Shameless: Season 2

Product Description

Shameless: The Complete Second Season

William H. Macy stars in this racy and edgy adaptation of the long-running British family drama as Frank Gallagher, the alcoholic patriarch of a large, unconventional, blue-collar family. In the U.S. version, the sprawling Gallagher family has been transplanted to working-class Chicago during the challenging times of today's recession. Making ends meet is always difficult, especially with a mother who is AWOL and a father who usually ends up passed out on the living room floor. Emmy Rossum stars as oldest daughter Fiona, who is left to the often impossible task of keeping her five younger brothers and sisters on track.

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Welcome back to another season of depravity starring the family who puts the fun in dysfunctional. The Gallaghers, central characters in Shameless, are "living crappily ever after," or so the tagline goes, and in this second season of the Showtime series (with 12 episodes, plus bonus material, on three discs) they more than live up to that billing--especially Frank (William H. Macy), a strong candidate for the worst fictional father figure since Darth Vader. In just the first three episodes, this unrepentant drunk puts up his 2-year-old son as collateral after losing a ridiculous $10,000 bet; steals an engagement ring another man intends to give to the daughter of Sheila (Joan Cusack), the agoraphobic widow Frank regularly sponges off of; and withholds the news that a heart has become available for transplanting into a dying woman friend whose pension Frank hopes to steal. As before, all of this leaves his six kids to pretty much fend for themselves. They include twentysomething Fiona (Emmy Rossum), the de facto mom, who takes care of five siblings and manages to hold the whole thing together while barely staying a step ahead of her own tangled love life; Lip (Jeremy Allen White), a scam artist who's smart, resourceful, and caring; Ian (Cameron Monaghan), who despite his homosexuality yearns to attend West Point and join the army; and Debbie (Emma Kenney), who runs a daycare operation out of their home (the family also rents out Frank's bedroom to a pregnant Chinese woman and a prostitute) while anxiously awaiting the onset of adolescence. These are the characters we come to root for, and who give the show its heart and soul. As for their dad… well, once his mother (a hardened criminal brilliantly portrayed by Louise Fletcher) shows up, it's clear the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. And while Macy is excellent in the lead role (in one of the bonus features he discusses the challenges of playing a character that's perpetually wasted), the days when we chuckled along with lovable drunks like Dean Martin and Foster Brooks are long gone. And there's not much lovable about Frank Gallagher anyway; in addition to being an alcoholic, he's a liar, a thief, and a self-entitled freeloader whose own kids don't want him living under the same roof as them. Shameless is smart, well written, and humorous (in a black, satirical kind of way), but perhaps not for everyone. Bonus features also include featurettes, unaired scenes, and a preview of season three. --Sam Graham