#and then in shameless he’s married to sheila who’s joan cusack

[m4ndysk4nkovich]

EDDIE JACKSON WAS PLAYED BY BILL MURRAYS BROTHER???!! WHAT???

[mandy4ever69420]

opinion on sheila?

i don't care for her. as a person. i've found her miscellaneous shenanigans a lot more enjoyable upon rewatch, though, since i'm no longer trying to find a way to still like her as a person. it's very sad for me to not like her because she is played by JOAN CUSACK whom i adore + naturally she fucking kills it in her performance. alas she is not dom top rosalie mullins from school of rock 😔

i contemplated leaving my response at that but i DO in fact think she's really interesting! i thought, you know, some other people have made Some posts about how she fucks up but tbh, come to think of it, usually they only go so far as to say "she did bad thing, therefore bad" and dont go past that! which is tragic. SO i'm going to. i hope.

please keep in mind as you read this that my biggest problem with sheila is her attempt to, as a white christian woman, adopt and raise a handful of native american children, which is a facet of cultural genocide (article II, item e) that the ICWA was literally created to prevent. i also dislike her for other reasons, but this is the biggest

sheila is probably the strongest example within shameless of a character being cute, charismatic, or "nice" on the surface, in a way that really powerfully distracts from the type of harm they're capable of.

particularly, in addition to being "nice" and carrying joan cusack's INCREDIBLE charisma, sheila is also disabled! she's terrified of a lot of things, and mocked by her husband for it. she absolutely deserves sympathy for her struggles with agoraphobia and a LOT of people conflate sympathizing with someone with having to accept their behavior. this is the flip-side of people not understanding that someone who has done something scary or messed up still has a sympathetic internal experience.

season one has sheila most of the time unable to enact harm because of her limiting circumstances. although she repeatedly ignores frank's sexual boundaries, he's also definitely taking advantage of her hospitality the entire time. frank often will lose sympathy points by acting horrifically in other ways, sheila's behavior will be ignored for how sympathetic she is. in season one, sheila also APPEARS to be a great and supportive mother to karen, specifically because of the contrast in how overtly judgemental and controlling eddie is. while watching this show with a friend of mine, she made the great observation that when sheila comes out of her shell a bit, you can really see how she wound up married to such a stuck up conservative asshole.

even so, sheila's inability to support her daughter hurts her. that's not to say she's at fault for the way her agoraphobia leaves karen feeling adrift, just that it happened. i really like season 1 sheila. karen also spends a lot of time feeling that it's her responsibility to take care of sheila, and while it's extremely nice of her to do, the fact is that sheila needed an adult's support, not her teenage daughter's. when karen spends so much time acting protective towards sheila, which sheila was undoubtedly both touched and embarrassed by, i think this also pushes forward into both of their minds the way that sheila views karen in some ways as more of a bestie/equal than a child under her care.

note also here - sheila seems to have no grown up friends! there are a couple times when she tries to branch out (christianmingle, selling sex toys) but they don't seem to work out. she even sort of alludes to knowing people at her old job at a hair salon, but she seems to never have actually be close to them, just sort of friendly. she is extremely lonely, probably since even before she developed agoraphobia.

sheila is loud and brash and strange, which masks in ways that she may also be very very insecure. it makes sense if she only bonds with little kids if she's terrified of the judgement of an adult. (this is also a problem with kash - though obviously, kash takes this in a worse direction by pursuing ian romantically). she's also GOOD with little kids. she absolutely is not good with teenagers. i would absolutely trust her to watch a toddler, i don't think there's any real problem with that.

however, please see: sheila playing with liam, she asks him "which do you prefer, the baby, or the whore?" this line is hilarious. it also points to her having more or less the same conservative view of sexuality that results in karen's DaddyzGirl plotline. it feels relevant she uses a blonde barbie to represent the "whore".

sheila also seems more involved in catholicism than the gallagher family. to be sure, the gallaghers are catholic, but i didn't get the impression that it was as much of a religious identity to them as something they just inherited and went with.

