been? The US TV series, adapted from the British version, has been running for seven seasons with each season bringing to light fresh and interesting issues for its main characters to face. The series follows a dysfunctional family living in the South side of Chicago on the fringes of poverty and destitution.

The patriarch of the family, Frank Gallagher is an all-out alcoholic and drug addict who does not take care of his family but instead leaves his kids (Fiona, Debbi, Lip, Ian, Carl and Liam) to fend for themselves. Throughout the first six seasons we see Fiona, the eldest sister, take charge of the family responsibilities and attempt to take care of her family while each sibling goes through their own self-actualization. This short review will attempt to frame each character of the family in the broader context of the show while also revealing why the show is so alluring and just down right intoxicating in the way it chooses to tackle the most taboo issues in our contemporary age.

We start off with the care-taker of the family, Fiona, who leads the charge of the Gallagher’s as they attempt to survive a life of poverty. Throughout the first six seasons we see Fiona go from one chaotic relationship to another, depending in some way on the lover that she is with for a sense of belonging and emotional support. As the care-taker of the family Fiona has barely any time for herself or even any sense of a career. She cheated on a good corporate guy with his bad ass brother, she’s left cocaine out for her baby brother to snort, she’s went to jail and survived addiction and recently dated a drug addict who break her heart at the wedding altar. Yet, still Fiona carries on and in this new season has taken a dramatic turn in that she chooses to no longer be the care-taker of everyone else but rather to focus on herself and her own career goals. She encapsulates the Shameless version of the modern woman, hooking up on Tinder without any emotional ties while driving hard to make some semblance of a career for herself.

Then we have Lip. The chosen one of the family. The one with the brains to succeed yet his circumstances and his environment enforce an attitude of apathy and at times down-right recklessness in the face of his promising future. While Lip and Fiona both wish to escape their family responsibilities they also feel a powerful duty to take care of the Gallagher family in a way that Frank (the father) cannot or will not. Lip has his own share of problems, from battling alcoholism to sleeping with a college professor and getting expelled. A recent development may see Lip turn to internet fraud to make money, a decision which could lead to some disastrous consequences. Lip represents what happens to individuals with higher than normal intellect who either get lost in the system or who cannot reach their inner potential because of the way they have been brought up or the hidden ideologies that are embedded in their character.

 Ian, one of my favorite characters, has grown from season one as a shy homosexual into a paramedic with bipolar and a potentially transsexual boyfriend waiting in the wings for him. With Ian we the semblance of Monica, his mother and Frank’s ex-wife, come through simply because he inherited her bi-polar tendencies. Ian has gone from the military to being a go-go boy at a gay club, to being in a mental hospital and finally finding some stability in a paramedic job that he is especially good at. Ian is an important character for the show because he is the presence of the LGBT experience. Ian’s character reveals how LGBT people experience poverty and how this poverty affects the LGBT experience.  In the recent season we see him face a host of intellectual and personal challenges as he learns about intersectional sexualities and the wide spectrum of sexual expression that exists. In this way the show includes a side of the human experience that is seen as taboo but also is very necessary to explore and represent accurately on TV.

Debbie has gone from the innocent young girl to a sexually awakened young woman who soon learns the real way of the world. She becomes pregnant and decides to keep the baby, a decision that has caused a rift between Fiona and her. The father of the child (a young high school boy) has left her to fend for herself and in her desperation she turned momentarily to stealing prams and mommy clothes to get by. Debbie represents for me how the circumstances of poverty can twist even the most innocent of people to accept their circumstance and do what is supremely necessary to survive. Though everyone at every turn suggests that she becomes a prostitute (i.e Frank and the Russian bartender Svetlana) she holds to a kind of moral code that seems to prevent her from ever becoming such a character.

Carl is the bad boy of the family. The one no one sees any future in other than possibly landing up in jail. But as Carl goes from being a drug dealer, to selling guns at school and eventually having his first girlfriend he begins to see what he is actually lacking in life: a father figure to show him how to be a man. This is a journey of manhood that Carl must walk alone as he attempts to enter military school to learn how to be a man. Carl’s presence in the show deals with issues of masculinity and how our conception of manhood and owning your “ish” can lead to some positive effects on youth who are seen as delinquent or lost to the never-ending cycle of poverty. It becomes interesting then to note how the issue of poverty and masculinity link up in the show. If we see poverty as a emasculating tool of oppression then we must seek to look at how we are perceiving masculinity and how characters in shows such as Shameless view their own masculinity. This is a further topic of exploration for a later date.

Liam, while not saying much in seven seasons, represents the ultimate innocence in the show. This innocence is surrounded by sex, drugs and poverty and it is this environment that makes Liam character all the more striking because it contrasts his fragile state as a baby boy but also brings to light the experience of babies in such circumstances and how they learn from their surroundings.

 Shameless is a successful show because of the issues that it deals with. It takes a family and puts them through the most hellish of situations and tests their faculties to see how far a human being can be pushed in such dire circumstances of economic oppression. From dealing with issues from gentrification to prostitution, drug smuggling, homelessness, sexual fluidity, social media hookups, crime, heartbreak, lies, growing up, mental illness, addiction and many more nuanced issues we as viewers are not only made to feel aware of our immense privileged positions in society, but we are also challenged and enticed by the taboo. This concept of taboo makes us unsettled yet also allows us to tap into that dark side of our own nature and enjoy vicariously the craziness that the Gallagher family get up to. It is darkly comical to see people pushed to do absurd things to survive in a Capitalist system hell bent on making as much money as humanly possible. Yet also there is a touch of humanity and liberation to see these characters rise above their circumstances, find love, deal with their addictions and mental flaws and still hold on to the bond of family that exists between each other.  Though Frank may be the devil in the show, he seems to be the necessary devil that the family bond around and that pushes each and every one of the Gallagher siblings into a frantic state of self-becoming.