Shameless 4×10 Review: Liver, I Hardly Know Her

This show is going to kill me!  Fiona went off the deep end, but this crisis seemed to bring everyone together by showing how much Fiona means to them.  Frank seems to have luck coming out of his ears when a deadly situation turns in his favor.  Kev and Veronica had their baby girls without a hitch (thank God), but things got rocky in the partnership between Mickey and Kev.  With how things are going in each episode, I am freaking out about how these final two episodes will end.  But first let’s take care of “Liver, I Hardly Know Her”.

So I think it’s safe to say that Fiona hit rock bottom in this episode.  But the way I see it, she can only go up from her.  After a hard night of partying with Robbie and his loser friends, Fiona found herself in a van with said friends on her way to Wisconsin, clearly violating the terms of her probation.  The difference between Fiona and Frank is that she accepts responsibility for her actions.  It may take her a while to get there, but that’s more than what we can ever say for Frank.  He will go to his grave, thinking he’s a victim of circumstance and blaming his problems on everyone else but himself.  But with Fiona we saw that moment in the gas station where she admitted on the phone to Lip how bad she screwed up but that she still needed him.  In this episode, we finally saw the Gallaghers acting like a family again!  They banded together in mutual concern for their sister and went into search mode in an effort to find her.  The moment in the living room where Debbie and Ian were talking about how they should have seen this coming and Lip told them not to go down that road was very telling.  I think Lip was stopping them because he knew they were right.  The kids have always taken Fiona for granted, always assuming that she will be there.  What I loved the most was that they didn’t jump down her throat when they saw her or spoke to her again.  The relief on Lip’s face that she was okay was evident as he pulled her into his arms and later put his coat around her shoulders.  He didn’t berate her for violating her parole; he was just so damn happy that she was okay.  You could see that Fiona was bracing herself for the worst, so much so that when it didn’t happen you could see how shocked and relieved she was.  The look on her face when Debbie told her that she was so happy to hear Fiona’s voice was touching and tugged at my heart strings.  The time for punishing Fiona has passed.  Now is the time to support her and help her get back on her feet again.  That’s the thing I love the most about Fiona.  It doesn’t matter how many times you knock her down, she will always get back up.

I’m really starting to worry about Ian.  He was so up and down and back and forth in this episode that I was getting whiplash!  I mean going to boot camp because you need to get away?  Really, Ian?  It doesn’t work that way.  Now that the “honeymoon” phase has ended, I think Mickey is really starting to see that something is seriously wrong with Ian.  The scene with Mandy and her ex(?) made that abundantly clear.  That guy may have shoved at Ian afterward, but when he was up against that wall with that knife cutting into his throat he looked like he was going to soil himself.  I must confess I was disappointed that Mickey was gung-ho to pump Kev full of bullets with his brothers but couldn’t muster the same enthusiasm for his sister.  This situation with Ian has to come to a head soon, but I don’t think we’ll really be seeing the aftermath until next season.  Things are too focused on Fiona and Frank, and Ian’s recovery is something that needs to develop over an entire season, much like Fiona’s downfall.  So all I can say to the Gallavich fans out there is have some patience.  I would rather have a properly developed storyline rather than some ham-fisted attempt for this extremely dysfunctional couple.

So Kev and Veronica had their beautiful baby girls, but Kev gave me a mini heart attack in this episode!  When Mickey emptied the register of all the cash, Kev took it all back by gun point, causing him to rush home and prepare for Mickey’s retaliation.  He grabbed a shotgun from the closet at one point, fearing Mickey had arrived, only to find little kids settling off fireworks in the street.  He went back inside and tripped, causing the shotgun to go off!  I couldn’t breathe for like two seconds until Veronica and the babies were shown to be unharmed.  “No more guns” was the promise made and one that I hope sticks around.  I understand big poppa Kev just wants to keep his family safe, but there are other ways of doing that!

Sammi and Shelia appeared to be preparing for Frank’s death when they were thrown a Hail Mary from Sammi’s dealer in the form of a doctor willing to do the surgery from twenty five grand.  This all sounded too good to be true, but with the group committed to keeping Frank alive running out of options, they met with the doctor and scheduled the surgery.  Unfortunately with this kind of deal you get what you paid for, and that came in the result of Frank not receiving a liver but losing a kidney!  But this turned out to be a blessing in disguise as due to his dire state he was pushed to the front of the line on the transplant list, with his strange wedding ceremony being interrupted as a liver became available to him.  Now I’m not too sure how valid that wedding was as the details of his marriage to Monica are a bit unclear.  It appears Shelia wants to use this wedding to somehow be able to adopt Roger Running Tree’s nieces and nephews.  Hey, Ian was able to go off to boot camp like it was a spa weekend (I’ve got two siblings in the military, and I can tell you it is nowhere near that easy), so Shelia using some half-assed wedding to Frank to adopt these kids isn’t the craziest thing we’ve seen.  Either way, I’m interested to see how this all plays out in the final two episodes.

The preview for next week’s episode and a teasing tweet from Cameron Monaghan’s Twitter account promises explosive scenes to come on the Gallavich front.  I’m freaking out about what will happen with yet another visit from social services and whether Fiona or Frank will be there to keep the kids out of foster care.  This season has to be the best one yet and one can only guess at how things will end for the Gallaghers.  What are your thoughts on this episode?  Comment below and thank you for reading!

Author: Sarah Sue

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