Shameless (US): I’ll Light a Candle for You Every Day Rewatch
January 27, 2015 8:43 PM - Season 2, Episode 3 - Subscribe
The episode opens with a dream scene where Fiona is having sex with Craig, who turns into Debbie telling Fiona something about dead people.
Debbie is obsessed with death, since she saw her “first dead person” at the nursing home at the end of last episode. “There are 200 euphemisms for death … ‘living impaired’ … ‘retroactive abortion’ …” She figures that as the youngest female member of the family, everyone else will die, “and then I’ll be all alone.”
Fiona gets coffee with Craig, and they start talking a lot about what things would be like if Craig weren’t married. They end up having sex in Craig’s car (by the stick-figure sticker of Craig, his wife, and their three kids in the car window), and it falls short of Fiona’s dream.
Fiona takes a purse that was left on the bus, and returns it to its owner, Kim, after stealing the cash. Fiona’s immoral behavior in this episode will catch up with her.
Jody shows an engagement ring to Frank, asking for his “blessing” before Jody proposes to Karen; Frank steals the ring and uses it to propose to Dottie, hoping to inherit her pension when she dies soon. Frank takes a call offering a heart transplant to Dottie, but he falsely tells the caller that Dottie just died. When Dottie realizes she missed out on the heart (but not that Frank was responsible), she tells Frank, “I’m ready to go” — meaning both to go into the bedroom and have sex, and to die. This will interfere with Frank’s plan to marry her, but he agrees to do it for $2,000 and a flat-screen TV.
Frank rants at the bar: “God’s plan is that you take what you’ve been given and don’t complain. No one is satisfied with what they have anymore! Always trying to get something better! ‘I don’t like my heart — I think I’ll get on a list! Upgrade!’ If you’ve got a bum heart, that’s your lot in life. Don’t take someone else’s — it’s not yours.” (Of course, in his head, Frank is rationalizing his act of preventing Dottie from getting the heart transplant, so that Frank could get something that wasn’t his.)
Kevin wants to buy the bar from Stan, but V doesn’t like the idea: “You don’t have the head for that kind of thing.” “Are you calling me dumb?”
Debbie is obsessed with death, since she saw her “first dead person” at the nursing home at the end of last episode. “There are 200 euphemisms for death … ‘living impaired’ … ‘retroactive abortion’ …” She figures that as the youngest female member of the family, everyone else will die, “and then I’ll be all alone.”
Fiona gets coffee with Craig, and they start talking a lot about what things would be like if Craig weren’t married. They end up having sex in Craig’s car (by the stick-figure sticker of Craig, his wife, and their three kids in the car window), and it falls short of Fiona’s dream.
Fiona takes a purse that was left on the bus, and returns it to its owner, Kim, after stealing the cash. Fiona’s immoral behavior in this episode will catch up with her.
Jody shows an engagement ring to Frank, asking for his “blessing” before Jody proposes to Karen; Frank steals the ring and uses it to propose to Dottie, hoping to inherit her pension when she dies soon. Frank takes a call offering a heart transplant to Dottie, but he falsely tells the caller that Dottie just died. When Dottie realizes she missed out on the heart (but not that Frank was responsible), she tells Frank, “I’m ready to go” — meaning both to go into the bedroom and have sex, and to die. This will interfere with Frank’s plan to marry her, but he agrees to do it for $2,000 and a flat-screen TV.
Frank rants at the bar: “God’s plan is that you take what you’ve been given and don’t complain. No one is satisfied with what they have anymore! Always trying to get something better! ‘I don’t like my heart — I think I’ll get on a list! Upgrade!’ If you’ve got a bum heart, that’s your lot in life. Don’t take someone else’s — it’s not yours.” (Of course, in his head, Frank is rationalizing his act of preventing Dottie from getting the heart transplant, so that Frank could get something that wasn’t his.)
Kevin wants to buy the bar from Stan, but V doesn’t like the idea: “You don’t have the head for that kind of thing.” “Are you calling me dumb?”
Im not regularly commenting in these threads because I binge-watched through all the episodes in like a week so they all get mixed together. But I want to say that I really appreciate these write-ups and want you to know that I (at least) am reading them.
