Shameless: May I Trim Your Hedges Recap

“May I Trim the Hedges” (1/27/2013) refers to the segment of this Shameless episode where Lip sets out to entrap a female pedophile who moved into the neighborhood to prove to Ian that her affair with a 14-year-old student was not “love” but was the same thing as the adult who took sexual advantage of Ian when he was 15. So that’s your title and one of Fiona’s last statements totally sums up the episode: “”The world’s messed up. So much ugly sh-t happens.”

At the grocery store, Fiona sees an opportunity to get a job when the frustrated cashier quits because she can’t deal with Debbie’s coupon counting. But Bobby, the manager, wants to feel Fiona out first to get an idea of how she feels about “meat” — like his. Fiona storms off but later comes up with a plan to get the job and some veal with the deal. On the bus home, Debbie cannot stop staring at a man in the back who is masturbating. Fiona chases him off the bus and calls the cops when they get home. Traumatized Deb gets Milkovich self-defense training from Mandy, as Kyle, the kid who Kev’s ex is trying to pass off as his, finds out first hand. But they bond in the playground with some smokes while Deb contemplates becoming a nun. Kyle tells her she’s too pretty to be a nun and gives her a sweet kiss.

Who would voluntarily put their baby in Frank’s care AND give him money? Yeah, you guessed right. Sheila. Hymie needs his vaccination and Sheila is too exhausted to take him.

Doctors are thieves, little Hymster. They just have degrees to keep them out of jail ~ Frank

Frank takes the baby to the bar and asks Kate for a thumb tack and a band-aid. While Kate threatens to report him for child abuse, he sees a blurb on TV for Make-A-Wish and gets a better idea of what he can use Hymie for. Only Hymie’s condition isn’t what the foundation is funded to help — dying children. Quick-thinking Frank tells the lady his other son is dying, goes home and convinces Carl that he has brain cancer and shaves his head. Lip intrudes on this scene and Frank claims the head shave is because Carl has lice. Now Carl thinks he has cancer AND lice! Down at the Make-A-Wish office, the lady gives in to Frank’s begging and says she will bump a paraplegic off the list to send Carl to summer camp. Carl is thrilled but it’s not something Frank can sell on eBay, like the sports tickets he was hoping for.

After gathering a gang complete with baseball bats to beat the daylights out of the pedophile, they are shocked when a woman answers the door. Recognized as the 8th grade teacher who went to jail for sleeping with her 14-year-old student, she explains:

I did my time. I paid for my mistake, if love can be called a mistake. ~ Blake Collins

Lip returns and baits her, taking his shirt off, asking her for food, leaving some on his mouth, then asking her to wipe the food off. It’s more than she can resist. And even though he has the cell phone picture he meant to get, when she tells him to bring the peanut butter with him, he goes upstairs and gets a lot more than he bargained for. Part of her “A+ student” schooling, besides grammar lessons, includes Nair “down there”.

Lip introduces Mandy to peanut butter, and she figures out where he learned that when she discovers his state of hairlessness. Mandy gets some guys to dig a grave in the yard of the female teacher’s home, knocks on the door and informs her that she is either moving or getting buried. She moves.

Fiona and Veronica march back to the market where V tries to get a job, taping the meat conversation the manager lays on her. Fiona uses the tape to blackmail the married manager into giving her day shifts and veal. Meantime, Kev’s intentions to get his wife, Cheryl, to sign their divorce papers get sidetracked when she informs him he may be Kyle’s father. Veronica has been staying with Fiona, trying to get a grip on what to do. She fears demanding that Kev choose her will kill everything that she loves about him. When Kev makes his choice on his own, it’s Veronica, although he wants to get to know his “son.” When his wife finds that out, she sneers that Kyle isn’t even her kid, it’s her sister’s kid she’s borrowed for the occasion. That revelation results in a knock-down drag-out and she is forced to sign the divorce papers.

Jimmy has spent the day with Estefania, getting bridal pictures for the INS. Bridal gowns and bridesmaids in ugly blue dresses make Estefania hot, so she prevails upon Jimmy to relieve her sexual tensions in the back of the limo. The episode ends with him coming home. He and Fiona are kissing when she bursts into tears over all the ugliness that went down and all in one day! Then she tells Jimmy: “I trust you. That’s bigger to me than ‘I love you.’ It’s a bigger deal. I trust you.” And that really had to make Jimmy feel pretty low. Maybe Fiona will find out the real reason the Escalade sits outside her home all the time in two weeks.

We’re glad Kev didn’t get taken in by that lying wench, Cheryl. Even Kyle didn’t want to be in the same car as “that psycho.” He stayed behind and asked Debbie if he could use the phone to call his “other mother.”

May I Trim Your Hedges Cast:
Emmy Rossum – Fiona Gallagher
Cameron Monaghan – Ian Gallagher
William H. Macy – Frank Gallagher
Emma Kenney – Debbie Gallagher
Jeremy Allen White – Lip Gallagher
Ethan Cutkosky – Carl Gallagher
Justin Chatwin – Jimmy / Steve
Harry Hamlin – Ned
Shanola Hampton – Veronica Fisher
Steve Howey – Kevin Ball
Joan Cusack – Sheila Jackson
Stephanie Fantauzzi – Estefania
Noel Fisher – Mickey Milkovich
Emma Greenwell – Mandy Milkovich
Kerry O’Malley – Kate
Bernardo de Paula – Beto
Cameron Richardson – Cheryl
C.J. Berdahl – Kyle
Justine Lupe – Blake Collins (the teacher)
Eric Edelstein – Bobby (Keane’s manager)
Angie – Julia Boyd
Make-A-Wish Lady – Lauri Johnson