by the time jody shows up in karen's plotline, sheila is established so aggressively as being kooky and unable to handle a lot of the "real world", that when i recall thinking, oh, well, she shouldn't be letting this guy around her daughter, but i'm not sure she understands whats happening. and it's true she probably didn't. part and parcel to her viewing karen as more of a best friend than a child in here care, and her inability to understand teenagers the way she does littler kids - she just defaults to trying to interact with karen as another adult.

sheila being more catholic also adds an interesting layer to how much she wants karen to go out with jody, given that karen is a bisexual girl, even if sheila might not be aware of that.

i assume we're already in agreement that she shouldn't have allowed karen to marry a 37 year old - which she definitely had to consent to. in an interesting parallel here with my general read of mickey being the karen to ian's lip, the united states does allow people under 18 to get married, but only with a parent's consent. mickey is the only other character i can think of whose parent gives such horrifying and enthusiastic consent to their marriage (and, similarly - both lip and ian show up to these weddings, get drunk, and make an ass of themselves)

sheila viewing karen as a best friend more so than a daughter also is what leads her to believe it's acceptable, just kind of bitchy, to sleep with jody. jody is another incredibly immature adult. this is a running and well executed theme in most of the predatory characters on this show. karen didn't want him, and sheila later apologizes for all the wrong reasons.

sheila obviously gets hit with another massive wave of loneliness and regret after she kicks her daughter out - she doesn't seem to understand that attempting to force someone to keep an unwanted pregnancy or child is a surefire way to ruin a relationship, and almost certainly thought that karen would go into playing this "sweet little girl" role she expects of having a cute, blonde, daughter. this also shows up in sheila's idealization of karen's relationship to jody. sheila can't accept that karen is outspoken and independent, she wants karen to be a housewife and a princess - karen apparently loved princess stories as a small child (or sheila thought she did), and sheila is unable to accept that that's changed - and she wants jody to be the prince in this story.

even when karen comes back, sheila still can't wrap her head around karen not being obligated to be a mother. she's horrified to learn that karen had told hymie's father's family that sheila "wasn't safe", when karen just wanted desperately to go back to before, because she wanted her mom to love her, and she wanted to feel close, without the imposition of an unwanted child from a traumatic pregnancy.

this might be a reflection of the disaster that was sheila's marriage - a lot of women will try to make up for what they feel they missed out on by projecting onto their daughters' lives. sometimes this is just awkward, but sheila decides to send her brain damaged, absolutely unable to consent, daughter off with jody. when karen becomes disabled sheila sees her no longer as a best friend, but more like a doll. come to think of it, this might be why she got so enthusiastically involved in ..."activism"... for down syndrome. it's an exciting role to play for her.

jody makes probably one single good point in his entire life, which is that hymie should stay connected to his chinese heritage. he obviously didn't care THAT much, and sheila wasn't really listening, because these two later separate hymie from family who DO want him (tommy and his mother) to participate in this fanciful idea.

sheila is, after that, somehow surprised to learn she feels lonely again! she desperately seeks out community however she can - this time in latching onto being 1/32nd menominee after taking a DNA test (as per my memory?) - there's not really anything wrong with wanting to know more about a part of your heritage, and if she'd been more normal about this, who would've fucking cared?

carl doing a crappy imitation of black culture while he believes himself to be 1/8th black is the closest comparison here. sure, sheila also might've really identified as native at that point, maybe she meant well! however, sheila is a grown adult, who tries to build this connection through children. carl, is, however fourteen years old, and he tries to get involved in black culture by hanging out with and emulating older people, befriending and protecting nick, and failing pretty embarrassingly at getting a date. even so, carl's behavior is cringeworthy enough to get commented on by pretty much everyone in the show.

and sheila's attempts to adopt these random children are the culmination of her "cute little baby" obsession - it doesn't escape my notice that she barely pays attention to the oldest (gary?) and focuses heavily on a little girl - and her desperation to find community. she again ignores frank's right to consent or not (and.. the legality of bigamy) to marry frank solely to acquire cute little kids, and, by her hope, a connection and real reason to be involved in a tight knit community.

