Shameless: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		3.0
Overall		4.0

Shameless: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Movie Review

Shameless or shameful? Word to the wise: don't pass judgment on the Gallaghers too soon...

Reviewed by Kenneth Brown January 25, 2012

I'll just say it: I was convinced I'd hate Shameless. Despise William H. Macy's bumbling drunk. Loathe the Gallagher family. Have to grit my teeth through what I thought would be an overly gratuitous shameless-for-shameless'-sake Showtime series. But something funny happened to me on the way to "Father Frank, Full of Grace," the last of the show's twelve first-season episodes. I grew fond of the Gallaghers. Felt something you might call empathy for showrunner John Wells' down-on-their-luck Chicago family. Laughed, laughed some more, and even shed a man tear or two. Amidst all its parental neglect, vile behavior and outlandish subplots, I began to enjoy Shameless for what it is: a timely dysfunctional-family dramedy disguised as a maddeningly cynical, desperately reprehensible comedy. I'm late to the party, I know -- again, I thought I'd detest every minute, a la HBO's Hung -- but now that I'm here, I don't really want to leave.

Who better to introduce the Gallaghers and their South Side Chicago stomping grounds than Gallagher patriarch Frank (William H. Macy)? "Nobody's saying our neighborhood's the Garden of Eden. Hell," he muses, "some people say God avoids this place altogether. But it's been a good home to us, to me and my kids, who I'm proud of... because every single one of them reminds me a little bit of me. Fiona (Emmy Rossum), my rock, huuuge help, has all the best qualities of her mother, except she's not a raging psycho bitch. Lip (Jeremy Allen White), smart as a whip. Straight A's and the honor roll. Boy's definitely going somewhere." To jail maybe. "Ian (Cameron Monaghan), industrious, conscientious, ambitious, incredible work ethic. Don't have a clue where he got that from. Wants to be a paratrooper. Knows how to disembowel an enemy with a roll of dimes and an old gym sock. Carl (Ethan Cutkosky)... um, I don't really know that much about Carl. Oh! Loves animals. Always dragging home some poor stray he found, taking them up to his room." Where he dons a welder's mask and does God knows what with the poor little creatures. But back to Frank: "Ah, Debbie (Emma Kenney). Sent by God, total angel. Raises money for UNICEF year-round, some of which she actually turns in. Liam (Brennan Kane Johnson & Blake Alexander Johnson), gonna be a star. I'm no biologist, but he looks a little bit like my first sponsor. He and the ex-wife were close. And me! Frank Gallagher. Father, teacher, mentor. Captain of our little ship. We may not have much, but all of us, to a man, knows the most important thing in this life. We know how to f#$&ing party. Wah-ha!" Cue police sirens and the end of Frank's stab at pomp and circumstance.

Well-to-do hopeless romantic Steve (Justin Chatwin), sexually adventurous neighbors Kevin and Veronica (Steve Howey and Shanola Hampton), and the straight-laced, drama-prone Jackson family (Joan Cusack, Joel Murray and Laura Slade Wiggins) round out the motley Shameless crew, each with their own crop of issues and hangups. And while that might make the series sound like a breeding ground for gimmick-driven shock-n-sexual-awe -- which, admittedly, it sometimes is -- there's a real sense of heart amongst the drunks, eccentrics, rough-and-tumbly kids and otherwise good-natured deviants. It involves the briefest of beats too; a sweet smile here, a shared laugh there, a gesture of genuine affection, a touch of tough love, a display of brotherly concern, the tenderness of a little girl tying her father's shoe or a big sister offering an available shoulder. It's strange, the contrast. Other premium cable shows wear their R-rated content like a badge of bad-boy cool. Shameless, though, is more, well, shameless than most other HBO and Showtime series, and yet through all the sex, drugs and absentee parenting, its characters are somehow more human. Somehow more worthy of investment. Frank is constantly tossing his kids to the wolves, and there's little doubt that the maladjusted Gallagher tots and teens will grow up to be equally maladjusted adults (if they manage to see adulthood from anywhere but the inside of a jail cell). But Fiona and her siblings have an innate where there's a willfulness there's a way spirit that even a not-so-lovable loser like Frank is incapable of stamping out. It makes Shameless and its troublemakers more bearable than Californication and its narcissists, more likable than the Nurse Jackie misanthropes, more winsome than the United States of Tara denizens. The Gallaghers actually long for each other's company and compassion. It doesn't make any sense... and yet, it makes perfect sense. Dysfunctional families do it every day.

The real draw of the series is Chatwin's Steve and Rossum's Fiona, who fall for each other early but whose relationship is nothing less than a minefield. She doesn't take kindly to his means or methods, or even his kindnesses, nor does she appreciate his handouts. But Fiona isn't the insurmountable obstacle she fights to be. Between caring for her brothers and sisters -- which amounts to a 24-hour a day job since Frank is either passed out on the floor, wasting away in a local bar, or taking up residence at the Jacksons' house -- handling parent-teacher conferences, keeping electricity flowing, putting food on the table and, oh yeah, trying to live the life of a young woman who shouldn't be facing so many odds, Fiona is a miracle, flaws and all. And it's that modicum of benevolence, however muted by circumstance, that keeps her from becoming an unrecoverable alcoholic like her father and Shameless from becoming an unredeemable parody of itself. It extends to Lip, Ian and Debbie as well, passed down through the genes maybe, and only leaves Carl and Liam out in the cold. (Carl's little more than a comically destructive serial-killer-in-the-making and Liam is only deployed for Frank's wife slept around and now he has a black kid! sight gags before being tucked back into bed.) Frank has an arc as well, and not just into the bottom of a bottle. He's perpetually playing catch up with Fiona, but just when you count him out (taking the Jackson's daughter to a meet-the-teacher night and leaving Fiona and Lip to deal with Carl's principal), he sobers up and takes a shot at being a man. His typically pitiful attempts don't amount to much, granted, but he tries and, at least for the moment, that's something.

