Forum Post: Shameless (US) Season 2 Episode 1 | Watch Shameless (US) Season 2 Episode 1 Online - Summertime

Meet the fabulously dysfunctional Gallagher family. Dad's a drunk, Mom split long ago, eldest daughter Fiona tries to hold the family together. Eldest son Philip (Lip) trades his physics tutoring skills for sexual favors from neighborhood girls. Middle son Ian is gay. Youngest daughter Debbie is stealing money from her UNICEF collection. Ten-year-old Carl is a budding sociopath and an arsonist, and toddler Liam is - well, he might actually be black, but nobody has a clue how.

Click Here To: Watch Shameless (US) Season 2 Episode 1 Online Free - http://tvnation.info/shameless-season-2-episode-1-summertime/

Click Here To: Watch Shameless (US) Season 2 Episode 1 Online Free - http://tvnation.info/shameless-season-2-episode-1-summertime/

I don't know if you can call 2011 the year the BBC invaded American television, but it comes darn close. The first of the shows to premiere in the new year will be Showtime's version of the British award winning Shameless. Shameless follow Frank Gallagher, played by William H. Macy, and his not quite normal family. For instance the youngest of the Gallagher clan is quite obviously not Frank's yet that isn't even the family's biggest concern. Nor would it be the fact that in order to make ends meet and keep the electricity from being turned off all the kids chip in including the youngest daughter who takes up a collection that is supposed to be turned into Unicef. Yeah those are problems alright, but like I said they aren't the Gallagher's biggest problem. Their biggest problem would be Frank and his inability to stay sober long enough to pay more than his bar tab at the neighborhood pub.

With that being said the first 21 minutes of Shameless doesn't detour much from the British version and that's OK. Instead of feeling as though I had seen it before (which I had) I just felt as though I was being introduced to a new slightly (overly) dysfunctional family. This was mostly in part to the cast who not only owned their roles they owned whatever scenes they were in and I don't say this lightly. Not once during the preview did I feel as though this was a family I was supposed to pity and feel bad for. This was a family I wanted to know and to hang out with. Luckily for me starting Sunday January 9, 2011 I get to hang out with the Gallagher family.

It's a fast paced Comedy-Drama like no other, in that it lends itself perfectly to both without apology or hesitation.

Whereas the British original finds it's characters living, fornicating, screaming and jumping in the revelry of zero-expectation in a rigid class system, the American remake masterfully equivocates the triumphs and the tribulations of a lower class family existing on the edge of acceptability at the heart of society in a flawless, delicate and shameless manner.

The pilot introduces the characters, much like their British counterparts, not in an effort to garner their sympathy but simply as a statement of fact. The aspiring teen marine struggling to hide his homosexuality only fears losing the love of his brother, the absent drunk dad who loves his children but through the haze becomes a heckling prophet - a Shakespearean fool who sees through the thin veil of sanity and order, a young woman struggling to keep the family together seeing a way out through a handsome highwayman. These people are not bad even if they do bad things. Society has forgot about them and for that they couldn't care less for it.

The whole cast is tremendous but William H. Macy rises to the occasion with the father, a Frank Gallagher straight out of a bar in Memphis at 3 a.m. on a Wednesday, last orders, don't interrupt him because he hasn't finished yet, he's got to tell you what's wrong with the world before he wakes up and it all ends. You would believe this guy was a war vet or something with the confidence and delirium at which he pontificates.

No matter what your race or background you can take something away from Shameless. Most television that likes to call itself Comedy, Drama, or both, tends towards a particular demographic, offering an escape fantasy for, say, the 'off-beat' teens in Glee or the sexually deviant young adults in True Blood or the repressed housewives in that show about the repressed housewives.

As the designated guardian's new boyfriend takes a seat at the head of the table, he pushes Frank's legs aside as he crashes drunk on the floor. Shameless doesn't escape anything, it lives in the world it is given and every so often reminds you, during those joyously chaotic scenes, that the sweetest lemonade is almost bitter, so it's just as well every episode is only an hour for you to laugh, cry and enjoy.

Moments of anarchic jubilation inter lap, run over and sometimes juxtapose flourishes of near-the-bone reality, served eloquently on a fresh platter to which America needs to to have the stomach for.