Can all of this happen offscreen in between seasons?

Frank's speech at the end absolutely wrecked me. It reminded me of how brilliant Macy is on this show when you actually give him something real to work with. Goddamn.

Dennis showed great restraint in the review by not even lightly referring to it this time. This is an important first step for him.

I worked at a Dunkin for four years in downtown Chicago, and I can confidently assert that characters such as Affleck's in that sketch exist out here as well. I had some pretty gnarly flashbacks last night.

I will NOT go to the restroom upon you!

Damn. We were this close to making it through half a season without an Armisen cameo. I thought we were in the clear when he didn't show up in the Wiig episode.

I actually put two and two together just the other day, and realized that Jones was the guy from that "ranting in the car" scene from Waking Life, and now I no longer know how to feel about that entire movie.

His problem is not being as smart as he is self-important.

"Why should I have to apologize to Jews? They're the ones that suck!" -Lupe, probably.

That toast was pretty damn perfect, all things considered.

Eh, I figured it was worth including in spoiler tags since it was related to another show. lol.

I thought the same initially, but the preview clips on YouTube confirm that that's very much what happened to her.

I disagree about Marchand's death HURTING the show in question, but I do get what you're saying. And it definitely did affect the overall direction.

I said this on a thread for a previous episode this season - Frank's character should have gone out and been "preserved" in the way of Livia Soprano . Had he died at the end of season 4, Frank's presence would have still lingered in subsequent seasons via his kids' initial shock that he was actually gone, followed by…

I mean, they made an entire movie out of Superstar, so…

It definitely was at the beginning of the show's run, but Rossum has made herself a near-household name at this point, and is more often than not the strongest performance in any given episode. Between that and Frank's character's diminishing usefulness, I get where she'd want this.

Hire Riblet!

Not to excuse the shoddy way in which the writers decided to throw Mickey's character into the "bad news ex" box, but doesn't a lot of the abruptness of the breakup/subsequent character exit have a lot to do with Noel Fisher leaving the cast with not a lot of notice? I could be wrong, but I do recall reading such a…

Monica will likely be dead by season's end, they're laying out career paths for Fiona, Ian and Carl; it's becoming clear that the core characters are being primed to go on their separate paths fairly soon. If it were any other network but Showtime, Shameless would have ended after season 4 or 5, but my guess is that…

Same here.