Warning: The following contains spoilers for Sunday Shameless. Proceed at your own risk!
The message of Shamelessseries finale: life goes on– well, unless you’re Frank.
After waking up from his overdose, the Gallagher patriarch eventually ends up in the hospital, where he died of COVID. Frank’s spirit visits the Alibi when the family (plus Kev and V) celebrate Ian and Mickey’s wedding anniversary. The party moved outside while the gang sang ‘The Way We Get By’ by Spoon as an expensive car went up in flames. Frank then began to float on his bar stool with his beer in hand above the city, while a voice call revealed the contents of his o-so-Frank letter.
While Frank’s story was coming to an end, the rest of the future of the characters was in the air at the end of the finale: Lip considered a (much lower) offer over the house; Tami was possibly pregnant; Ian reassured Mickey that he would be a good father, so that children might soon be in the cards for them; Carl was interested in buying Kev and V’s bar; and Debbie’s new inmate invited Debs to come with her to Texas.
Below, executive producer John Wells talks about Frank’s death, the finale of the show, Fiona’s absence and potential spin-offs.
TVLINE | When did you know how the series would end?
Honestly, probably not too long ago, maybe after Christmas. We were constantly watching what was going on with the virus and how it would affect the show. We are writing about a community that will be affected economically and health-wise by the pandemic. We therefore monitored it because we wanted to make sure that we would not do anything that by the time it would be anticlimactic and a kind of post- [the pandemic]… We really hoped that the pandemic would end and then we would rewrite everything at the end so that it’s not all about this. But alas, that’s not what happened, so we thought we should deal with it in the world of Shameless and has an end that reflects what’s going on in the world for people living on the poverty line, and also still funny and Shameless in the midst of this tragedy we are all experiencing.
TVLINE | Most of the characters’ storylines are pretty open, except for Frank. How did you come to the conclusion that he should die in the series finals?
Bill Macy and I talked about it over the years, and we both felt strongly that even though we had a lot of fun with Frank, it would give the impression that there were no consequences for years of damage to his body between drugs and alcohol. be fair. So we always talked about doing some kind of alcoholic dementia story. We actually wrote it, or most of it, when we stopped in March. We were only a few days away from starting to shoot. As COVID got worse and worse in late spring and summer, we realized we needed to be rewritten because we had to deal with COVID in this community because it hit low-income and underprivileged communities very hard. So it became a natural conversation that Frank might die of COVID – though I have to say, there are so many comorbidities, about anything that could overwhelm him. He’s like a big Jenga tower, if you just touch [and] took out one more thing, [he’s] is going to fall apart.
TVLINE | Frank had previously had close brushes with death due to his various health problems. If you let him die of COVID instead of drugs or alcohol abuse, how does that change the trajectory of the character?
We tried to get them to talk about all his other problems as well. So they bring out all his medical records, they talk about how terrible his health is, and then he has so much alcohol in his body that he inflates the crematorium. We thought we were doing a little bit of all of the above.
TVLINE | The other Gallaghers’ future is hinted at, but it remains open. Was the idea to leave the door open for a spin or a revival?
No not really. The idea was to make it look like life, where you really do not know what’s going to happen next, and to let the audience members who have close relationships with many of the characters fill the void you want to fill. can not be wrong about what you think happens next. You’re gonna argue or think about it, but it is for you to fill in the rest of the story for the Gallaghers, with the exception of Frank. I have been involved in a number of lengthy shows already. I just think it’s lifelike, and just as a viewer I always feel like I like that feeling. Just walk away from the ER [on ER], or start a new government in Washington when Bartlet flies and Santos becomes president [on The West Wing]. This is what I keep in a story, so I did it. I can decide. [Laughs]
TVLINE | If you could imagine a spin-off for one of the characters, which one would it be?
