So Fiona gets a mostly happy ending to the laundromat arc. What was the point of showing her not only taking money from Patsy's, but fraudulently using Etta's cards? Why showcase such obvious issues as Etta's poor memory regarding the sale and Fiona only checking in at the diner when she was supposed to be managing…

They have so much to work with in telling this story; I don't see why they feel the need to dumb it down.

A ghostly Diane Court! Yeah, I see it.

I get your reasoning, but I would argue that the show didn't set it up that way. Either Ian was lying to Mickey and himself during the breakup (which God knows we've probably all done; breaking up with someone is hardly the most rational of times) by saying he didn't need to be fixed, or Ian was telling the truth but…

Dexter did better for ratings, and Homeland does better now, though Homeland surely costs more to make. Plus I have to remember that Showtime makes money via subscriptions and secondarily through licensing content for secondary sources like Netflix and DVDs, so advertising rates that rely on ratings are not an issue.…

The ratings are good for a Showtime drama, but they've been sliding since season four and are now down about a third from their height. I am wondering about renewal. It can't be that expensive to produce, since it's not a costume drama or reliant on special effects. Salaries would be the major cost, and they're also…

Yeah, I thought she was a hipster (clothes/attitude)? Fiona attacked her as such and didn't treat her like she was someone from the neighborhood. Maybe there was a lot of editing before the scenes were filmed.

It was the weirdest breakup, and to me it was clearly cooked up very late in the game to fix writing Noel Fisher out longterm. The issue of Ian not wanting to be "nursed" by Mickey had been brought up and seemingly resolved in episode ten. From there, Ian gets arrested, runs off with Monica, and has Monica tell him…

Yes, Vee is married to Svet. Kev isn't, nor is he married to Vee. He owns the bar. There is no automatic transfer to a spouse that Svet could rely on. This would have to be entirely based on Kev signing papers without reading them. Kev has trouble reading, but why would he or Vee sign supposed adoption papers and not…

God, but this show frustrates me. On one hand: really well-acted. I live for scenes like the older siblings and Kev in the kitchen, and Sierra telling off Lip wasn't bad either. On the other: the writers do not live up to the acting talent they have. Every week, they put their cast in the position of having to work…

The ID thing: I get that ID is a fraught issue for people who are trans, but in Illinois you do not have to show proof of surgery to change your license. If the show is going to highlight trans issues through this character, they could be more careful with the legal realities they reference. Instead of that, why not…

I don't have high hopes for this, either. The end of Ian and Mickey's relationship was one of the biggest "huh?"s I've ever seen - you had so many possible issues to work with to break these two up, and THAT's what you go with? Add in that awful prison scene, where they throw in that Mickey's going to be some kind of…

Am I nuts or did Frank soak the homeless shelter in gasoline and set it on fire last episode? Was there any reference to that when he stole the washer?

She's stolen cash from the diner and there's no way she's not stealing time from the diner, she took advantage of Etta's dementia to lower her offer by 20k, and now she's fraudulently using Etta's credit cards to pay for supplies. Am I right in thinking that she bought Etta out entirely (I thought that when Fiona…

All I could think was that the writers are desperate to reintegrate Frank with his kids' storylines and are resorting to having him literally break into the house…again.

I wish they had let us see Debbie be something other than The Worst Teenager this season, because I know I'm supposed to feel terrible that Derek's family took the baby and yet it's kind of a shrug moment. She tried to leave the kid at a fire station earlier this season, and used money from hocking stolen prams to…

I did feel for Lip, and the scene was affecting, but the pacing of this story has been off and diminished the force of the rejection. We had four episodes of Lip-as-intern, where he was talking about using it as a stepping stone to a real job without needing a degree. We saw that it was degrading, but instead of…

The student rep bugged me, but it was because I felt the role was a cheap shot at debates about contemporary campus culture. They put a female minority student there to whine about feeling safe (presumably a reference to "safe spaces") across from Lip pointing out the privilege of the student body. The kind of student…

Very little of the season has carried much dramatic weight. The two moments I can think of are Ian struggling with the need to return to the doctor for a dosage adjustment, and Lip confronting Fiona about the money she took out of the house. Everything else has been played as comedy, and while the show needed a course…

Shameless's entire concept of anal sex has been drop trou, bend over, cut away since season one. It's a planet where lube and foreplay do not exist, much to my wincing irritation.