Shameless Recap: Sleepwalking (Season 8 Finale)
Season 8 of “Shameless” wrapped up on January 28, 2018 with an episode entitled “Sleepwalking.” TVLine talked with the show’s executive producer Nancy Pimental afterwards. She explained the motives behind some of the storylines this season, with a couple of teasers on Season 9 thrown in for good measure. Quite seriously, the finale was a big let down. We were hoping for some kind of big shake up that would revitalize our interest in the show. That didn’t happen, but here’s what did:
I think you should give Charlie one last chance. ~ Lip
After moping around over Sierra all season, when he finally gets her, that’s what Lip turned around and told her. OMG! And we’re supposed to think that Lip has matured and realized that he’s not ready for this commitment because he needs to know himself better first? Uh, yeah. Well, what we thought was he didn’t like her saying that she didn’t see that he was strong before and he didn’t like her sudden use of the “L” word. He wanted her to choose him, not get her by default. More to the point, by now, who cared? We would have rather seen him be with Eddie, but she took off for Cabo, leaving little Xan to the mercy of Social Services. Lip jumped right on that as his next White Knight project. He even let her name his motorcycle Keith. Perhaps we’d be more impressed if he showed his younger brothers some of that big brotherly love.
How stupid do you think I am, Carl? ~ Kassidi
Despite being handcuffed to the bed by Kassidi in her last bid to prevent him from returning to military school, Carl made his getaway. According to the producers, this story line was “one hundred percent” to show that Carl’s role model of love is Monica and Frank, “it’s all Carl knows!” Oh. So that’s what that was about. Wow. Call me shallow, but I watch this show to be entertained, not to get a better understanding of the Gallaghers’ psychological problems.
I want you to be madly in love with me. ~ Fiona
Fiona resolved her squatter/lawsuit problems with the help of Ford, some advice from her mentor, Margo, and a smoke bomb from Pyro Paulie. She offered Rodney and Trina $4,000 cash up front and $500 a month for a year to leave town. They refused so she burned up $200 on a grill and that made Rodney accept the remaining $3,800 and sign a paper. A release? A contract? We don’t know. We just know it was absurd. Ford’s response to Fiona’s quoted declaration was that he no longer falls in love like a teenager, and according to Ms. Pimental that is good for Fiona. So that means more Ford in Season 9.
And then Franny will be spending time with Pepa! And what will she call Pepa? Mommy? Mother? Mama? ~ Debbie
We haven’t seen Derek Delgado since Episode 5 and all of a sudden, in the finale, he’s back to ask Debbie to consider shared custody now that he’s marrying Pepa. Debbie will probably agree so she can have more time for herself and, hopefully, hobble back to welding school.
This is about you loving all of the attention and the hero worship. ~ Trevor
One would suppose now that Ian and his Spartacus groupies have been arrested, that will be the end of Ian’s career as a paramedic. Whatever, one thing’s for sure, Trevor has his number and that’s the end of that grand romance.
Do we steal from our friends? ~ Liam
Liam went along with Frank’s plan to relieve Dylan’s father of some of his wealth, coming up with a slick way of obtaining the code to shut off the burglar alarm, but ultimately, he didn’t give Frank the right code. So while Liam was lounging on the deck of a yacht in the Caribbean, Frank had to outwit the cops by hiding in a Porta-Potty and that was just gross and not even funny. Maybe, like the freedom symbolism of Lip’s motorcycle, it was symbolic of this season’s storylines?
Here we are, Ms. Zlata! I know you must be thirsty after your long trip ~ Veronica
Freelania was not only still alive, her mother Zlata was on the way over from Russia to attend her wedding. Kev and V did everything they could to help get Svetlana to the altar in Freelania’s place to become the bride of old moneybags, Rupert. That included waylaying Zlata at the airport and knocking her out with Valium and vodka. Kev even gave Svetlana away, right after finding out from Rupert’s son that there was a prenup. This was the funniest storyline in the whole season actually.
All in all, this was a mishmosh of a season with a lot of promising possibilities that were promptly dropped after a few scenes, in favor of storylines we could have done without. The good news is that Season 9 can only be an improvement!
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boardwalk next to the wire number 1 hbo show of all time loved it
@ john stier – Boardwalk Empire started out superbly, but it kind of weakened down the stretch. Re: the Greatest HBO Show of All-Time, 98%+ of the viewing public would vote for “The Game of Thrones”. The popularity of that series is phenomenal!
I’d probably put “The Sopranos” & “Deadwood” a notch or two ahead of “B’walk Empire”. And no argument about “The Wire”… Great series!
