I dislike the nonsensical way they introduced him (Caleb cheats! Ian decides he should try sleeping with a woman! Ian expresses uncharacteristic biphobia! Enter a trans man to teach Ian about gender and sexuality!), and am happy to be past the didactic aspect of his first few episodes, but I like the actor and the…

Someone whose ex-wife (or maybe not really?) forges passports and who lives a six-hour drive from the Canadian border, obviously.
Sometimes the show's LA base is transparent.

The JimmySteve has worldwide criminal connections/Estefania subplot was the start of the misdirection of that character; it seemed to exist solely for dumb slapstick and then would veer into horror at will. JimmySteve being forced to dismember a body is not a tone shift that works easily when they then stage a funny…

Cast interviews have indicated that they'd like to keep Trevor on the show next season (if there is one), but I can't see how. How would Ian explain where he's been? If he lies, then the audience knows he majorly betrayed Trevor and seriously considered chucking him in favor of his still-beloved ex and a life in…

Failed contract negotiations would explain the messy way the showrunners addressed his leaving as well as his own silence. They don't want to get blowback for not paying a key part of their ensemble what he's worth; he doesn't want to publicly seem "difficult" for asking. The showrunners stalled on a response as to…

Given the set up it's actually weird that they didn't evoke his mental health in relation to Ian's decision to go back home. We've had Ian sent home from work due to a possible manic phase; a discussion with Lip about a medication adjustment that Ian admits he struggles to deal with; multiple scenes of all…

They did incorporate a lot of callbacks to their prior relationship. I'm imagining a writers' room and a timer: "ok, write a two-episode send off, thirty minutes on the clock, aaaaaaand go!" "They meet at the baseball field, kiss in a van, look at the stars…let's get Noel in earrings…Ian sacrifices love for…

I get it in the sense that the writers want us to see the contrast between Ian's newly stable life/career and his past, and are evoking the gulf between that and life with an escaped convict on the run. So I guess the me of "it's not me" is the manic phase Ian that he now has under control? It was a little too pat as…

I was all, "Because he broke up with you," but that would make sense.

Next episode we find out that he planned to have someone cover his shifts in advance! If not, come on Shameless, he has got to be fired by now.

The recent headlines about Emmy Rossum's salary negotiations have made me wonder. He wasn't being paid as a series regular but worked his ass off in seasons four and five. If the show has hardballed its lead about paying her what she's worth, it's possible that he asked for more pay or more stability or both, got…

The show put together the equivalent of a fan video of their relationship with voiceovers from Cameron Monaghan and Noel Fisher as a way to close things out, and it conveniently skips over their breakup, the world's worst prison visit, and the substantial stretch of time when Ian wasn't showing any hint that he had…

I know, way too fast. After almost two seasons of nothing (a break the show sometimes treats like a year, sometimes like five), we get one episode for Ian to decide he's going to run away with Mickey, one episode to reverse that decision. Ian had just decided he WAS "that person" the day before he decided he wasn't.…

Well, we still have Lip. Knitting is an improvement on sleeping off a bender in the gutter, but it's no laundromat payday.

What did happen to the hints that Ian's bipolar had something to do with his actions? The talk with Fiona, the expressed desire for excitement, not sleeping, the camera work…misdirection, I guess.

Sigh. Developing Ian and Mickey was the one thing season five had going for it (until the last episode, anyway). Funny that the parallel to their end here happened in season five, too, with return-of-JimmySteve. How the writers managed to fuck it up so badly, I'll never understand, but given that they did I guess this…

They didn't undo the damage they did to that relationship in my eyes. Ian seems to have done a 180 last episode (the guy he didn't talk about, or visit, or reflect on is suddenly someone he still loves/fears living without) and then another 180 this time (he's "not that person anymore" - can we see this thought…

I see some of these as unintentional red herrings - Fiona taking money from Patsy's and leaving the note, and us never seeing her pay it back, leaves us hanging as to when she will get caught. It's like one writer includes elements that could build to a particular end, and the writer of the next episode doesn't pick…

That remark is projection coming from Ian. In their last year together, Mickey was the stable one and Ian was the manic-episode-having sometime baby thief. It's implied that he has not told Trevor that he has bipolar disorder, though, so maybe this is how he paints Mickey to gloss over exactly what happened. But if…

In the context of what they're putting on screen now, I can accept Ian being torn about staying or going, being angry, etc. I mean, he was blindfolded and tossed in a van, and is blindsided by the escape. But the huge caveat is the what they're putting on screen now part, because neither character's motivations and…