Oh, that would be a bunch of them. We originally planned to get a little further into the story and buy Carl the bar at Kev and V and turn it into a cop and let Debbie work behind the counter. I would love to see what happens to Mickey and Ian in their married life and have children. I would love to see Lip take over a motorcycle shop and really get himself on the ground and become more and more the patriarch for the rest of the family. There were many stories we could keep telling. Showtime was ready to be finished, and they could not have been more beautiful to us during those 11 years. So I have nothing but appreciation for all the things they have done for us, but I could keep doing it.
TVLINE | Is there with your partners at Showtime or Warner Bros. talked about revisiting these characters?
No, and I’ve seen them dump the sets in a trash can, so I do not think anyone expects that. We’ll have to see. I did not really think about it.
TVLINE | There was one notable absence in the episode, though we did see her in flashbacks. Did you try to get Emmy Rossum back for the finals?
Yes, and she really wanted to [come back], and we worked on it and worked on it. She lives in New York with her husband, and we unfortunately managed to determine it just at the wrong time. The second or third time we closed everything with quarantines of two weeks. So the timing did not work out. It was disappointing for all of us, and especially for Emmy, but with her other commitments, she could not go back to New York for two weeks and sit in quarantine after being in Los Angeles. It’s sad. A slight discomfort in the face of the great tragedy of the pandemic, yet sad for all of us.
TVLINE | What would you have done if you could have had Fiona in the final? What was your original vision for her?
I honestly never really got that far. But what we were talking about was that she, with the information the family had about Frank’s dementia, would come back and deal with Liam’s guardianship and decide where Liam was going to be while selling the house and being part of all those decisions. , [and we’d] have a few more moments with Fiona and the rest of the family. Because it was so hard to work out, we never got to the point [of] it actually writes and then has to ditch, but that was the intention. Emmy is one of my favorite people, so I wish I could have just seen her as a friend.
TVLINE | The final image of a show is so important, and you get a few different ones because you have the montage with the family singing, making Frank sway, and his letter being read aloud. Talk to me about what you wanted to convey at that last minute.
We wanted it to be shameless. Bill and I talked a lot about if [Frank] wrote a suicide note, it would be full of grievances, because it’s Frank. And then to oppose that the family actually survived and were adults and had fun and were themselves while talking about himself in a narcissistic way was the right way to go. So we tried to balance humor with character work and heartwarming [scenes]to see the whole family together again, just like in the pilot episode we shot 11 years ago. We tried to balance it all out. I think we pulled it off. You never know when you want to shoot things like let the main character die and soar in the air or it will work, but that’s all. Shameless. One of the wonderful things about Shameless is that it’s so shameless that you can do things you would never do in another show. [Laughs]
TVLINE | The content of Frank’s letter is not, I would say, hot and vague, and his children never really have a moment of closure with him. Was it important to you that the final relationship would not betray their problems and that it would remain faithful to who Frank really was?
Yes. We tried to think about it, and I tried to write a few different times at the scene where they figure it out, and I just thought it’s the wrong note to end up with. Shameless. ShamelessEven though we were crazy and outrageous, it’s about joy and about family and people looking out for each other. The idea that they are all going to be tearful trying to figure out what to do with Frank’s ashes does not feel very Shameless-to me. You kind of want to go out on the tone you came up with.
TVLINE | Do you have a favorite moment from the finale, something that really stands out to you?
Yes, I had many favorite moments from the finale, but Lip and Ian chatted during the Polish one-year party, when Ian offered Lip his share of the money, and then Lip showed it off and discovered that they all thought he was’ a large part of what they went through. The reality in that family and in many families is that the older siblings are ultimately the mother and the father as the mother and father are not really capable of being adults. Fiona and Lip raised their siblings. I really enjoyed getting someone to really say that to Lip, because that’s not what he thinks of himself, of who he is.
TVLINE | One last question, because this is something that’s going to haunt me for a while: Is Debbie actually going to Texas?
[Laughs] We had a big argument about it in the room. Several people think she would never go. I actually think she’s doing it, but I think she’s coming back like six weeks later, with a brown complexion and Frannie on tow. [Laughs] One of my favorite characters, and Emma [Kenny’s] so wonderful in the part. [Debbie is] crazy, really beyond her mind. She is the person in your family who does the same that.
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