one of the points at which joan cusacks acting really sticks out to me is when she's at the hearing in hopes of approval for her adoption, and she's sort of playing hard at being "in" group - to boost her chances at getting approved adoption, and because she really, really wants to be "in". she kind of believes she's getting there until the council start to talk to each other in menominee which she, of course, has no clue at the beginning of how to understand. they're just speaking in their own language, but she feels an acute sense of exclusion. when they conclude and simply say "no"- no explanation offered, because why bother to explain to someone who is not going to get it - she has this devastation on her face, because she realizes she was not going to be "in" anyway, no matter what.

when it comes to these kids, yeah, they may have wanted to live with her. but they're kids! they like wifi, and cool snacks, and tv. children deserve a lot more respect and to be trusted, but they also can't understand why it'd be harmful to grow up in a white christian household.

sheila reattaches herself to frank pretty aggressively in response to her new, new, new, old loneliness. she again views someone's daughter as a peer (or adversary) and not a daughter - though with sammi, at least she's a grownup with boundary issues.

sheila's writing is less compelling to me after this, but that might just be because when she really really does try to adopt these kids, i kind of blacked out from rage, and couldn't stand to really look at her. in my rewatch i might pick up on more in s5. she does get pretty involved in the gentrification plotline, though, which is well written, but super difficult for me to look at directly (high fives for anyone who will never afford a house in their hometown) i really hope that her independent sheila life will give her some self confidence by herself, so she'll feel better AND stop twisting herself into these convoluted choices and taking really bizarre kinds of advantage of people in an effort to find ANY community. but idk maybe she'll become a scientologist or something. who really knows

[geekade]

A Series of Unfortunate Spoilers - The Bad Beginning

Friday the 13th (otherwise known as the unluckiest day of the year, even though sometimes we are graced with more than one) was also the release date for the new Netflix original series A Series of Unfortunate Events, starring and produced by Neil Patrick Harris. Adapted from the children's book series of the same name and written by Lemony Snicket, AKA American novelist David Handler, the show follows the terrible misfortune of three newly orphaned children and the dark mishaps they experience that no one should have to endure, let alone orphans.

Now the purpose of a Spoilers! article is to do exactly what the title means: give away the ending. In the Netflix series, each book (there are 13 of them, each with 13 chapters) is broken down into two episodes. Four books are covered in the series, making eight episodes total for the first season. I have to say I am a little disheartened - a word here that means immediately lost confidence in this new show’s ability to go with the theme of 13 - however I hope that NPH and the cast can prove me wrong. So turn back now reader before these unfortunate events are unraveled before you much like the sad, itchy sweaters given to the children by Mrs. Poe.   To begin, we must start at The Bad Beginning.

Their lives devastated by a terrible and mysterious fire, Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire find themselves cooped up in Mr. and Mrs. Poe’s home before being delivered to their new guardian Count Olaf. Mr. Poe, a banker who really has no experience in dealing with the foster care system or social services, appears to be just as useless as he is in the books. As for the rest of the Poes, his wife indulges in crazed paparazzi, and something just doesn’t seem right about his kids. After their uncomfortable stay, the Baudelaires pack up their few belongings, including a mysterious trinket Klaus found at the burnt ruins of their family’s home, and are escorted off to meet Count Olaf, the famous actor, and the Baudelaire childrens’ closest living relative. Sadly, their guardian was not Justice Strauss, Olaf’s incredibly kind and interesting neighbor who is played by Joan Cusack, well known as Sheila from Shameless, A.K.A. the nicest lady EVER!

I am not sold yet on NPH being the nefarious villain that is Count Olaf, especially not with random musical numbers popping up in the middle of a scene. I suppose they could never truly make the series as dark as I would like it, but I’m hoping they spice things up in the next few episodes with more treacherous behavior. I can kind of see how they wanted to make him seem goofy at first, as long as it doesn’t continue like it did with the Jim Carrey version.

