Analysis Of Shameless

“Shameless”: did showrunners stop romanticizing the typical working class family? American TV shows have always loved to follow a typical poor family. This base on which a plot could easily be developed has been popular since the late 1980’s like the TV shows “Family matters” or “My wife and kids”. Those TV shows never really presented an accurate depiction of the traditional working class family since the audience of those shows was only looking for a simple entertainment without any challenging ideas or criticism of the inequality within a country. This behavior changed drastically as showrunners decided to create new rules that would give them more freedom; they realized that the general public loved TV shows like “Malcolm in the Middle”

First, we can imagine that this boy is no different than the typical dunce who cannot control his temper and doesn’t care about school, but another element that is rarely used in TV shows changes completely the way we look at this character. In fact, John Wells decided that Ian Gallagher would be gay. This homosexuality brings something more to the show and surprises the audience who believed that “Shameless” would only be about the struggle of a family dealing with its financial problems. Wells turned his show into a social drama where Ian doesn’t only face poverty, but also has to hides his sexuality in a community where gays are still marginalized. His boyfriend, Mickey, cannot accept his homosexuality and hides it from his father who considers this sexual orientation as a sin, even a disease. He is almost repulsed by his own nature since he has learned to hate

The problems that the Gallaghers have to face usually come from the family itself and even if most of the difficulties they encounter come from their social status, they are not necessarily directly connected to a lack of money . We can take the exemple of the relationship between Fiona and her younger sister Debbie: this last one got pregnant and decided to keep the baby despite her young age. Fiona decided that if she wanted to stay in the house her sister would have to get an abortion. In this example, the showrunners present a problem that can occur in a working class family without criticising girls who find themselves in this situation. Both sides can be understood, Fiona wants to protect her sister and assure that Debbie finishes High School, while the pregnant teenager seems to be ready to be a