Review: Showtime's "Shameless" Season 11

Shameless is one of those dirty secret little shows that’s too irresistible not to enjoy. Everyone watching knows that it’s too bombastic to be a true account of life, but there is enough honesty and earnestness sprinkled over all the farfetched shenanigans that it doesn’t matter. And season eleven, which positions itself as the end of the Gallagher family’s cinematic tale, adheres to that formula just as staunchly as every preceding season, and perhaps even more so.

The season was chock full of all the emotional turmoil and signature southside mayhem that audiences have come to expect. And even though it’s clear that the creative team is trying their best to let the Gallagher clan go out with a win, things just never really coalesce into something on par with the glory of the earlier seasons.

Part of the issue is the weight of the ending, which is a frequent problem amongst finales. Everyone, from the executives to the viewers, knows it’s the end, so rather than tell a cohesive story the builds to something important, they provide a season that tries to condense everything that everyone loved about the show over the years into each entry and the result is a loosely connected hodgepodge of episodes that feel oddly disparate from everything that came before.

Moreover, there’s a fixation on showing the trajectory of the main characters. Obviously, it’s important that fans get an idea of what the future has in store for their favorites, but that shouldn’t be the point of storytelling. Rather, it should be the byproduct of a tight plot that wraps things up enough that audiences can gauge for themselves what will happen to each person.

And this leads to the biggest issue with the final season of Shameless: a lack of resolution. As previously mentioned, every character had a storyline that was propelling them forward which, when concluded, would provide an ending of sorts for them that, while not definitive, would wrap up their arc on the show satisfyingly and give viewers an idea of what would happen next in their lives. From Carl’s job as a police officer and his journey to find out what kind of cop he wanted to be, to Liam’s existential terror at being left behind by his siblings, there was a rhyme and reason to everything. And then Frank was diagnosed with dementia, caused by his years of hard drinking, which ultimately led to a suicide attempt and his eventual death, and every other story took a backseat.

Going further, the feud between Lip and Debby about the fate of the Gallagher house, which was a focal story for the season, just disappeared. The police investigation into the Born Free robbery got hastily wrapped up and forgotten. Even the Milkovich neighborhood infestation, which dominated much of the season, fell away with a few throw away lines. Once it was known that the Gallagher patriarch was on his last legs, nothing else in the series mattered. And, as such, the final episode didn’t bother concluding anyone else’s story.

And that’s the biggest issue with the series: none of the plots from the show got answered. Everything just moved forward as it would otherwise. Now, there is a reason for this, which is likely to showcase that just because the show is at its end doesn’t mean the character are done. Their lives will continue, and by having the finale be something of an anti-finale, the creative team is highlighting this aspect. Even the attempt at having Frank reflect on his family, as the letter he wrote was read over his soul shuffling off the mortal coil, left much to be desired. It gave fans a glimpse of what the Gallagher kids’ lives could be, but only through the very skewed lens of Frank. It also appears to be something of a ham-fisted attempt to leave enough intrigue and unanswered questions to allow for a series revival a few years down the road, which is quite disappointing, as the show deserved something more definitive.

All in all, the season did its best to let Showtime‘s Shameless end with a bang, but the result was more of a wheezing cough. The loosely connected plots blazed a typical path of Gallagher destruction, and there was some fun to be had, but the cathartic conclusion never came to fruition and audiences will be left scratching their heads, wondering what’s next.