I enjoyed certain elements, like Lip having to reconsider college and clearly falling for Sierra, who has been (so far) a healthy and normal person, and Ian and Trevor's stalemate from last time being resolved in a way that actually showed us the development of some chemistry. It's still heavy handed (could have done…

Last season when the house was being auctioned she was able to apply for a mortgage; we saw her at the bank and the loan officer gave her advice on establishing a credit record. They were outbid (and banks do not do mortgages for auction purchases in any case), but we had a nod to her being able to get credit. I did…

Thank you for the For Better or For Worse callback. Oh, the earnest treacle of that strip…

I don't need a Saint Fiona to be interested in the show, and I think it's a better show for including at least some characters that are not straight up caricatures, but flawed enough that we don't fully know whether the balance tips toward good or bad and whether it will change over time. What I think works, though,…

Not everyone who is trans and hasn't had gender reassignment surgery is preop, because not everyone will have surgery or wants to. There's a whole range of comfort levels with genitalia and whether or how people want to use theirs. But if his genitals are really off limits because he's uncomfortable with them, maybe…

I have been struck by the difference between what is understandable and what is held up as good. It's understandable that Fiona would be a shitty guardian, since that's what she knows. Fiona was forced to take on responsibility too early, and Fiona's life sucked because her parents were neglectful and abusive. I…

If she took out a business loan, maybe, but if she took out a home equity loan, they wouldn't need to know what she's using it for, just that she has the collateral (in the form of a house worth x amount of money) and has decent enough credit to indicate that she can manage payments.

I had a lot of "how dumb are you???" moments with characters last night. Not just Lip and the obvious, not at all suspicious questions, but Fiona and her massive purchase on a business she knows nothing about and Kev and Vee not immediately chucking Svetlana out. For Fiona, I feel like the arrogance of the purchase…

I'm not even clear on what Fiona bought. She took out a home equity loan to do it, which means regular payments or goodbye house. But there was mention of a lease on the space being up in eight years. So did she buy half the business, which is run in a leased space, and will now be on the hook for rent? Or did she buy…

I get you in her heart being in the right place, but Fiona did a lot more work and sacrificed more for the family before she took on the guardian role. Since then, she has endangered Liam, broken parole to get high, been to prison, taken off with Gus for days at a time making no arrangements for the children in her…

The bizarre circumstances under which Ian became employed are a weak point of the show, though. When the writers stretch all credulity, or ignore something that they've previously established in their universe (like ignoring the several-episode arc when Fiona sought legal assistance to request guardianship in court,…

Well, there's suspension of disbelief and enjoyment of absurdity, but the show has relied on legal and financial realities to establish elements of plot that it then ignores at the writers' convenience. If this show had ever just been a sitcom and didn't ask for the kind of emotional investment in the characters that…

It seems that they're headed for a sexual relationship, and given that they showed Ian experiencing visceral disgust not at his female partner's gender but specifically at her genitalia a couple of episodes ago, I'm not sure that they can avoid some kind of simplistic "Ian finds out that you're not attracted to…

Distrust of the government, maybe, but the people who opt out of vaccines tend to be high-income white people. Probably because they have the luxury of both the time and the income to deal with the exceptions for school or can afford to homeschool.
The vaccine plot seemed about two years out of date for topicality,…

Are hot forty-something financial planners really giving away athletic sex and financial advice to Tinder hookups? Are they even on Tinder? Have I been missing out?

Interesting! It also got them out of the issue of how the family was managing to hold it together when Frank was so often out of it or just plain gone. They'd pushed the limit of belief by the middle of season three. They were still exploring what guardianship meant in season four (while I still think that her…

I'm bothered by the guardian thing not because Fiona ignores it at will—it's a pretty expected thing that she would have second thoughts about it, or would want to revert to "normal"— but because the show itself seems to have forgotten it. We learn in season three that Frank is willing to call CPS on his family, and…

He's not Lip, but he was never shown as dumb or ignorant until last season with the sudden "what's quinoa, I've never been to a restaurant" shit. In the first three seasons he was doing decently in high school and trying to get through higher level math for his West Point application, and no one seems to have thought…

I'm having a hard time enjoying what I see because I can't help but think about things characters have experienced or done that the show seems to want to forget. That said, I'm glad that we're being given some nuance about Fiona's behavior, particularly via Veronica.

I…yeah, it's not convincing that he would be so totally at sea as he is here, and the brunch came across as a clumsy, clumsy way to try to be topical. Wouldn't he at least have some knowledge in the abstract?