Deb Crosses A Threshold, And Crosses A Line

If there were any doubt that the gentrification of the Back Of The Yards is real, a daytime raid on The Alibi's rub and tug operation should put it to rest. The block's getting cleaned up, the lesbians have moved in to one property while continuing to go hard after others, and old-style businesses are evolving with the times. You got a bunch of unemployed prostitutes? Retrain them as breastmilk pumpers!

But while the younger Gallaghers are getting up to the usual summertime fun (ish, in Deb's case), it's a mixed bag for the older ones. Lip is starting to be worn down by the physical demands of his job; Ian's worried about Mandy moving to another state with her abusive boyfriend; and the less said about Frank's fix-up for Sammi, the better. And Fiona barely has time to enjoy the afterglow of her surprise great date with a cool, nice, talented guy before getting some even more surprising news from Deb. As for Frank: he ramps up his superbeer brewery after getting a big order from an Alibi barfly, all the while trying to manipulate Sheila out of accepting the lesbians' great offer on the house. Soon enough, though, the question is moot.

Let's run everyone down from who had the best week to who had the worst.

1. Carl
   His sneaky battle against the gentrifiers -- waiting until after dark and moving the parking restriction signs to the opposite side of the street, resulting in the Lisas' getting their car towed -- is both ingenious and the kind of chaotic good we hope to see from members of the clan. Furthermore, while I obviously can't endorse a sixth-grader (even one who's about to do the year for a second time) engaging in sex acts, I appreciate that Carlilingus is learning early the importance of satisfying his partner's needs before his own.
2. Fiona
   Fiona has been decisively rejected by a regretful Sean, which is why she is finally ready to relent to Davis's overtures and go out to a jazz club. Naturally, there they get ambushed by Davis's live-in girlfriend -- who stalked him there from his Instagram -- and Fiona very generously covers by pretending to be dating Gus, Davis's friend who'll be playing tonight. A big kiss meant to sell the lie actually turns out to be...pretty decent, and when he invites her out for coffee -- which turns, in a perfectly innocent way, into gumbo at his place, she lets herself notice that this is a good guy who can play music just for her and that maybe she should make out with him.
   

   What she doesn't know at this point is what Deb has been up to the past couple of days, and finding out puts a damper on her good mood...but the mood is mostly good, for a change, and Gus is a fox so I really hope this pairing works out.

3. Frank
   I guess the advantage of extreme, sociopathic selfishness is that as long as the horror you visit upon others hurts them worse than it does you -- if it even hurts you at all -- then nothing really sticks to you and you never have to change. Consider Frank's actions in this episode. He literally pimps out Sammi to get gear for his home brewing operation. He lies his face off to Sheila about wanting her not to sell her house because he has to stay close to his doctors, and his kids, when the real reason is...said home brewing operation, which he's running in her basement. And he recklessly rigs up the piece of equipment he's traded Sammi for, leading to an explosion that destroys Sheila's house and kills Hanzi, Sammi's date. But Frank has fear? A thousand times no. He instantly changes tack, eagerly telling Sheila he's all in for her road trip plans: "Let's go to the Grand Canyon!" Frank, maybe wait to have this conversation when a man's disembodied leg gets bussed by the authorities?
4. Kevin & Vee
   I kind of appreciate that Vee has worked out a solution that will get breastmilk into her twins without her having to nurse them herself: this is an issue on which women get judged far too much, and too harshly, when there are many reasons that mothers can't nurse their children even if they really want to, and at least this demonstrates that Vee has heard Kevin's concerns and is trying to address them. The profit motive makes the human dairy she establishes kind of problematic, though, and I still feel like we're headed for Vee walking out on the family because her difficulties with breastfeeding are just one symptom of the larger issue, which is that she fundamentally does not want to be a parent to these kids.
5. Lip, Ian & Mandy
   Mickey might be resigned to Mandy's moving to Indiana with Kenyatta, but Ian (whose mood seems fairly stable this week) is not letting it happen without a fight: he tells Lip what's happening and implores Lip to convince Mandy that she's worth a damn. Lip may be very mature in some ways, but he is still just a college freshman-about-to-turn-sophomore, and the best idea he can come up with to cleave Mandy and Kenyatta is to...have sex with her himself, as proof of her value as a person as opposed to a mere "hood girl"? Mandy is pathetically grateful to be getting Lip's attention, but she knows it doesn't mean he loves her, really, and she goes anyway. This story feels like it probably isn't really finished, though.
6. Deb
   Sick of getting iced out by her frenemies, Deb decides to show everyone how grown-up she is by throwing a grown-up party, lubricated by a case of Frank's "Milk Of The Gods," beer that's several degrees of magnitude more intoxicating than any beer that's commercially available. This is, unfortunately for Matty, what he ends up drinking when he shows up with a couple of his friends, and he ends up in Deb's bed. Lacking good judgment or experience, Deb assumes that Matty's friction-based hard-on is a reliable indicator of his willingness to deflower her, even after a whole season emphatically resisting her. The next morning, she wakes up elated that she's become a woman, while Matty is terrified about her having "statutory-raped [her]self." (It will be interesting to see whether this portrayal of male consent and female-on-male sexual assault is part of the current thinkpiece conversation.) Deb is sitting heartbroken in the back yard when Fiona returns from her nice date with Gus, and after securing Fiona's agreement not to tell Deb how to feel about it because Deb's not sure herself, she tells Fiona everything. After a beautiful series of microexpressions from Emmy Rossum -- shock, disappointment, fondness, nostalgia -- Fiona spares Deb her judgment, and simply takes her hand.
   

   It's another sweet, sisterly moment, and another storyline that feels unresolved.

7. Sheila
   Well, the bad news is that fucking Frank blew up her house. The good news is that she had enough money to buy a luxury RV and drive as far away from him as the bounds of the continental North American land mass will allow. I hope she also has enough to replenish her supply of dildos.
8. Sammi
   The surprise of the episode is how good Sammi is on a first date: warm, complimentary, sweet, impressed by everything. And even though I think she's mostly garbage, I couldn't help feeling bad for her when things with a prospect she'd decided was a good person on Frank's endorsement -- I mean, of all people's, Frank's! -- went completely awry and let her down. Maybe she'll stop trying so hard to force Frank into a relationship with her now that she knows what he's really capable of.