Yes, I have to agree with JLane. Let me tell ya, I LOVED Boardwalk Empire so much in the beginning. I went over to my son’s every week to watch it with him and his wife and I bought them a bigger TV to watch it on. I recapped the show faithfully — episodes, quotes, characters, fatalities by season — and in this post, I even expressed my supreme frustration with the constant online glorifying of any other character on the show BUT Nucky. Ultimately, it could have been better than The Sopranos but it wasn’t.
Whoa, VJ! Calm down, little lady… did you happen to switch to decaf after you wrote that post?! Hmmmmm 😉
Currently in theaters is “The Shape of Water” which is getting all sorts of accolades and deservedly so. Michael Shannon has a role in the film as Colonel Richard Strickland (the guy who finds and tortures the “mer-man”), and it’s almost a carbon copy of the character he played as the Prohibition Agent in B’Walk Empire as Nelson Van Alden. All throughout the movie, I was having flashbacks of the HBO serious due to the likeness of the two. If you get a chance, check it out.
LOL, JLane. I will look into that Michael Shannon film. Thanks for that info.
P.S. – I actually drink half-caf all the time but I love coffee so much, that even so, I probably ingest more caffeine daily than most people who drink regular coffee! 😎
Well VJ, like you I was “underwhelmed” by the finale specifically, and the entire season in general.
If they had to rename Season 8, it would have to be dubbed “The Year of ‘The Lip'”. I thought Jeremy Allen White was superb this season, and I was OK w/ his “about-face” re: getting/wanting Sierra back. His line about being drunk or stoned his entire life and not knowing who he really is and/or what he actually wants was one of, if not the best moments of the season. (I recall from my youth buddies that passionately wanted and chased after a certain girl, and once they got her attention and interest, they panicked because they had commitment issues and didn’t know how to proceed!)
It was great to see that Liam hasn’t turned “Gallagher” yet and protected his friends home, and that Carl did make it back to Military School despite all of Kassidi’s interference.
I’m not sure why they even wrote Debbie into the script this year. Except for the “Gallagher Manicure” scene, she added nothing to the show. And please tell me why Svetlana didn’t at least dye her hair blonde to try to resemble Freelania just a little bit?! Geez!
No real cliffhangers, no big time plot twists… I hope that “Shameless” hasn’t jumped the shark at this point. I’ll guess we’ll find out next season, ay?!
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, VJ – it was a pleasure reading your column and swapping opinions with you throughout the year! 🙂
I like Debbie, JLane. I think Emma Kenney is immensely talented and not giving her much to do is part of what I disliked about this season. I’m not faulting Jeremy Allen White’s acting by any means, but really, besides the commitment phobia thing, I think the fact that Sierra dumped Lip was the biggest factor in his wanting to get back with her to begin with.
In any event, the direction of this show feels like what happened with “Boardwalk Empire” to me. Instead of telling the story the way they originally intended, they turned it into a morality play.
In my opinion, if even one of the Shameless characters overcomes his or her roots, the show ceases to be about its very title, but the audience is already bored with the blowing a great opportunity shtick. So where is there to go from here?
Wow! I couldn’t agree more about “Boardwalk Empire”! I became so frustrated with where that show went I’ve yet to watch the final season (although I’m pretty sure I’ll get around to it one day…) 😉
You absolutely hit the bulls-eye with what is going south w/ this show… Except for Frank in the second half of the season NO ONE IS SHAMELESS ANYMORE! Fiona longs to be a responsible business woman, Lip strives to be sober and help every stray that comes his way, Ian wants to save gay children, Debs aspires to be a productive, responsible and supporting single mom, Carl has his sights on graduating from Military School and Liam is a sweet kid. Where’s the shame in any of that?!
I liken to this to, let’s say, a “Superman” series (or any super-hero will work). Superman can only save some many people in so many different ways until the writers run out of ideas for him to show off his skills as the Man of Steel. So what do they do when the well runs dry of heroics? They give Superman an anxiety like depression or loneliness, or turn him into an alcoholic, etc. But nobody wants to see a down-on-his-luck, sad-sack Superman. They want to see a bada** dude who does bad things to bad guys. In the same light, who wants to see a Gallagher with morals? No one! We want troublemaking Gallaghers…
To answer your “rhetorical” question, I haven’t a clue where the show goes from here. But I hope it goes somewhere better than Season 8, that’s for certain… 😉
omg, JLane — “we want trouble-making Gallaghers” — and how!
Fiona should be gouging the tenants, Debbie should have continued making money with Toto and Duran and so on.