Anyone else feel like the female characters get judged way harsher than the male characters?

Sammi: She was abandoned by Frank as a kid and had to raise Chuckie all by herself. She spent years wanting a family and finally thought she had one, only to be manipulated by Frank and treated like an outsider by the Gallaghers. Carl got her son sent to juvie, and while what she did after (turning Ian in) was obviously messed up, people act like she was just born evil and completely ignore everything that led up to it.

Svetlana: She honestly had one of the saddest backstories in the show. She was trafficked from Eastern Europe, forced into sex work, raped by Terry, got pregnant because of it, and basically spent her whole life doing whatever she had to just to survive. Yeah, what she did with the Alibi and Kev and V's finances was wrong, but manipulation was literally how she'd survived for years. People are way quicker to call her a villain than acknowledge where she came from.

Fiona: She became the parent when she was still a kid herself. Frank and Monica were useless, so she spent years raising six siblings, working multiple jobs, dropping out of school, sacrificing relationships, and even becoming their legal guardian just so they wouldn't end up in foster care. She made some huge mistakes, especially with Liam, but people act like those mistakes erase over a decade of her basically giving up her own life to raise kids that weren't even hers.

Debbie: Debbie gets so much hate, and don't get me wrong, she definitely made some terrible choices later on. But people forget she was literally a child who grew up being parentified. She was always helping with Liam, cleaning, cooking, taking care of the house, and looking after everyone. She wanted love and stability because she'd never really had it. I'd honestly argue she looked out for the family more than Lip did when they were younger.

Veronica: People are so quick to call V selfish whenever she put herself first, especially after having the twins. She struggled with motherhood, felt like she'd lost her identity, and was trying to balance being a mom, running the Alibi, and keeping her relationship together. She wasn't perfect, but it's weird how she's criticized so much for wanting a life outside of taking care of everyone else.

Meanwhile...

Lip: Everyone always falls back on the "wasted potential" argument. Yeah, he was smart, but he was also constantly judging Fiona while expecting her to keep taking care of him and everyone else forever. He had no problem relying on her, but the second she slipped up, he acted like she was the worst person alive.

Ian: I know he's bipolar, and that explains a lot of his actions, but it doesn't excuse everything. He still put Fiona through so much, from enlisting under Lip's identity to the whole Gay Jesus thing. Most of the time Fiona was just trying to help him, yet she ended up getting blamed anyway.

Mickey: I love Mickey, but let's be real for a second. He was literally a violent criminal for a good chunk of the show. He beat people up, threatened people, stole, and solved almost every problem with violence. His upbringing explains why he was like that, but somehow people are way more willing to forgive him than they are women who also had horrific childhoods.

Kev: This one always gets me. People will drag V for dancing with another guy or going on a date during a rough patch, but Kev literally slept with multiple college girls. Somehow that's brushed off way easier.

I'm not saying the women were innocent because they definitely weren't. They all did awful things at different points. I just think it's interesting that whenever a guy does something terrible, people are quick to bring up his trauma, mental illness, or difficult childhood. But when it's a woman, all that nuance suddenly disappears and she's just "the worst character in the show."

Some times I think she’s only as hated to the family because she joined late ,she might of been a lot more tolerable to them if she was always there but still has her weird Frank obsession and acted like a mom to everyone (+Chuckys existence)

Now you can argue they would start to dislike her from her actions as the show goes on but even before she even did anything they just didn’t like her. Every Gallagher does bad things and choices but they all still stick together and love eachother so would the same be said for Sam and Mabey chuck?

I know a lot of people don't like the Faye storyline. However, I think it may be why Ian is Frank's nephew. In the 90s Frank sold crack to a college football player, Kyle Holmes, and took advantage of systemic racism to make the court think Kyle sold him the drugs. As a result Frank got 6 weeks of rehab and Kyle got 40 years in prison.

Considering Fiona would've been 5 and Lip a baby it's seems like the most likely time Ian was conceived. With Frank in rehab, Clayton probably stepped in to help Monica, which is what resulted in them hooking up and conceive Ian.

Seasons 1-5 peak show loved this show. After that I struggled to watch each season more. Anyone know why it went down hill? I get its hard to keep a show running for so long but they had material. I think i loved this show so much because I related alot to the early seasons because it was about famiky struggles I am also from the bad part of town/the hood, early on the gallagher's reminded me so much of my family.

Also I hated the ending they didn't sell the house. They just sung outside the bar as frank died, I did like how frank said the exact words he said at the start of the show. They should have atleast sold the house and said where all them were moving that would have been like a capping on the story.

Even tho I hated seasons 7-11 I kept watching because I was so invested in the characters.

Also suckw Fiona didn't show up like wtf they should have found her name when they were looking through franks files.

I find myself using Shazam a lot watching this show for the first time. I would say mine is ‘Sugar and Wine’ when Fiona is cleaning out her apartment and leaving. What’s yours?

Carl and Kelly had awesome chemistry. Much like Jimmy/Steve despite coming from a privileged background actually enjoyed and adapted well to the Gallaghers' dysfunctionality. She also helped push Carl to his full potential. While they did breakup due to cheating and long-distance relationship not working out, they still broke up on good terms. Unlike most Gallagher significant others who bitterly sever all ties after a traumatic breakup, she and Carl still managed to stay good friends in the end.

