Shameless - "But At Last Came A Knock" Review

“I was raised by a pack of wolves, just like you were. Only my wolves went to Harvard.” -Steve

Shameless delivers it’s most emotional episode thus far. We get an incredible performance from Emmy Rossum and some really nice developments in the characters. The episode accomplished a few major things. Debs now knows about Steve’s secret life and Fiona realizes that she needs to be a little bit selfish and have a life of her own thanks to the arrival of her mother, Monica. These are two huge developments and I will say that the episode seemed a bit disjointed. These two huge plot developments might have deserved their own individual episode, but nevertheless, we got a solid 50 minutes of entertainment tonight.

At the outset of the episode I was thinking Shameless was up to their old tricks again. We get a nice story from Fiona and the other siblings and the Frank story is a side bar about him chasing money and getting drunk. We learned last week that Frank will do anything for money, even stay sober. So it was interesting when he couldn’t get go through with contacting Monica and even further when he couldn’t face her. Maybe I had missed hearing her name before, but I didn’t think all these shenanigans from Frank would lead to the mother showing up. But when she showed up, boy did she change the dynamic of the show in a hurry.

Debs is the first kid to see her and she greets her by shoving her to the ground. Then Debs tells the whole family mom is back at Sheila’s. There was a very nice moment when Fiona, Lip, and Liam all seem to think Frank did something wrong, but Debs screams back in defense of her father, “Why do you always blame Dad first?” The family is moved to silence at the news of their mother being in town. Liam runs away to Mickey and the rest of the family goes to see her. At Sheila’s house we learn that Monica and her life partner Roberta want to start a family and they want to take Liam with them. In perhaps the finest acting of the season Fiona passionately defends he family. She resents that her mother left her with the kids and left her with all the work to do. The years of pent up rage come flying out when she says she wants to start a family. “Well how about you finish this one first?” Debs and Carl are extremely conflicted emotionally and when they hug their mother, Fiona has had it and leaves. Up until this point I had always wondered why the children put up with Frank. Frank is a worthless father, but he did one thing that can’t be forgotten in their lives, he stayed. The Gallagher’s don’t care about a lot of things, but family and loyalty, they care very much.

Fiona ran away and no surprise, Steve came and comforted her with a new house he bought her. Rewind to the beginning of the episode. Debs is skeptical that Steve is cheating, so she does some detective work and finds out about Steve’s real life as Jimmy Lishman from the North Side. There was a really great scene with Steve and Debs while Mrs. Lishman is ratting out Steve’s gimmick. Just Steve staring at her with a look of terror while Debs gazes on in disappointment. No words between the two, just a story told in body language. Steve has to come clean to Debs and says he doesn’t want a life where he’s expected to be a prim and proper doctor, he just wants to be happy. One concern I have with all of this is that Steve’s go to move is to provide for Fiona’s needs with gifts. I wonder how compatible the two would be if he didn’t have all that money. Does the car thievery really pay that well? Or is he still living off family money? I know Fiona just wants Steve, but the gifts are a bonus.

Fiona will inevitably find out about Steve’s double life. Fiona’s stance on lying is very clear. She told Steve he could sleep with other girls as long as he told the truth, so something tells me Fiona won’t take the news too lightly. One question. We saw Steve kiss a girl we thought was his girlfriend/wife last episode on the mouth, and this week his mother awkwardly kissed him long and good on the mouth. Was Candace Lishman (as it says in his phone) just his sister? Is the mouth kissing a Lishman family tradition? I think Fiona could be talked into staying with Steve if he just lied about his family. But lying about a girlfriend/wife? I don’t think she sticks around.

I’m excited about a few things going forward. The first is I can’t wait to see Fiona fight for her family. It’s clear she wants to move forward with Steve, so I hope they try and start a family together with the children as their legal dependents. I also think there’s a lot of legs to Lip learning Steve’s trade. Lip has a brilliant mind, but doesn’t want to leave the hood. A way he can use his intelligence to get rich and stay a degenerate is by perfecting the art of car thievery. Ten minutes on the job and he already had a few ideas for Steve on how to make business better. Because I love their relationship, I wonder what will happen with Kev and Veronica and their foster child. She took a back seat once Monica showed up, but I am interested to see if they continue to develop this awkward family. I’m not so sure Veronica is ready to go from single to a grandmother in the span a few weeks though.