Pimp’s Paradise Recap: Shameless

The Gallaghers got their house back in the 7th episode of Season 6 of Shameless (2/21/16) but the details of how that came about weren’t spelled out. All we know is Fiona used Carl’s money and her name is on the deed, but Carl considers it his house and let Frank move back in with Queenie and Chuckie. Ian is also staying there. Carl has some guys come over and install a slide next to the staircase and all kinds of swag with images of the Benjamins on them. When Fiona does show up, she is appalled at what is going on. Carl doesn’t care about her name being on the deed. It was his money and he’s having some homies over later.

Queenie tells Frank she isn’t going to stay. She’s a rolling stone who works and lives on an eco-farm and found her calling in healing people, and she plans on taking Chuckie with her. Frank is determined to keep her at the Gallagher homestead, and tells her about Debbie’s condition.

Over at the Wexler house, Erica told Debbie she has to leave because they can’t afford her anymore now that she is in remission. (Not sure what sense that makes). Debbie decides she is going to have to appeal to Erica’s weakness for women but doesn’t quite know how to go about it. After trying to get advice from Carl and doing some online research, she is about to go through with it, when a text comes from Frank, telling her to come home — they got the house back. Debbie jumps up and probably gives Erica a bigger shock than learning she was in remission: she resigns, she’s only 15 and she likes boys. Well, maybe it wasn’t that shocking. Let’s not forget that Erica was a lot more wild than Debbie in her teen years.

Carl told both Fiona and Dominique that Nick was gone and seemed rather depressed about it, except for when he was conducting business. Carl invited kids at school to his party and the Gallagher homestead was full of homies when Fiona walked in. She tossed everyone out after Carl left. He went to the home of the boy that Nick murdered and tried to give his parents an envelope with money and drugs in it. The father wouldn’t take it and told him to leave. Carl left the envelope on the stoop with other cards and flowers that had been left.

Chuckie got suspended from school because he wrote a book report on Hitler’s Mein Kampf. Queenie wanted to keep him home and homeschool him “with Grandpa”, but Grandpa wasn’t having that. He wants Queenie’s days to be devoted to him, not Chuckie. So they went to the school where Frank convinced them to let Chuckie present his book report, though we think the addendum about calling the ACLU did the trick, not Frank’s passionate discourse on the free speech rights of white supremacists. Queenie apparently interpreted this as if Frank really cares about Chuckie and decided to stay. Ha! Frank wasn’t even going to let the poor kid in the house when he got suspended but Queenie showed up at the door and saw Chuckie.

Later when Fiona came over to make dinner, Queenie and Frank were already making it. She and Sean were disgusted by the antics of those two at the dinner table. Sean asked Fiona to really move in with him and she happily agreed. They got up to leave and were going to take Liam but he wanted to stay with Debbie who said “he can stay with me, I don’t care.” Fiona said she didn’t care either and left with Sean.

Kevin and V’s Vacation: Carol came and took the Myanmar refugees away and Kevin made arrangements with Svetlana to watch take care of the “chocolate-vanilla babies for a small fee” so he could whisk V away to the honeymoon suite of a dive motel in Gary, Indiana for some alone time.

Lip’s New Digs: At college, The leaked photo of Helene lying nude on Lip’s bed had another consequence — Lip got kicked out of his dorm room because the mural Amanda painted on the wall over the bed was also in the photo. “No defacing school property.” A pretty girl named Victoria took pity on Lip’s plight and tipped him about a houseboy job at a sorority house. He got a free room in the basement as part of the deal and, as usual, all the girls are gaga over him. Sadly, Lip is still not over Helene. He got drunk and went to Helene’s house, begging her to come out and talk to him. He threw a bottle at the house and lurched away. When Victoria showed up later to hang out with him, he wouldn’t get up to answer her knock on the door.

The Wedding Guests: Caleb invited Ian to his cousin’s wedding. There he finds out that Caleb’s father is a homophobic pastor. Caleb made a bit of a show of putting his arm around Ian every chance he got. Ian began to feel uncomfortable, as though he was just there so Caleb could rub his gay self in his family’s face and wanted to bounce. Caleb apologized and said it was just that his family “pretends they’re too religious to notice” and try to ignore that he is gay. Ian suggested that they make it harder for them to ignore with some dirty dancing. Later as they walk home, Caleb took their relationship into more serious territory with a declaration that he wants Ian.

What did we leave out? Oh, yeah, the lice. Probably because there really didn’t seem to be any purpose of throwing that into the episode. Somewhere along the line, at daycare probably, Liam got lice. Even though he was staying with Sean and Fiona, she went over to the Gallagher homestead to de-lice him and the house. After leaving Liam with Debbie, Sean made Fiona dinner at their place and discovered that she had them, too.