Warning: The following contains spoilers for Sunday ShamelessProceed at your own risk!
The message of Shamelesslast episode: life goes on– well, unless you’re Frank.
After waking up from his overdose, the Gallagher patriarch eventually ended up in the hospital, where he died of COVID. Frank’s ghost then visited the Alibi while the family (plus Kev and V) celebrated Ian and Mickey’s wedding anniversary. The party went out, the gang sang Spoon’s “The Way We Get By” while an expensive car went up in flames. Frank then began to float above the city on his bar stool, beer in hand, as a voiceover revealed the contents of his oh-so-Frank letter.
As Frank’s story drew to a close, the rest of the characters’ futures were in the air at the end of the finale: Lip considered a (much lower) offer for the house; Tami may have been pregnant; Ian assured Mickey that he would be a good father so that children could soon be in the map; Carl expressed an interest in buying Kev and V’s bar; and Debbie’s new convicted girlfriend invited Debs to go to Texas with her.
Below, executive producer John Wells talks about Frank’s death, the show’s open conclusion, Fiona’s absence, and possible spin-offs.
TVLINE When did you know how the series would end?
Honestly, probably not that long ago, maybe after Christmas. We continued to monitor what was going on with the virus and how it would affect the show. We wrote about a community that was really going to be affected by the pandemic economically and health-wise. So we kept an eye on it, because we wanted to make sure we weren’t doing something that, by the time it was on the air, would be anti-climactic and kind of post- [the pandemic]… We really hoped the pandemic would end and then we’d rewrite everything at the end, so it wasn’t all about this. But unfortunately that’s not what happened, so we thought we had to deal with it in the world of Shameless and have an ending that reflected what was going on in the world for people living on the poverty line, and that too was still funny and Shameless in the middle of this tragedy we all live in.
TVLINE Most characters’ storylines remain fairly open, except for Frank’s. How did you come to the decision that he had to die in the last episode?
Bill Macy and I had talked about it over the years, and we both felt strongly that while we had a lot of fun with Frank, we leave the impression that there is no consequence whatsoever for years of harmful behavior to his body between drugs and alcohol wouldn’t be fair. So we’d always talked about doing some sort of story about alcoholic dementia. We had actually, or most of it, written it when we quit in March. We were only a few days away from the start of the recordings. When COVID got worse in the late spring and summer, we realized we had to rewrite, because we had to tackle COVID in this community, because it hit the low-income and disadvantaged communities very hard. So it became a natural conversation that Frank might die of COVID – although I have to say there are so many comorbidities that anything could have pushed him over the line. It is like a huge Jenga tower that if you just touch it [and] took out one more thing, [he’s] is going to fall apart.
TVLINE Frank has dealt with death before as a result of his various health problems. If you let him die of COVID instead of drugs or alcohol abuse, how does that change the character’s trajectory?
We also tried to get them to talk about all of his other problems. So they pull out all of his medical records, they talk about how bad his health is, and then in the little tag, he has so much alcohol in his body that he blows up the crematorium. We thought we were doing all of the above for a bit.
TVLINE The future of the other Gallaghers is hinted at, but they remain open. Was the idea of leaving the door open for a spin-off or a revival?
No not really. The idea was to make it look like life, where you really don’t know what’s going to happen next, and let the spectators who have a close relationship with many of the characters fill in the blank you want to fill in. You can’t be wrong about what you think will happen next. You will enjoy thinking or thinking about it, but it is for you to fill in the rest of the story for the Gallaghers, with the exception of Frank. I’ve been involved in a number of long-running shows. I just think it’s lifelike, and like a viewer, I always feel like I like that feeling. Just walk away from the ER [on ER], or a new government will begin in Washington when Bartlet flies away and Santos would become president [on The West Wing]That’s what I like about a story, so that’s what I did. I have to decide. [Laughs]
TVLINE If you could imagine a spin-off for one of the characters, which one would it be?
