Carl’s First Sentencing — and Chuckie’s: Shameless Recap

Carl and Chuckie were both sentenced to juvie in “Carl’s First Sentencing”, the 9th episode of Season 5 of Shameless (3/15/2015). Carl’s public defender tried to impress upon him how ratting out G-Dogg was the key to his salvation, but as we all know “Gallaghers don’t snitch.”

Carl was handed a one-year sentence for being a smart ass in court and rewarded with a doo-rag for not snitching on the bus. Chuckie, on the other hand, got beat up for snitching on Carl. He was taken under the wings of the Neo-Nazis on the bus after Sammi tattooed a swastika on his forehead. Carl did not go totally unscathed. Sammi paid him a pre-sentencing visit and they got in a fight that left both of them with some battle scars. The Gallaghers were very proud that Carl got a few uppercuts in on Sammi.

We expect Sammi will still be on the warpath after Chuckie was sentenced to 120 days, 60 for good behavior. Shameless Fiona told Sammi to “pack her shit.” No thanks for doing Fiona’s job during the period of time that the legal guardian of the Gallagher children wasn’t bothering to even come home. It was confirmed that Chuckie had a borderline IQ of 71, but somehow this did not help his case nor did Sammi’s plea for mercy, even blaming herself for bringing her innocent boy into a den of wolves, while the Gallagher clan rolled their eyes and wasted their time trying to make their little sociopath look like a remorseful choir boy.

Ian had a paranoid episode where he thought the MPs were coming after him. After almost hitting Debbie with a baseball bat, he agreed to go to the clinic and take medication. He and Mickey were stunned to learn that it was going to take some experimentation to get Ian on the correct mixture of drugs and when they did, he would be taking them for 30-40 years.

Kev was still at college with Lip. While Lip was running around trying to dodge messages from financial aid, Kev was appointed “the Rapewalker,” the guy who escorted girls who had partied too hard back to their dorm to protect them from being molested. Some of them invited Kev in to molest them. The college boys all got together to have a talk with Kev since they weren’t getting any. Kev showed them a picture of Veronica and one fellow was simply flabbergasted that Kev would ever leave his hot wife. This wake-up call led Kev to close down the Rapewalker service.

Lip signed up for a critical theory class and the professor, Helene, took enough of an interest in him to call financial aid and check into his situation. She thought he looked like an Egon Schiele self-portrait and had both street smarts and smart-smarts so it was a shame that he had to leave school but, at the same time, the no-fraternizing rule went out the window. She and Lip had hot sex in her office.

Lip looked into the possibility of hacking into financial aid and adjusting his tuition to paid in full with the dorm thief, Joaquin, who didn’t see anything wrong with helping himself to anything in any dorm room with an open door. Joaquin didn’t steal a laptop though, so their only option was the computer lab. Lip felt that was too risky or he just didn’t trust Joaquin because he stayed up all night at the lab himself to no avail.

Later, Lip learned that the Bare Maids multi-millionaire had been the roommate of Lorenzo, the financial aid officer. Bare Maids moneybags, Nick Wiltern, floated a loan that would cover Lip’s tuition until his financial aid came through. Lip could not believe that anyone would do something for nothing. He went off to Helene’s house and told her he wasn’t leaving after all but now the no-fraternizing rule was back on. She said it didn’t matter because it wasn’t that great — he was too exuberant. She showed him Schiele’s self-portrait and gave him another chance to be less exuberant. He ended up spending the night. Lip almost had a melt down in the morning when her husband, Theo, showed up and was even more confused when Theo just gave Helene a kiss and offered Lip an omelette. Lip is about to learn that some members of the “upper class” are even more shameless than the Gallaghers.

Throughout the entire episode, Frank went on an adventure with Bianca, the 32-year-old emergency room doctor, who just learned that she had pancreatic cancer. After a few drinks at the Alibi, they went off to buy some weed. Bianca shared her by-the-book life and how she kept her emotions bottled up. Bianca never even got revenge on Daisy Kelso, the girl who stole her date at the prom and banged him in the bathroom of Popeye’s Chicken. “You have not lived until you’ve heard the bones of your enemy being crushed under 3,000 tons of Detroit steel,” Frank observed.

Bianca wouldn’t answer her cell phone and told Frank she refused to undergo chemo after what she saw during her residency: patients enduring round after round of poison pumped into their system so they could spend their remaining days by the toilet. She had decided to go out with a bang, not a whimper, and tossed her cell phone in the lake. Bianca wanted to know if the times Frank almost died were peaceful experiences. Frank said no, he didn’t care how much they meditate, when it comes to dying, “those Hindus will be shitting their pants just like the rest of us.” Then they went streaking. The next morning, Bianca vented her rage at the lakefront– Frank’s favorite yelling-at-God spot.. They paid a visit to Daisy Kelso and Bianca finally got payback. She punched Daisy in the nose right in front of her little son, so hard she hurt her own hand. Bianca fell asleep on Frank’s shoulder on the bus and, yes, we thought he was going to steal that shitload of money she had on her and just leave her on the bus. But Frank must already have his eye on a bigger prize (remember Butterface?). He took her home and put her to bed on the sofa instead.