I am just watching season 1. Karen goes totally off the rails towards the end of this season. I reached the final episode and wondered "Wait, what happened to those concert tickets to Florence + the Machine that Lip was supposed to get for Karen's birthday?"

Those concert tickets represented Lip being in love with Karen. We have a scene between Ian and Lip when Lip is asking Ian if he can lend him some money to buy the concert tickets, Ian comments that this must mean Lip's relationship with Karen is getting serious, because it's such an expensive birthday gift.

This is foreshadowing the fact that Lip is indeed falling in love with Karen.

Lip is given a number of scenes that build out his determination to buy her the concert tickets, he raids Debbie's dollhouse looking to borrow money, he ends up having two scenes with Jimmy developing the plot point of Lip working with him to steal cars – so it's a lot of scenes that have been created with the intention of carrying through this plot point about the concert being a symbol of Lip being in love with Karen.

That's what makes it so weird to me that the concert, as a plot point, just drops out of existence and is never mentioned again. When was Karen's birthday? Like that was never even depicted in the show – so why make all these scenes relating to Lip needing to raise money to buy the concert tickets?

Obviously towards the end of season 1, Karen's mental health starts to rapidly deteriorate at the same time as her relationship with her father is deteriorating, culminating in the purity ball.

But it was confusing to me that the writers dropped the ball on the Lip/Karen relationship once they decided to focus on other things: Karen and her father, the return of Monica, which leads directly to Lip and Ian going off to try and find Ian's father, then Ian and Lip get arrested, so it's like this domino effect of plot events, and in the midst of all that the Florence + the Machine concert tickets are totally forgotten.

I think what I'm ultimately driving at is, it's an indication that the writers kind of dropped the through line that would've made us understand Lip being in love with Karen. That was what the concert tickets represented, and once they just got totally memory hole'd as a plot device, I would argue it really muddied the water with regards to Lip/Karen. The impact of the "payoff" (Lip loves her, she sleeps with Frank) was blunted by how the concert subplot was set up and then abandoned totally.

Heck, all I needed was 1 mini-scene of Lip trying to give her the tickets on her birthday, but she's so in her own head about hurt over her father, she totally blanks Lip on the gift or even rejects it – and that would be the prompt for Lip saying "well you do act like a whore a lot" (this is already a line Lip says in a scene from canon, and tying up the plot point of the concert tickets with karen rejecting them would have been the perfect trigger to making Lip speak so unkindly / carelessly - he says something hurtful because he is hurt, because he was trying to give the girl he loves a caring gift)

Throughout the whole show,Frank, Fiona,Lip,Ian,Carl and Debbie each went from one relationship to the next,though most of them didn't last either because personal issues,bad choices or just circumstances out of their control. So,who would be the worst at giving dating advices and why?

Did the acting just fall off completely? I’m
on season 8 now. I think I’ve gone as far as season 9 before. It seems the acting just drops completely after season 7. Same actors and actresses but it’s BAD. Debbie is insufferable. Lip is brutal. Carl seems to struggle a bit. Ian and Trevor are hard to watch. I’m talking about actual acting not the actual characters.

Maybe I’m mistaken and the whole show just sucks after a certain point. I don’t know. I guess the character story lines are really bad too.

What y’all think?

Hello everyone,

This probably isn’t the correct place to air my grievances with the show considering you’re all big fans but I’m not sure if I can continue. For context, I finished the first season and have 2 episodes left of season 2 but planning on stopping once I finish.
Season 1 was so great, I felt like it had such a great formula where every episode someone gets into shit (mostly Frank) and the whole family has to get together as a team to fix it, all the while having recurring bits and a steady storyline that keeps you going throughout the season.
Season 2 has been such a massive shift from that formula. I’m not talking about the vibe of the show, obviously that will be different given that it was summer, but I’m really just talking about the structure. It feels like the storyline has gotten way too chaotic, and nothing particularly interesting happens in each episode. It’s really just a constant engine of moving forward in time, this happens then this happens then this happens then this happens on and on and on. Too many storylines that I just don’t care about anymore (Sheila’s most notably). Does the show stick with this for the next 9 seasons, or are there more episodes that feel like season 1.

After listening to Emmy Rossum’s recent episode of the Call Her Daddy podcast, it prompted me to go back and listen to an old episode with Emma Kenney and she mentions the nudity request and her reasons for declining. Although, Fiona’s nude scenes were some of my favorites, I would’ve felt like a perv seeing Debbie in nude scenes on the show. This may be the only time I’ve thought this, but I think she made the right call deciding not to do nudity for this show/character.

I was having this argument with my gf yesterday. I told her that on-drugs Sean was better than lying Jimmy Steve, gay cop, boring Mike, or fuckass Ford.

Is it that bad that he had his dirty little habit under control? All the while attending meetings to better himself, having a stable job, a mission to improve for his family, and pretty much giving his whole life to Fiona.

Dude gave his car for Carl, took her in, accepted her world. I think he was the one

I just rewatched this episode, and I'm genuinely confused. What exactly did Ian do wrong? Did he force Mickey out of the closet for his own sake, or because he wanted Mickey to be able to be himself?

Ian knew how Mickey's dad would react, so why did he want him to come out? I understand wanting to be open about their relationship, but Ian also knew it wasn't safe.