Oh, it would be a few. We originally wanted to get a little further in the story and let Carl buy the bar from Kev and V and turn it into a police bar and let Debbie work behind the counter. I would like to see what happens to Mickey and Ian in their married life and having a few children. I’d love to see Lip take over a motorcycle business and really get down on the ground and become more and more the patriarch of the rest of the family. There were many stories we could have kept telling. Showtime was ready to be done and they couldn’t have been nicer to us for the past 11 years. So I have nothing but appreciation for all the things they have done for us, but I could have kept doing it.
TVLINE However, with your partners at Showtime or Warner Bros. talk about revisiting these characters later?
No, and I watched them put the sets in a dumpster, so I don’t think anyone expects it. We should see. I haven’t really thought about it.
TVLINE There was one notable absence from the episode, although we did see her in flashbacks. Have you tried to get Emmy Rossum back for the finale?
Yes, and she really wanted that [come back], and we worked and worked on it. She lives in New York with her husband and unfortunately we managed to time it at the wrong time. We hit the second or third time everything ended with two-week quarantines. So just the timing didn’t work. It was disappointing for all of us, and especially for Emmy, but with her other commitments, she couldn’t quarantine back to New York for two weeks after her stay in Los Angeles. It is pathetic. A minor inconvenience given the great tragedy of the pandemic, but 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 never really got that far, to be honest. But what we talked about was that, with the information the family had about Frank’s dementia, she would come back to handle Liam’s custody and decide where Liam would be while they sold the house and some of those decisions. , [and we’d] have some more moments with Fiona and the rest of the family. Since it was so hard to train, we never got to the point [of] actually write and then throw it away, but that was the intention. Emmy is one of my favorite people, so I would have liked to see 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 edit while the family sings, you let Frank float, you have his letter 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 grievous, because that’s Frank. And then contrasting that with the fact that the family actually survived and is grown up and having fun and being himself while talking a little narcissistic about himself seemed like the right way to go. So we tried to balance some humor with character work with heartwarming [scenes]and seeing the whole family together again, just like they were in the pilot episode we shot 11 years ago. We tried to balance it all. I think we did it. You never know when you try to shoot things like let the main character die and float in the air or it will work, but it’s all ShamelessOne of the great things about it Shameless is that it’s so shameless that you can do things you would never do on any other show. [Laughs]
TVLINE The contents of Frank’s letter are not, I would say, warm and hazy, and his kids never really have a moment of closure with him. Was it important to you that the finale didn’t betray their troubled relationship and that it stayed true to who Frank really was?
Yes. We tried to think about it, and I tried to write the scene they found out a few times, and I just thought it was the wrong note to end on for Shameless Shamelessdespite all our craziness and excess, was about joy and about family and about people who look out for each other. The idea that they would all tear in their efforts to figure out what to do with Frank’s ashes didn’t feel bad Shameless-ly for me. You want to go out a bit with the tone you came in with.
TVLINE Do you have a favorite moment from the final, something that really stands out?
Yes, I have a lot of favorite moments from the finale, but Lip and Ian are talking at the Polish one-year anniversary party, when Ian Lip offers his share of the money, and then Lip turns it down and finds out they all thought he was a big part of what had gotten them through. The reality in that family and in many families is that the older siblings are ultimately the mother and father, while the mother and father are not really capable of being adults. Fiona and Lip raised their siblings. I really liked having someone say that to Lip really, because it’s not what he thinks of himself, of who he is.
TVLINE One last question, because it’s something that will tease me for a while: is Debbie really going to Texas?
[Laughs] We had a big fight about it in the room. Several people think she would never go. I actually think she does, but I think she’ll be back six weeks later, with a tan and Frannie in tow. [Laughs] One of my favorite characters, and Emma [Kenny’s] so great in the role. [Debbie is] crazy, really crazy. She’s that person in your family who just does it Which
Shameless fans, what did you think of the series ender? Rate it below and hit the comments!