Shameless trips over its own feet, though, when it gives the masses what they presumably want: horrible people being horrible. We get it. Kevin and Veronica don't really care if one of the Gallagher kids walk in while they're going at each other. Frank abandons his kids again and again, to the point of endangering their lives and inadvertently placing them in the path of some very nasty (and bizarre) low lifes. Sheila is an agoraphobe and a closet dominatrix. Karen has a whore streak. Eddie is a neutered sadsack. On and on and on. The left-hook being that most of the Gallaghers and their friends and neighbors aren't horrible people at all. Wells knows it, the actors convey it, the writers highlight it, and Shameless celebrates it. Kevin and Veronica are decent people with familiar problems. Frank has a lot of deep-seated wounds and issues he drowns in alcohol. Sheila is trying to overcome a debilitating condition. Karen is flailing and learning life's hardest lessons. Eddie is a man at the end of his rope. So why are there so many over-the-top, flaunt-the-extremes subplots? Kevin and Veronica fight and... ahem, alliterative followup... and concoct a wedding for cash. Frank fakes his own death, takes whatever Sheila gives (wherever she wants to give it), wakes up in Canada (before illegally reentering the States), and has to resist young Karen's advances. Debbie kidnaps a toddler. A foster child is taken from a polygamous cult. And Steve can't possibly be a good guy and nothing more. Can he? It makes for sharp comedy, but it sometimes undermines the Gallaghers and their family drama rather than underscoring it. It gets much better as Wells finds the series' rythym as Season One plows ahead -- early episodes suffer from transparent please keep watching our show! titillation -- but some viewers will abandon Shameless before realizing there are deep caverns and compelling character-scapes to explore. So give it a chance. Then give it another chance. Then another chance after that. If the Gallaghers haven't grown on you by mid-season, if the series hasn't roped you in, by all means walk away. Just don't be surprised if you want to stick around for a while longer.

Shameless: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Complete First Season's 1080p/AVC-encoded video presentation impresses. Colors are saturated as intended, saturation is dead on, and black levels are deep and dark. Detail is excellent too, with crisp edge definition, refined fine textures, and revealing delineation. There also isn't any artifacting, banding, aliasing or unsightly nonsense to be found aside from the sort of low-light noise and filmic softness inherent to a production of the series' nature. The Blu-ray presentation of Shameless' first season is as striking as it is proficient, and fans of the show will be more than pleased with the results.

Shameless: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Shameless sounds just as good thanks to an ironically poised and proficient DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track. Dialogue is clean, intelligible and perfectly prioritized. Rear speaker activity is assertive but never too aggressive, boasting subtle ambience, slick directional effects and an unexpectedly immersive Canaryville soundfield. LFE output follows suit, leaping into whatever mess or fray the Gallagher family finds itself in. And the show's music pours over the soundstage, confident in all its raging rock-anthem angst. The Complete First Season sounds great.

Shameless: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentaries: Two civil but entertaining commentaries are available: "Pilot," which features a broad overview of the series courtesy of writer/director John Wells, executive producer Andrew Stern and actress Emmy Rossum, and "Frank Gallagher: Loving Husband, Devoted Father," a more episode-centric track with writer Etan Frankel, director David Nutter, and actors Cameron Monaghan and Jeremy Allen White. Both are worth a listen, although I preferred Wells and Rossum's track.
• Bringing Shameless to America (HD, 14 minutes): A look at the process of reworking and repurposing a successful UK television series for an American premium cable audience.
• Bringing the Fun to Dysfunctional (HD, 11 minutes): Go behind-the-scenes of the show with key members of the cast and crew in this much-too-brief making-the-series featurette.
• A Shameless Discussion About Sex (HD, 13 minutes): Rossum and co-stars Steve Howey, Justin Chatwin and Shanola Hampton have a candid chat about the sex in Shameless and, you guessed it, shameless sex.
• Deleted Scenes (HD, 12 minutes): A small but effective selection of deleted scenes await fans of the series.
• Season 2 Sneak Peek (HD, 4 minutes): Could it get even better?

Shameless: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Sorry to repeat myself, but I thought I'd hate Shameless. Reject William H. Macy's advances, Emmy Rossum as a lead, and her young co-stars' supporting performances. I was convinced I'd loathe the Gallaghers. But something funny happened to me on the way to "Father Frank, Full of Grace." I sort of became attached to the Gallaghers, felt something for the down-on-their-luck Chicago family, and actually came to enjoy Shameless. If Season Two continues its upwards trend, this might just become one of my must-see Showtime series. Warner's Blu-ray release sobers up with ease too. It's a bit light on extras, but between the 2-disc set's top-notch video presentation and immersive DTS-HD Master Audio track, the disappointment barely registers. Shameless doesn't quite strike the balance it's aiming for, but I think it might be well on its way. As I said before, give the series a chance. Then give it another chance. Then another chance after that. If you're anything like me, it'll grow on you and leave you curious as to where Wells will take the series and the Gallaghers in Season Two.