Anyway, the Baudelaire orphans live with Count Olaf for an indeterminate - word here that means uncertain but definitely longer than anyone should have to - amount of time. They are forced to do super gross chores, experience physical, verbal, and psychological abuse, all while sharing one dingy bed. The orphans brought all these issues to Mr. Poe and even mentioned some to Justice Strauss but they did nothing! I’m sorry but there’s this thing called DCPP (Division of Child Protection and Permanency, formerly known as “DYFS”) that exists to prevent abuse in foster and adoptive homes. But I guess Justice Strauss missed that class. Or maybe it just doesn’t exist in the world of the Baudelaires since no one really knows what country they live in or if it’s an alternate universe.

So the abuse continues. In fact, it actually gets worse. The Baudelaires discover that Olaf is really out for their fortune and the viewers learn that it was Olaf, disguised as a consultant, who convinced Poe to appoint Olaf as their guardian. One thing I can’t argue with is the sheer uselessness of any adult in this series. The books depict this very well and even has a line that I’ll never forget that says something like: “the only thing Mr. Poe ever seemed to be good for was coughing.” Coughing and being gullible, in my eyes.

Side note: having a narrator in this show is incredibly useful. Lemony Snicket, played here by Patrick Warburton (better known as Puddy!), narrates all 13 books, often pausing to define words, explain phrases, and just add in a little extra to the plot to help out. Warburton does an excellent job of this while traversing through the mysterious underground tunnels. In the books you don’t really learn about some of the mysteries until book five, and the tunnels until about book six, but I feel that they are a great addition to the show. I was annoyed at first that they were not following the timeline of the books, but these changes help the series move along because there were times in the books that it kind of dragged. I feel like that was partially because of their reading level. If anything, the book series matured with the reader, which was enlightening. However, showing the complexity of the plot earlier on really pulls the viewer in. 

Meanwhile, back to the plot. Left to their own devices, the Baudelaires begin researching law in Justice Strauss’ extensive library. Once Olaf announces that the orphans will take part in his play "The Marvelous Marriage," this research continues at an alarming rate. Klaus believes that Olaf plans to legally marry Violet in order to gain access to their fortune by using the play as a decoy, and deceiving Justice Strauss to "act" as the judge in the play. Justice Strauss, blinded by potential fame, goes along with the play and ignores the warning of the children. Klaus, determined to reveal Olaf’s nasty plan, confronts him and tells him he knows what he’s up to. But Olaf is on to him. So baby Sunny is captured and placed in a cage dangling from the super spooky tower in Olaf’s home. The two other children are threatened that if they do not comply, Olaf’s creepy associate with the hook hands will cut the rope and Sunny will plummet to her most untimely death.

These threats don’t stop Violet's determination, and her disgust in marrying Olaf also probably fuels her resolve. She stays up all night inventing a makeshift grappling hook, climbs the tower to rescue Sunny but instead comes face to face with the hook-handed man. Foiled again, the Baudelaires have no choice but to participate in the wedding unless they want to lose their baby sister. And so the show must go on!

The Marvelous Marriage appears to be a very boring play. Olaf seems to be the only character and Violet has no lines except “I do.” She says that line, signs the legal marriage license provided by Justice Strauss as a “prop” and ultimately meets her doom. Olaf boasts of his accomplishment to the audience, Poe is in disbelief, Justice Strauss is distraught, and yet Violet and Klaus know that they fooled him. Knowing Sunny is now safe, the two older siblings reveal that Violet actually signed with her left hand when she is clearly right handed, a small tidbit of information that was provided in the very first scene at the beach.   So the Baudelaire orphans stopped Olaf's first devious plan to get his hands on the Baudelaire fortune. I’m not 100% sure if signing something with your non-dominant hand really nullifies a legal document, but for the sake of Violet’s future I’ll accept it. Yet this does not stop Olaf from escaping since all the useless adults merely sat in horror that such a thing could happen regardless of how many warning signs there were and how many complaints the children voiced.

Tune in next week to meet Uncle Monty, hear Mr. Poe cough more, and maybe find out WHY THE F%*# THEIR PARENTS ARE ALIVE???? BECAUSE THEY SHOULD BE DEAD AND I AM BOTHERED BY THIS BUT I SHOULDN’T BE. So maybe I lied about being okay with all these plot changes and the cool underground tunnels. Oh, how I was wrong. But at least now I get to see more of Cobie Smulders!