Cameron Monaghan’s portrayal of Ian Gallagher’s mental illness unraveling is brilliant.
Shameless, Showtime’s Sunday night series about the very dysfunctional Gallagher family and their friends has felt like home to me since the day it debuted.
From the seemingly always grey and slush-covered scenes of my hometown Chicago; to the role reversals of children having to parent their parents, raise themselves, and keep secrets in order to stay together; to the crazy chaos of their lives and the situations they must navigate just to survive: Shameless and its over-the-top storylines aren’t so over-the-top for me. As a matter of fact, they hit pretty close to home, and in no scene has it felt more familiar than in the final moments of season five episode six “Crazy Love” when Ian Gallagher (brilliantly played by Cameron Monaghan), the middle child who is gay, signs himself into a psychiatric hospital.
The fear seen in Ian’s eyes. The slight tremble of his hand as he signs his name on hospital papers. The resignation on his family’s faces, the realization [Read more…]
