Shameless Season 6 Premiere: Updates on the Gallaghers and Friends

The first episode of the 6th season of Shameless was called “I Only Miss Her When I’m Breathing,” a reference to Frank Gallagher’s deep mourning over the death of “the love of his life” Bianca Samson. Hanging with a derelict must have been on Bianca’s bucket list… after learning that she had terminal cancer, she went on a wild adventure with Frank and finally committed suicide in the Season 5 finale. Pretty much all Frank does in the season premiere is talk about Bianca to anyone who will listen, and that’s like no one, including the priest in the confessional, an orthodox rabbi, the Mormon missionaries, and every other religious movement in town. He hangs out by Bianca’s grave, pretending she’s there and goes around telling his kids he loves them. So much for the pater familias. Here’s what’s going on with the rest of the Gallaghers:

Fiona is still married to Gus Pfender but that is obviously a technicality. She is sleeping with her boss, Sean Pierce. When Sean’s assistant manager, Otis, gets arrested, he offers Fiona the position. Co-worker Melinda is plenty mad about it because she has been working there longer than Fiona. Reluctantly, Fiona accepts, although we’re not sure why she is so reluctant. She did say something about her tips.

Lip is doing okay at college, as far as we can see academically, assisting Professor Youens when he is sleeping off a bender and covering for him when he is late to his own class. But Lip is deep in love with kinky professor Helene Runyon aka The Cougar. When his roommate shares some gossip that Helene has moved on to new meat, Lip loses it and goes to her house. He sees Helene kissing a young man who is just leaving. He beats up said young man. It turns out to be Helene’s son, Dylan. In the meantime, Lip took his roommate’s advice to get himself some age appropriate action and when Helene storms in to confront him about assaulting her child, Lip is in flagrante delicto with Tiffany Thomas.

Ian visits Mickey in prison, but only because Svetlana paid him $50 to accompany her and baby Yevgeny. Mickey has a 15-year sentence but claims he’ll be out in 8 years due to overcrowding. He asks Ian to wait. Ian doesn’t want to lie but Mickey tells him to lie if he has to because he needs that to hold on to during his long stretch. Ian unconvincingly complies. The odds are that Mickey will be there the whole 15 anyway, if not more, since he is getting paid to stab someone in the eye for half of $2,500. The other half goes to Svetlana for lining up these jobs.

Debbie is pregnant but she is lying about it, at least to Fiona, even after confirming it at Planned Parenthood. She did tell her boyfriend, Derek, fully expecting him to join right in parenting classes with her. But Derek ghosts on Debbie, hightailing it to Florida and leaving his mother to give her the bad news. Derek’s parents later showed up at the Gallaghers to talk about Derek and Debbie’s baby and Fiona’s like “what baby?”

“White Boy” Carl gets released from juvie where he has evidently been training for a life of crime and planning on doing whatever is required to get him back in. He arrives Chez Gallagher unannounced, with his new cornrow hairdo, and wants to have a friend sleep over. Nick the friend is a huge recently released convict they had to let go on his 18th birthday. He set his father on fire when he was 9 and just got out of a year in solitary. Never-in-charge at home Fiona just looks bewildered, as usual, instead of telling Carl to get him the hell out of there.

Liam has gotten a bit bigger and is still watching inappropriate TV shows for his age.

Kevin and Veronica are dealing with the Ladies of Gentrification and their complaints about Yanis, who is deliberately harassing them because he is both anti-gay and anti-gentrification.

Main cast:
William H. Macy – Frank Gallagher
Emmy Rossum – Fiona Gallagher
Jeremy Allen White – Lip Gallagher
Cameron Monaghan – Ian Gallager
Ethan Cutkowsky – Carl Gallagher
Branden Sims – Liam Gallagher
Steve Howey – Kevin Ball
Shanola Hampton – Veronica Fisher

As always, we will look at the other characters in the Supporting Cast post.