So much for not getting hooked on any new T.V. shows.
I stumbled across "Shameless" on Showtime one night when I was too tired to read but not ready to go to bed. I'd read an Associated Press article about the series, and it didn't appeal to me. A dark comedy about a chronic alcoholic trying to raise five children after his wife runs off? No, thanks.
But I gave it five minutes, then ten, trying to sort out who was who in the chaotic, cluttered, somewhat grimy lives of the Gallagher family, headed by Frank Gallagher, played flawlessly by William H. Macy.
Frank Gallagher is an unrepentant addict, a scam artist, a man intelligent enough to be a captain of industry but flummoxed by an ego that insists the world owes him a living and an insatiable appetite for mind-altering chemicals of all kinds.
Older daughter Fiona is a typical oldest child, and a typical adult child of an alcoholic. At 21 she is preternaturally maternal, and ferociously protective of her five younger siblings. Her enormous, dark eyes burn with determination, but also reflect the soul of a girl worn out from bearing grown-up burdens. She's outspoken, street smart, and desperately in need of someone to lean on. But of course, when she does find that someone, a kindhearted car thief named Steve, she can't let herself enjoy it too much; she knows that good times are temporary, and the people you love will eventually drop you on your head.
The younger Gallaghers are intelligent, smart-ass, make-do kids. They stick up for one another and they stick together. And although they treat their father with cynical disregard (in one episode they all raised their hands immediately when Frank asked, "All right, how many of you have, at least once, wished you could see me dead?") they go to extraordinary lengths to protect him when he gets himself in too deep. This is partly because they need Frank around to serve as the ranking adult at parent-teacher conferences and when Social Services comes nosing around, but also because he's their dad. If you find that hard to understand, you must not know any families with active alcoholic in them.
One episode captured the pain of living with an alcoholic so accurately I thought I might have to quit watching the show altogether.
Frank comes to after nearly dying of alcohol poisoning and finds himself in the hospital, surrounded by doctors who are fascinated by his resilience. One of them offers Frank $3,000 if he'll participate in an experiment. The catch is, he has to refrain from drinking for three weeks - and wear an alcohol detection bracelet.
Being the kind of man who would eat glass for far less money than that, Frank agrees. He returns to his family a sober man. He cooks breakfast for everyone, he goes bowling with them, he listens when they talk. He's warm, he's attentive, he's involved. He's a dad.
The older kids watch all this with a jaundiced eye. They have scar tissue where their hearts used to be, courtesy of Frank's previous bouts of sobriety.
One of the older brothers gently warns his younger siblings of how this all will end. "It won't last, you know. Don't get used to it."
In an instant I was 15 years in the past, overhearing my daughter Jess telling her younger brother and sister not to get too excited about the trip their dad had promised to take them on next summer.
"He says stuff like that, but it never happens," she explained.
My husband wanted to be the good dad, the loving husband, the family man who worked 40 hours a week and took his family on fun summer vacations. But, like Frank Gallagher, his addictions drowned his best qualities and turned him into someone we wanted to love but had to back away from.
There's no despair quite like watching someone you love destroy themselves from the inside out. There isn't enough love in the world to change an alcoholic who doesn't want to be sober.
In the Gallagher household, sobriety soon changed Frank into a man with grandiose plans and more energy than common sense. When he launches a remodeling project, taking a sledgehammer to the kitchen wall, the kids know that it's time for sober Frank to go. They immobilize him and pour vodka down his throat.
In the final scene the family is watching T.V. together. Frank slumps in a chair, glowering, bottle in one hand, cigarette in the other. Fiona's boyfriend enters and says a cheery, "Hi, Frank!"
"Fuck off!" Frank growls. The kids grin. Life is back to normal for the Gallaghers. And that's a normal a lot more people than you'd expect are comfortable with.
