The depressing finale of Shameless has left a lot of people hanging, as the most unexpected thing happened in it: William H. Macy, who’s been depicting the role of Frank Gallagher, died in the most horrible way ever. He was all alone in the hospital as his dementia and covid-19 results caught up with him.
Look, we all knew that one day or another, this day would come, but it would happen at such a depressing time and the reaction of the family just doesn’t sit well. It will take some time for the pain to heal.
In the opening sequence, you had the entire Gallagher family gathered around the dying Frank. Liam claims that it was a suicide attempt, while others believe that he will somehow get out of it and be back on track in a few days. For the kids, it’s just another day – nothing out of the blue or shocking.
It was saddening to see Frank in his dementia-riddled state – he couldn’t even articulate his thoughts or explain what he was going through. Even in his regular condition, he is unable to grasp social cues and is a waste of space.
Many would’ve predicted in the first season that Frank would face a death alone in the hospital with no one by his side, and the creatives of the show made sure that they followed it through. The impact of covid was probably just as add-on to show how the low-income communities got effected by lack of resources and capital.
We’ve been told that the second half of the series finale was written after the lockdown, and so, we can assume that the storyline of the pandemic was added much later and that the original ending was a bit different. The family lived in the south side of Chicago and the writers felt that it was of utmost importance to show the life of people who’re living just above the line of poverty.
The ending was open-ended, so we don’t really know what happened with the rest of the characters. It seems to have indicated a happy ending for the rest of the characters— a new beginning, at least. The Gallaghers reunited with their elder sisters at the Alibi and were completely unaware and unbothered about their father’s passing. They united to celebrate Ian and Mickey’s wedding anniversary, but there were several questions that were unanswered. For instance, we don’t know if Lip bought the Gallagher house or not, or if Kevin and Veronica sold their bar and moved to Louisville.
The ending seems right, because we can now see Lip as the new patriarch of the crazy family. Some would like to believe that Ian and Mickey adopted a kid and raised him in a not-so-crazy household.
It would’ve been better had Emmy Rossum made the cameo appearance in the finale. She left the show in season 9, after which no one ever bothered to even take her name in the storylines – as if she had never existed. You would assume that there were some issues behind the scenes. However, Emmy couldn’t appear in the finale as she got stuck due to coronavirus restrictions.
Anyway, we hope that you liked the ending of this fan favorite series. We’re definitely going to miss the dysfunctional family!
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