As far as Frank goes, I love the fact that he is the most selfish, loathesome, horrid characters ever and at the same time so completely likeable. Everything he does is so bad, but I am still rooting for him.
posted by Literaryhero at 3:25 AM on January 29, 2015 [1 favorite]
As far as Frank goes, I love the fact that he is the most selfish, loathesome, horrid characters ever and at the same time so completely likeable. Everything he does is so bad, but I am still rooting for him.
posted by Literaryhero at 3:25 AM on January 29, 2015 [1 favorite]
Im not regularly commenting in these threads because I binge-watched through all the episodes in like a week so they all get mixed together. But I want to say that I really appreciate these write-ups and want you to know that I (at least) am reading them.
Thanks, I really appreciate that — for a while there I wasn't sure if anyone was still reading these.
I was pretty shocked that the show would have one of the two main characters do something as unfathomably evil as preventing his supposed fiancé from getting an urgently needed heart transplant, just so he can get some money, before assisting her suicide by having sex with her. (The most undignified Death With Dignity ever?) I mean, we knew from the first episode that he's a terrible person. But this episode lets us know he's a ... horrible person.
posted by John Cohen at 10:50 AM on January 31, 2015
Thanks, I really appreciate that — for a while there I wasn't sure if anyone was still reading these.
I was pretty shocked that the show would have one of the two main characters do something as unfathomably evil as preventing his supposed fiancé from getting an urgently needed heart transplant, just so he can get some money, before assisting her suicide by having sex with her. (The most undignified Death With Dignity ever?) I mean, we knew from the first episode that he's a terrible person. But this episode lets us know he's a ... horrible person.
posted by John Cohen at 10:50 AM on January 31, 2015
Another thing about the Dottie story: we're introduced to the character by hearing Frank and others at the bar laughing at her for being "Butterface" — a cruel, behind-her-back taunt which symbolically separates her head from the rest of her body.
Later, we see Frank gawking at her naked body through a peephole. Up to that point, the audience might feel they're seeing things through Frank's eyes.
But then we see Frank separating Dottie from the heart she needs to live. We finally see Frank ecstatically having sex with her as if he were untroubled by his knowledge that he's killing her. By this point, anyone in the audience who laughed along with Frank and the others at the bar at "Butterface" might look back and question whether they were laughing at something subtly evil — the separation of Dottie's face from her body, preceding the separation of her body from what could have been her heart.
posted by John Cohen at 8:20 PM on February 1, 2015 [1 favorite]
Later, we see Frank gawking at her naked body through a peephole. Up to that point, the audience might feel they're seeing things through Frank's eyes.
But then we see Frank separating Dottie from the heart she needs to live. We finally see Frank ecstatically having sex with her as if he were untroubled by his knowledge that he's killing her. By this point, anyone in the audience who laughed along with Frank and the others at the bar at "Butterface" might look back and question whether they were laughing at something subtly evil — the separation of Dottie's face from her body, preceding the separation of her body from what could have been her heart.
posted by John Cohen at 8:20 PM on February 1, 2015 [1 favorite]
Frank’s plan to marry Dottie so he can inherit her pension doesn’t make sense to me: isn’t Frank still legally married to Monica?
posted by John Cohen at 11:07 PM on February 2, 2015
posted by John Cohen at 11:07 PM on February 2, 2015
@John. In the episode, Fiona confronts Frank with the fact that he's already married. I assume the city would never have let him have that pension, but he's just so expansive with his misdeeds. Not calculating. I think that's why we can stick with it. He's a clown. A bad clown, but at least he's a clown.
Speaking of clowns... still waiting to see if anyone gets a clue about Eddie. I note that Jodie asked Frank for Karen's hand in marriage. Eddie is so annihilated.
posted by Alizaria at 4:13 PM on February 11, 2015
Speaking of clowns... still waiting to see if anyone gets a clue about Eddie. I note that Jodie asked Frank for Karen's hand in marriage. Eddie is so annihilated.
posted by Alizaria at 4:13 PM on February 11, 2015
In the episode, Fiona confronts Frank with the fact that he's already married.
Yeah, and he says something like "technicalities," but that doesn't really explain it!
posted by John Cohen at 4:19 PM on February 11, 2015
Yeah, and he says something like "technicalities," but that doesn't really explain it!
posted by John Cohen at 4:19 PM on February 11, 2015
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It's interesting to hear other peoples' takes on Dottie's death. The AV Club reviewer thought that as long as we saw the aftermath of Frank's horrible behavior, making him into a murderer wasn't a step too far, but some commenters have said that Frank directly causing her to lose her chance at a heart transplant was the last straw for them.
posted by twoporedomain at 8:50 AM on January 28, 2015 [1 favorite]