By NICOLE QUINONES
Viewers either love him or hate him, but they have to admit, Shameless wouldn’t be the same without him. Frank Gallagher is the deadbeat dad of all the Gallagher children on SHOWTIME’s award winning series Shameless. He’s an alcoholic who spends most of his time at the bar. He doesn’t take care of his children, but he just keeps making them. William H. Macy portrays the role perfectly, in all his messed up glory. I promise you while watching one episode your mind will change every five seconds, whether you pity him and want to hug him or want him to leave the screen. There’s no inbetween.
To say that Frank has a complicated relationship with his children in an understatement. Fiona, Lip and Ian cannot stand him, but Debbie, Carl and Liam always give him the benefit of the doubt. He has moments when his heart shows, like when Carl was about to get arrested he took the fall for him and when Monica died at the end of Season 7 we saw him break down. But he also has awful moments, like when he stole the kids hard earned money to pay for alcohol and when we saw him lose his mind and push Debbie at the end of Season 7. Despite all of the bad, the younger children see hope in their father.
Frank is actually a lot smarter than he leads people to believe. He had so much potential as a kid, he often compares himself to his son Lip, who got perfect scores on his SATs and attended the University of Chicago. This is all shown through long rants that are iconic in the show and get him out of trouble, he also is a genius in the world that he lives in. He found a way to totally manipulate the government into getting more money (two words: Aunt Ginger). Not to mention his relationship with Sheila, it takes a true genius manipulator to figure out how to seduce a woman who is afraid to go outside, into making him food and living in her home.
I can’t even say “you gotta love him” because one literally cannot decide if they love him or not. He may be one of the most controversial characters on television at the moment. Tune in for Season 8, November 5th on SHOWTIME to see what kind of trouble Frank Gallagher gets into this season, on Shameless.